Philosophy of The Mahabharata and Dialogues Plato’s Republic

 Plato’s Republic is an epic of philosophy, supplementing Homer’s epics in the Hellenic tradition. The Mahabharata is an epic bearing its philosophical interpretation throughout for those who have discerned its interpretative principles but manifest a comprehensive philosophical perspective, especially in the Bhagavad Gita.

 

Without presupposing that the accounts in these two texts, albeit from kindred cultures, should be the same, this Indica Course seeks to bring them, and the experiences of divinity that inform them, into a dialogue. These definitions of doing the right thing and duty in the Transcivilizational dialogues of Mahabharata and Republic are remarkable.

 

Guided by the question ‘What is justice?’ Through his dramatic protagonist, his teacher Socrates, Plato establishes that it is to be found in the well-ordered soul, but that to discern the order of the soul, one must look to the state in which one finds this order writ large. Socrates soon finds that the state, and hence the soul, finds itself ineluctably at war, and traces this struggle, within and without, throughout the text, which reaches its climax on a battlefield, with a vision of the souls of every kind of creature facing their ultimate choice. The Mahabharata, too, concerns a state at war and the war within the soul, as seen from many sides and in countless forms. In its climax, also on a battlefield, Arjuna, called by duty to destroy those who are as close to him as his very soul, appeals to his God to save him with an account of dharma, of the nature and ground of right action in the world, seeking as well that knowledge which alone may guide him in the most fateful choice of his life.

Studying these epics will naturally make you evolve higher than ordinary minds. You will find a better vision of life, soul, and purpose. 

These definitions of doing the right thing and duty in the Transcivilizational dialogues of Mahabharata and Republic are remarkable.

Studying these epics will naturally make you evolve higher than ordinary minds. You will find a better vision of life, soul and purpose.