Cosmism in Advaita Vedānta

Summary

Advaita Vedānta is often seen as world-denying, but this paper argues it actually affirms the world as contingently real and ethically significant. The author uses Sartre's view of consciousness to show the ego is not central to experience. Analyzing māyā and adhyāsa from Śaṅkara onward, the paper claims egohood is a metaphysical misidentification, not an illusion. Liberation (jīvanmukti) is interpreted as embodied freedom within the world, not withdrawal. The paper concludes that Advaita's implicit horizon is a world-affirming, cosmist metaphysics.

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Abstract

Advaita Vedānta has frequently been interpreted as world-negating, giving rise to charges of metaphysical quietism and ethical disengagement. This paper argues, by contrast, that Advaita articulates a fundamentally cosmist vision in which the world is neither denied nor absolutized, but affirmed as contingently real and ethically significant. The argument proceeds through a threefold analysis of ego, world, and liberation. Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s non-egological account of consciousness, the paper shows how the ego is displaced from the interior of experience and situated within the world, thereby unsettling ‘subject-centered’ conceptions of freedom. It then traces the development of the doctrines of māyā a nd adhyāsa , from Śaṅkara through post-Śaṅkara Advaita, showing that Advaita explains egohood as metaphysical misidentification rather than ontological falsity, while preserving the empirical world as the locus of experience and action. Finally, the paper interprets jīvanmukti not as withdrawal from the world, but as embodied freedom within it. In doing so, it shows that Advaita Vedānta offers a robust, world-affirming metaphysics in which cosmism emerges as its implicit philosophical horizon.

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