Shankara was born in a Nambudhiri family,1 at Kaladi, a small village on the West coast of South India. There is no consensus, among the historians of Indian thought, about the exact dates of his birth and death. According to Telang, Shankara belonged to the middle or the end of the sixth century A.D. Sir R.C. Bhaandaarkar suggests 680 A.D., as the year of Shankara’s birth. Anandagiri, in his biography of Shankara, Samkaravijaya, proposes that he was born in 44 B.C. and died in 12 B.C.2 None of these is based on sound evidence; they are only possible dates. Today the generally accepted dates of Shankara’s birth and death are 788 A.D. and 820 A.D., respectively.3

Though it is difficult to determine the exact dates of Shankara’s life, still the fact that he is an historical figure and a thinker of extraordinary merit, is beyond any doubt. He, indeed, is an academic prodigy. It is said that, at the age of ten, he not only memorized the scriptures, but also wrote commentaries on them. He is said to have written the illustrious commentary on Brahma-Sutras, when he was just twelve years old.4 As a young boy, Shankara was totally dissatisfied with the society in which he lived. At that time in history, Hinduism, in its practical aspect seemed to give primary importance to ritual practices and sacrifices. In the Hindu society, the caste system5 was prevalent, and the lower castes were treated with contempt by the higher castes, especially by the priestly class. The enlightened teaching of Buddha called for a transformation of hearts and interior attitudes, which were not given due importance, in the religious life of the people. Besides, Buddhism with its teaching worked towards the equality of all men by not accepting the disparities of the caste system. This message of love and equality of all, and the non-acceptance of the ritualism of Hinduism, attracted many, especially people of the lower castes, to Buddhism. As many embraced Buddhism, Hinduism began to lose its significance, and no longer had its former influence on the lives of the people. At the time of Shankara, Hinduism was at its lowest ebb. Though a boy, Shankara realized the need for change and transformation in Hinduism both in its philosophy and in its practice. He saw the need to understand the lofty truths of Hinduism in a new light and wanted his people to live by this new understanding of the scriptures.

Like water on a lotus leaf.6

He wandered as a teacher from place to place, engaging with leaders of other schools of thought in discussion, making them realize their erroneous doctrines and practices. Of the many such debates Shankara’s debate with Mandan Mishra, a great thinker of the time, is worth noting. Mandan Mishra held that the vocation of the householder is superior to that of a monk (sannyaasin). Shankara convinced Mandan Mishra, of the falsity of his belief. As a result, he became a monk and a disciple of Shankara, taking a new name Suresvaraacaarya, who later is said to have annotated Shankara’s commentary on the Brahma-Suutras.7

Besides conducting debates to enlighten the minds of the people, Shankara also established monasteries (mutts), in order to perpetuate the truths of Advaita Vedaanta. Shankara was not only a debater, a philosopher and a mystic, but also a man of human kindness and filial affection. He openly violated the law which governs the order of Sannyasins, by conducting funeral services for his mother, and thus had to face many objections from his community.8 Shankara’s short but active life came to an end at Kedarnath in the Himalayas at the age of thirty-two.9

Though Shankara’s life was short, his literary output was enormous. Shankara was the commentator par excellence of the Vedas. He wrote commentaries on the Bagavad Giita, the Vedaanta-Suutras and on all the major Upanishads. In these and his other works such as the Upadeeshasaahasrii, the Viveekachudaamani and other works, he elaborated the main lines of Advaita Vedaanta. Besides, Shankara also wrote many hymns in praise of popular deities to help ordinary people in their way to God. Many additional works, such as, Aatmaboota and the Mohamudgaram are attributed to him.10

The doctrine advocated by Shankara, from a purely philosophical point of view, and apart from theolo-gical considerations, is the most important and interesting one which has arisen on the Indian soil; neither those forms of the Vedanta which diverge from the view represented by Shankara, nor any other non-Vedic systems, can be compared with the so-called orthodox Vedaanta in boldness, depth and subtlety of speculation.11

Shankara was a great intellectual of his time. He was also a past master of dialectics. He was well qualified to be the founder of a new system. . . . But when he took upon himself the role of the com-mentator, he had not right to forget his position and foist upon the Upanishads a philosophy of his own. . . . As an exponent of the art of dialectics he may be looked upon as a great success, but as an interpreter of the Upanishads, he is a huge failure.12

He (Shankara) overrides others (other commentators) by the sheer force of his greatness, . . . in particular of his logic of absolutism and his logic of apprehension. The whole host of other commentators exhibit in their interpretation what may be called the thoughts arrested development, . . . (that) they all point by force of their unconscious logic to the Advaita Vedaanta of Shankarite type as their natural culmination.13

