Preface

At present the modern man is a victim of various conflicting forces which stand in the way of his self-realization. But one should not feel despair and disappointment as a dynamic philosopher Swami Vivekananda’s life and social philosophy are always there to save as a source of great inspiration to all of us. His eternal words give courage to a depressed mind and his optimistic message provides hope for a sinking nation. A distinctive characteristic of Vivekananda is the comprehensiveness of his vision. He was remarkably universal to the core of his luminous being. Behind his universal outlook was his great spiritual-realization-apprehension of the reality in and beyond appearances. This work “Social Philosophy of Swami Vivekananda-A Study” aims to deal and systematically study Vivekananda’s social philosophy and to evaluate its role to make this world a blooming unity. Attempt is made to critically examine Vivekananda’s social philosophy as pre-cursor to remove the strife and grief of the world and to establish harmony and understanding, which is the crying need of the day. The method of study is analytic, critical and evaluative based on data collected from both primary and secondary data.

To fulfill our aim of study and in order to make our study comprehensive, the study is divided into seven chapters with one sub-chapter. The first chapter of this thesis is ‘Introduction’. An attempt is made here to give a brief sketch of the life and work of Swami Vivekananda. Again, the philosophical foundation of Vivekananda as well as his social philosophy has also been explained in this chapter. The second chapter is ‘Vivekananda-As A Social Reformer’. In this chapter the socio-economic condition of the nineteenth century’s India has been explained briefly. Attempt has been made here to see the social reforms of Vivekananda. The third chapter is ‘Vivekananda’s Concept of Religion’. This chapter consists of a detail discussion on religion mostly about Vivekananda’s view. Important subjects like nature of religion, reason and religion, goal of religion, religious experience, ways to God, all these are discussed here in the context of Vivekananda. There is a sub-chapter of the third chapter which is titled as ‘Tolerance and Acceptance’. An attempt is made here to understand both M.K. Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda’s conception of religious toleration. The fourth chapter is ‘Vivekananda’s Concept of Universal Religion’. In this chapter an attempt has been made to discuss the concept of universal religion in the context of Vivekananda. The fifth chapter is ‘Practical Vedanta’. Here all the four lectures on Practical Vedanta delivered by Vivekananda in London have been explained. Vivekananda tried heart and soul to establish Vedanta a practical religion. The sixth chapter is ‘Vivekananda’s Concept of Education’. This chapter consists of a detailed analysis of Vivekananda’s view on education. Important subjects like philosophy of education, teacher and the taught, method of learning, education for the downtrodden classes, women education etc. all are discussed here in the context of Vivekananda.

The seventh chapter is ‘Conclusion’. The conclusion chapter makes a thorough analysis of the entire issue before the final judgement on the findings. Study reveals that Vivekananda’s philosophy is spiritualistic in nature. But his spiritualism has been applied to remove the social problems. There was no other aim in Vivekananda’s mind save the upliftment of the downtrodden masses of India (Whole human race at large). He knew that spirituality is the soul of India and he took advantage of this spirituality to root out the social problems of India. His aim was to arouse the latent divinity of man so that they gain confidence and to impart right sort of education for material advancement. Findings of the study reveal that if we are able to actualize his social philosophy, world will be a blooming unity under the banner of Vedantic humanity of oneness and then the human society will be peaceful.