Dharma and Identity in Śaṅkara's Advaita

The aim of this article is to put Śaṅkara’s (c.750 BCE) deconstructions of individual identity in dialogue with his ethical support of Vedic identity categories. Śaṅkara is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers of the ancient Veda-rooted (āstika) tradition (darśana) of Advaita Vedānta. This tradition argues that the innermost self (ātman) of all individuals (jīva) is non-dual (advaita) with unchanging and unqualified (nirguṇa) being-consciousness (brahman). All perceivable attributes, including the particularities of one’s own embodiment, are false superimpositions (adhyāsa) that arise due to deep-seated ignorance (avidyā) of true being. This ignorance is the root of all suffering, as it leads to states of attachment (kāma) and action (karma), which perpetuate one’s seeming entrapment within cycles of transmigration (saṃsāra). Accordingly, Śaṅkara argues that the only way to end this suffering is to relinquish all attachment fuelled actions, and to instead seek the highest spiritual goal (parama-puruṣārtha) of liberation (mokṣa), where the non-dual nature of the self is revealed. In this state of mokṣa all forms of worldly suffering come to a permanent end, as one’s identification with embodiment — which was the source of this suffering — is finally sublated (bādha). Śaṅkara thus argues that all facets of personal identity are, in fact, false products of the (mis)identification between the unqualified self and the differentiated mind-body. Prima facie, this deconstruction of identity categories would seem to imply that all persons are spiritually equal, and that socio-religious distinctions of caste (varṇa), gender (liṅga), and so on are irrelevant to one’s true self. However, as we will see, asserting the ontological instability of these identity categories nevertheless does not stop Śaṅkara from invoking them as properly determining each person’s location on a hierarchical spectrum of socio-religious merit (dharma) and entitlement (adhikāra). Consequently, while liberation (mokṣa) from ignorance requires a renunciation of religious acts and identities, Śaṅkara nevertheless firmly states that only certain identities are entitled to seek this ultimate liberation.Some authors have argued that this commitment to socio-religious hierarchy is incompatible with Śaṅkara’s broader view of the non-duality of the self and should therefore be regarded as a kind of unconscious acquiescence to bigoted notions which are otherwise deeply questioned by his non-dual metaphysics. In contrast, this paper attempts to show how Śaṅkara’s metaphysical and ethical commitments are in fact reconcilable from his advaita perspective. By doing so, one can shed light on how Advaita Vedānta has historically justified its belief in various forms of socio-religious stratification. This is particularly imperative as many of these stratifications continue to exist within Hindu sociocultural universes even today. As such, understanding how these Vedic identities have been configured in the past can be a crucial way of resisting and identifying their operations in the present.