Though our intention here is not to decide as to whose interpretation of the Suutras is superior or faithful to the scripture, in response to the contention of these scholars and to justify Shan-kara, it should be noted that his interpretation of the scripture is based on his own inner experience and mystical vision of truth. A religious genius, like Shankara, while interpreting the scripture cannot be faithless to his own inner experience of Brahman.14 Dr. Radhakrishnan rightly points out that "he (Shankara) is a philoso-pher and a poet, a servant and a saint, a mystic and a religious re-former." 15

Martin Heidegger, who is acclaimed as a seminal thinker and a significant philosopher of the present era, sometimes is referred to as "a man without a biography’.16 Though, this might be an exag-geration, yet his life was simple and normal as that of an ordinary German professor. Except for the period between May, 1933 to February, 1934 during which he was involved with Hitler’s Nazi party, his life was basically uneventful.17 He was born at the little town of Messkirch, in Southwest Germany on September 26, 1889. For the most part he lived and worked there, in the town of his birth -- except for the five years at Marburg -- until he died on May 26, 1976, four months before his eighty-seventh birthday.18 Some of his writings highlight his life and his multifaceted personality. The Course of My Life,19 A Recollection,20 and My Way to Pheno-menology21 give biographical details regarding Heidegger’s life, education, academic pursuits and the influence of other thinkers on him. His essays Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?22 and the Pathway23 point to Heidegger’s desire for oneness with nature, which one can experience only in the simple, still, calm and rustic life of the country. Such a natural environment gave him the perfect space and the solitude24 needed for his philosophical search.

All through his life, Heidegger was a seeker. As every seeker must be, Heidegger was courageous in his seeking. He was never afraid of going wrong while seeking. But, when he realized that he was in the wrong, he was never apologetic about it; nor did he regret his going astray from the truth. Instead, he courageously moved forward and continued his search. This is clear from the statements he made during the Der Spiegel Interview.25 It is this attitude that made Heidegger isolate himself from the National Socialism and to resign the office of Rector of Freiburg University.26 He did not count the cost of choosing what is true, when he knew that something was the truth. Bernhard Welte, gives the following tribute to Heidegger:

He (Heidegger) was always seeking and always underway. At various times he emphatically charac-terized his thinking as a path. He traveled this path without ceasing. There were bends and turns along it; certainly there were stretches, where he went astray. Heidegger always understood the path as one that was given him, sent to him. He sought to under-stand his word as a response to an indication to which he listened without respite. For him, to think was to thank, to make a grateful response to that appeal.27

The ‘matter-for-thought’ of Heidegger’s seeking has been received with great interest, even though he himself has been suspect due to his involvement with Nazism. Heidegger is one of the few thinkers to whom much attention is paid by researchers and scholars, even during his lifetime. Therefore, it is natural that there are differ-ences of opinion among the Heideggerian scholars regarding the manner in which his philosophy is viewed and interpreted. One opinion says that the whole of Heidegger’s thinking is contained in his major work, Being and Time, as it anticipates all the themes that occur in his later writings.28 Yet there is another view, which recog-nizes three separate periods in Heidegger’s path of thinking.29 There is a third view, which speaks of two periods in Heidegger’s thinking that are named as Early Heidegger or Heidegger I and Later Heidegger or Heidegger II. This view is held by a number of reputed commentators of Heidegger. According to them there came about a shift30 in Heidegger’s thinking that made him move from the early phase to the latter phase. Even they differ among themselves re-garding the nature of the shift. Thinkers, like John Wild, Alphonse de Waelhens, Lazalo Versenyi and some others, say that there is a break in Heidegger’s thought, the nature of which is such that there is no bridge leading from Heidegger I to Heidegger II. In other words, they speak of a complete break between the two phases. There are others, such as Otto Poeggeler, William J. Richardson, Walter Schulz and Werner Marx, who, though they recognize the shift in Heidegger’s thinking, hold for a coherence and unity of both the phases. In other words, they see the two phases, not as isolated from each other, but as a continuity, both in content and aim, though the perspective is different. Thus, for them, Heidegger II is an explication and an interpretation of Heidegger I, from the perspective of Being.31

