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11th-13th century CE (Ramanuja c. 11th c.; Madhva 1238-1317)Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Ramanuja and Madhva Answer Shankara With Personal Gods

Two philosophers insist the soul stays real and God stays a person, against the idea that all difference is illusion

On the timeline · around 11th-13th century CE (Ramanuja c. 11th c.; Madhva 1238-1317) · Puranic and Bhakti HinduismPuranic and Bhakti HinduismRamanuja and Madhva Answer Shankara With Personal Gods800 CE900 CE10001100120013001400

Quick facts

Ramanuja's school
Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism), 11th c.
Madhva's school
Dvaita (dualism), 1238-1317
Shared move
Both identify Brahman with Vishnu and center bhakti
Core disagreement with Shankara
The soul and a personal God are genuinely real, not illusion

What happened

Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta had taught that only Brahman is real and that the individual self's separateness is illusion. Two later South Indian philosophers pushed back with theistic systems that kept both the soul and a personal God real. The 11th-century thinker Ramanuja founded Vishishtadvaita, translated as qualified non-dualism, arguing that individual selves are real modes of the body of Brahman, so that Brahman stands to all others as the soul stands to its body, and he made bhakti, devotion to a personal God, central to liberation, identifying Brahman with Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi. Madhva, who lived from 1238 to 1317, went further with Dvaita, or dualism, insisting that the soul is inalterably dependent upon, and therefore fundamentally different from, Brahman, whom he too identified with Vishnu; for Madhva, scripture could not teach that all beings are identical because ordinary perception shows us that we differ from one another and from God.

Why it matters

Ramanuja and Madhva gave the enormous devotional energy of the Bhakti movement a rigorous philosophical foundation: if the soul and a personal God are both genuinely real, then loving devotion to that God is not a lower path to be transcended but the highest one, a conclusion that shaped Vaishnava theology for the next thousand years and underlies much of the popular Krishna and Vishnu worship practiced across India today.

How we know

Both philosophers left substantial Sanskrit commentaries on the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita that survive and are analyzed in academic philosophy scholarship; the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes their systems and dates from this textual record.

Sources

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