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 find...