The view of the second group of thinkers, seems to be in agreement with what Heidegger himself thought about the shift in his thinking. For Heidegger, the change involved in the shift is neither a break in his thinking, nor an abandoning of the earlier standpoint for the later. To quote him: "This turning (shift) is not a change of stand-point from Being and Time, but it is the thinking that was sought which first arrives at the location of that dimension out of which Being and Time is experienced."32 Besides there are some topics which Heidegger promises, at various places in Being and Time, that he would take up in the section of ‘Time and Being’,33 for example, the fuller development of the idea of phenomenology,34 of onto-logy,35 and the discussion on language.36 The fact that Heidegger wanted to publish these topics in the unpublished section of Being and Time, viz., ‘Time and Being’, from a different perspective, sub-stantiates Heidegger’s claim that the change envisaged in the shift is already present at the initial stage of Being and Time. Heidegger clarifies this point when he says: " Only by way of what (Heidegger) I has thought does one gain access to what is to be thought by (Heidegger) II. But the thoughts of (Heidegger) I becomes possible only if it is contained in (Heidegger) II."37 Thus, the ‘matter-for-thought’ Being and Time has not really changed even after the shift, but the perspective with which it is considered is changed. Heidegger remarks: ". . . the road (Being and Time) has taken remains even today a necessary one, if our Dasein is to be stirred by the question of Being."38 Commenting on this point J.L. Mehta concludes that the writings after the shift are a critique and a commentary on Being and Time.39 Therefore, for Heidegger, the completion of the shift "is not a turning to a new position, but rather a return to the original point of departure and a return to the ground upon which the circle-of-thought has rested from the beginning."40

Two events seem to have made Heidegger bring about the shift in his thought. They are the failure of Being and Time to accomplish its intended task of clarifying the meaning of Being and Heidegger’s political involvement. In Being and Time, Heidegger raises the question of Being41 and analyzes it in relation to time.42 He chooses the existential analysis of Dasein43 to clarify the meaning of Being, as he has the ontic, ontological and ontico-ontological priority.44 In this endeavor, that which he interrogates (das Befragte) is Dasein; that which is interrogated (das Gefragte) is Being; and that which is to be found out by asking (das Erfragte) is the meaning of Being.45 Even though it was Heidegger’s aim, he did not succeed, as he only dealt with the preparatory analysis of Dasein and his relationship to temporality, while the section three that should have treated the relationship between temporality and Being, viz., ‘Time and Being’ did not appear as per the original plan.46 Heidegger indicates the inadequacy of Being and Time to accomplish the task of clarifying the meaning of Being at the end of the written portions of Being and Time as follows:

. . . Our way of exhibiting the constitution of Dasein’s being remains only one way which we take. . . . Whether this is the only way or even the right one at all, can be decided only after one has gone along it. The conflict as to the interpretation of Being cannot be allayed, because it has not been enkindled. . . . it is of the kind which cannot get enkindled unless preparations are made for it: Towards this alone the foregoing investigation is on the way.47

Thus, it is clear that the published portion of Being and Time has failed to achieve its original aim. The reason for the failure of Being and Time was that, though Heidegger wanted to break with the metaphysical tradition and subjectivistic thinking, he was not able to be completely out of it at that time.48 So in Being and Time, he raises the question of Being from the subjectivistic perspective, even though he did not want to do so. Thus, in Being and Time, Heidegger has his legs, as it were, in two boats. On the one hand, he wants to extricate himself from the metaphysical-subjectivistic thinking and, on the other hand, he is unable to pull himself out of the very thinking he detests. "Throughout Being and Time there is a tension owing to the fact that the work lies halfway between metaphysical thinking and the new way of thinking."49 For example, Heidegger speaks of Dasein’s essence as existence in the sense of transcendence, and yet limits it by saying that every existence is one’s own, i.e., an owned selfhood. Again, authenticity of Dasein is reached by the call of conscience, which cannot be controlled by Dasein. But authenticity is attained only when Dasein resolutely owns the call in anticipation of his own death. These examples from Being and Time indicate that it was bound to fail, as it was attempting to give a new way of thinking without fully being out of the metaphysical thinking.50 To quote Heidegger:

The adequate execution and completion of this other thinking that abandons subjectivity (Heidegger II) is surely made more difficult by the fact that in the publication of Being and Time, the third division of the first part ‘Time and Being’ was held back. . . . The section in question was held back because thinking (Heidegger I) failed in the adequate saying of this turning (shift) and did not succeed with the help of the language of Metaphysics.51

Besides, the failure of Being and Time, Heidegger’s political involvement, may be another event that might have influenced Hei-degger to make the shift in his thinking. Martin Heidegger actively supported, especially in his public addresses at the University of Freiburg and to many workers’ groups, the cause of Hitler and the National Socialist Party,52 besides being an active member of the party for ten months between 1933 to 1934. One might wonder why such an outstanding thinker of the time, who was supposed to be the spiritual leader of the academic community and the nation,53 could so easily fall in line with the thinking of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

One reason was Heidegger’s belief in himself, as the philosopher-prophet, who was called to guide the German nation in that troubled period of the 1930s, like Fichte in the early 1800s. Besides, he also believed that with his national and international reputation as a philosopher he could do something to alter the destiny of Germany for the better. It would have been wrong for any person of Heidegger’s standing to remain unmoved when his nation went through such turmoil. So as an authentic patriotic citizen of Germany, he might have felt within himself that he should give spiritual direction to the German nation. It was probably what the nation expected of an outstanding thinker like Heidegger.54 Just as Plato attempted to bring about a philosopher-king at Syracuse by genuine support and education, so also Heidegger felt that the particular political situation of Germany in 1933, called him to guide the political leader of Germany.55 This may have made Heidegger support Hitler and his National Socialist Party, which was the dominant political force in the 1930s.

