Ramanuja
Vedanta · South Asia · 1017 to 1137
Indian teacher who argued that the world and individual selves are real parts of God, in a qualified form of non-dualism.
What it is
Ramanuja was a South Indian philosopher and religious teacher who helped to consolidate the Vishishtadvaita school of Vedanta, the philosophy of qualified non-dualism. He is honoured as a saint in the Sri Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism, which worships Vishnu.
He was a close student of the Vedanta of his day, which had strong ties to Shankara's absolute non-dualism, and he gave an alternative reading of the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras. Where Shankara stressed knowledge, Ramanuja gave devotion a central place and provided a philosophical basis for it.
The main ideas
- Qualified non-dualism. There is one ultimate reality, Brahman, but it is not without differences. Souls and matter are real, and they depend on Brahman for their being.
- The universe as God's body. Souls and matter are modes or qualities of Brahman, and stand to it as a body stands to the soul that inhabits it. The model is organic.
- Devotion matters. He gave devotion (bhakti) to a personal God a firm intellectual footing, and held that surrender to God leads to liberation.
- Against pure abstraction. Unlike Shankara, he did not treat the personal God as lower or merely apparent. He aligned philosophy with the theism of most Hindus.
What it looks like in practice
Picture someone who feels that their love for God is just a lesser stage than abstract understanding, and who is told that the love is itself the path. Ramanuja would say that the person who worships and the God they worship are really related, and that the relation is part of the truth, not an illusion. This is an illustration of the idea, not a quotation.
Books and moments
- The Sri Bhashya is his commentary on the Brahma Sutras.
- The Vedarthasamgraha is a shorter statement of his teaching.
- His commentary on the Gita is another of the texts traditionally credited to him.
Questions and criticism
- Is difference real or ultimate? Shankara and Ramanuja read the same texts and disagree on this, and the debate shaped Vedanta ever after.
- Can a person be both part of God and distinct? His body-and-soul model is a way of holding both, and its coherence has been debated.
- What is the role of devotion and knowledge? He gives devotion a leading role, and later schools weighed it differently.
Close neighbours
He answered Shankara and stands in a line of Vaishnava teachers. The pages on Shankara and Advaita Vedanta show the school he argued with.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Philosophies they belong to or are close to
Who they connect to
Reacted against
- Shankara · Ramanuja argued that Shankara's claim of an illusory world misreads the Upanishads.
Reacted against by
- Madhva · He agreed that God is personal but rejected the view that souls are parts of God.
Runs parallel to
- Thomas Aquinas · Both reconcile a personal God with a systematic philosophy of the soul and world. (scholars disagree about this link)
Other Vedanta thinkers
- Shankara · 788 to 820
- Madhva · 1238 to 1317
- Swami Vivekananda · 1863 to 1902
- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan · 1888 to 1975