Most Famous Vedanta Philosophers

Vedanta is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, centered on the metaphysical inquiries of the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita. Its central question is the relationship between the individual self (atman) and ultimate reality (Brahman). The most influential sub-school, Advaita Vedanta, holds that this relationship is one of non-dual identity. Vedanta has shaped Indian philosophical and religious thought for more than a millennium and remains a living tradition.

Philosophers in this tradition

Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902 · Indian
Narendranath Datta, known as Swami Vivekananda, was an Indian Hindu monk and the principal disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. His address at the Parliament of the W...
Adi Shankara 788 – 820 · Indian
Adi Shankara was an Indian philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, the school of non-dualism. Working in a brief but extraordinarily product...
Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941 · Indian
Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, philosopher, musician, and educator and the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born into a prominent Bengali fa...
Ramana Maharshi 1879 – 1950 · Indian
Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and one of the most influential teachers of Advaita Vedanta in the twentieth century. At sixteen he experienced a spontaneous identifica...
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 1888 – 1975 · Indian
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian philosopher and statesman, the second President of independent India and one of the foremost twentieth-century interpreters of Indian phil...
Sri Aurobindo 1872 – 1950 · Indian
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, poet, and anti-colonial revolutionary. After studies at Cambridge and early activism in the Bengali nationalist movement, he withd...
Madhva 1199 – 1278 · Indian
Madhva was an Indian theologian and the founder of Dvaita, or dualistic Vedanta. Against Adi Shankara's non-dualism and Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism, he taught that there is...
Sri Ramakrishna 1836 – 1886 · Indian
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a Bengali Hindu mystic and religious teacher and one of the most influential religious figures of nineteenth-century India. As the principal priest a...
Ramanuja 1017 – 1137 · Indian
Ramanuja was an Indian theologian and the most important exponent of Vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism, in the Vedanta tradition. Against Adi Shankara's Advaita, he taug...
Raimon Panikkar 1918 – 2010 · Spanish-Indian
Raimon Panikkar was a Spanish-Indian philosopher and Catholic priest, born in Barcelona to a Catalan mother and an Indian father, and one of the most influential figures in twen...
Akka Mahadevi c. 1130 – c. 1160 · Indian
Akka Mahadevi was a twelfth-century Kannada Bhakti poet and philosopher in the Lingayat tradition of southern India, one of the most striking female voices in classical South As...
Gaudapada c. 500 – c. 600 · Indian
Gaudapada was an Indian philosopher of the early medieval period, traditionally regarded as the paramaguru, the teacher's teacher, of Adi Shankara, and the first systematic expo...
J. L. Mehta 1912 – 1988 · Indian
J. L. Mehta was an Indian philosopher and one of the most important interpreters of Heidegger and the Vedantic tradition in twentieth-century Indian thought. Trained in Banaras ...
Madhusudana Sarasvati c. 1540 – c. 1640 · Indian
Madhusudana Sarasvati was a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indian Advaita Vedantin philosopher, traditionally regarded as one of the greatest Advaita systematists between Sa...
Vacaspati Misra c. 900 – c. 980 · Indian
Vacaspati Misra was an Indian philosopher of the tenth century and the most learned commentator of his age, a Maithila scholar who wrote authoritative commentaries on every majo...