Another possible reason was his belief that Adolf Hitler was a practical and wise man, an efficient leader of the German nation, in whose hands the Germans must place their destiny. The 1930s was a period of general political confusion. There were about 22 political parties in Germany, with divergent views on national policies.56

As none of these parties was able to solve the nation’s pro-blems, a strong leader and a national party was the need of the time. Heidegger saw in Adolf Hitler and in the National Socialist Party an answer to this need and so spoke in favor of Hitler.57 Though an initial impression of Heidegger during the early months of his tenure as the Rector of the Freiburg University, he realized that he needed to make some compromises with the officials of the party to get a wider audience for his views.58 Heidegger did have his differences with the party specially as he was against its racist tendencies. But, he still believed that the movement could be guided, by the presence of intellectuals, like him, within the party.59

Heidegger’s belief in himself as a philosopher-king to guide the German destiny, his belief in Hitler and his party as the salvation of the German nation, and the belief in his and other intellectuals’ ability to direct the course of the National Socialist Party came to a standstill when circumstances forced him to resign from his office of Rector in spring 1934.60 After his resignation, the intellectuals of the Nazi Party attacked Heidegger personally in their writings.61 He was constantly watched, especially, during his lectures.62 In 1934, he was prevented from participating in the International Philosophical Congress in Prague and in 1937 he was excluded from the German delegation for the International Descartes Congress in Paris.63 Hei-degger was declared as the most expendable professor and was sent to the Rhine to build fortifications.64 From these happenings after his resignation as the Rector, Heidegger realized that he was unrealistic in believing that he could change the course of National Socialism which was racism, social Darwinism, an active form of Subjectivism and a philosophy of will-to-power. It also dawned on him that besides having no control over this type of world view, he himself was in its hold as long as he was an ardent supporter of the National Socialism of Hitler. This awareness made Heidegger undertake a study on Nietzsche’s philosophy of will-to-power from 1936-1944 and give lectures on Nietzsche, in which, he criticized the National Socialist world view, which accepted Nietzsche’s philosophy as its basis.65 Heidegger’s involvement with the political situation in Germany between 1933-1934 made him understand experientially the danger of subjectivistic thinking, characterized by the will-to-power that was put into action in Hitler’s Nazi ideology and which he himself was attempting in Being and Time. Thus, in turn, led to the shift in his thinking and thereby enabled him to raise the question of Being from a new perspective.

Thus, already in the early 1920s, Heidegger was aware of the fact that he had to break with the metaphysical-subjectivistic think-ing and pose the question of Being in a non-metaphysical way. But he was neither certain of the exact method of approach, nor did he have, at that time, the right conceptual frame-work. Heidegger began to grasp the full implications of the shift and the direction he needed to take in order to raise the question of Being, only after the foundering of Being and Time, which made him realize the inability of metaphysical language to understand Being, and his political involvement in 1933, which made him realize the danger of sub-jectivistic metaphysical thinking. In his letter to William Richardson Heidegger notes: ". . . the matter thought in the term reversal (shift) was already in my thinking ten years prior to 1947."66 This clearly points to the fact that before, during and after his political involve-ment, Heidegger was reflecting seriously on the shift. The com-pletion of the shift in Heidegger’s thinking happened during the decade before 1947, even though Heidegger was aware of the shift as early as the 1920s.

Therefore, the shift from Heidegger I to Heidegger II is not something abrupt or sudden. It is not only related to Heidegger’s intellectual development, but also conditioned by the event of his political involvement. It is basically a shift in perspective rather than a reversal in Heidegger’s thinking. Heidegger I is a movement from Dasein to Being, while Heidegger II is a movement from Being to Dasein. This, firstly, involves a change in perspective, in which the emphasis moves from Dasein to Being as the horizon of Dasein. Secondly a change in the relationship between Being and Dasein, in which the role of Being is ontologically prior to that of Dasein.67 But in both of these phases Dasein plays a significant role. In Heidegger I he encounters Being in and through his involvement with the world of his concern, while in Heidegger II Dasein is the lighting-up-place of Being.