Religion Compass 9/9 (2015): 287–296, 10.1111/rec3.

12163

Free Will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta: Rāmānuja, Sudarśana Sūri

˙˙ 1
and Veṅkat anātha
˙
Elisa Freschi*
Austrian Academy of Sciences

Abstract
Free will may not be a universal problem, but it is also not only confined to Christianity, as shown in the
case of Viśistādvaita Vedānta. The authors of this school of Indian philosophy, founded in the 11th c. and
˙˙ up until today, had to face the challenge of accounting for human autonomy and God’s
still inf luential
omnipotence. Their solution was to create a precinct for free will in human minds, whereas all actions
depend on God. Thus, God does not interfere with the initial determination of human free will and it
later supports human intentions, thus permitting that they are turned into action.

1. Introduction
There are two opposite tendencies in the contemporary debate about free will outside of the
Judeo-Christian tradition. On the one hand, some scholars—especially in Western philosophy
departments—regard free will as a universal philosophical problem, along with ontology or the
philosophy of agency. On the other hand, and perhaps as a reaction, some scholars—especially
those working on non-Western philosophy—tend to see free will as a purely localised problem,
one that only has to do with specific historico-philosophical circumstances, such as Augustine’s
or Luther’s impact on Christian theology and little else (see Garfield 2014; Bartley 2014).
The present article will adopt an intermediate position, one which is dictated by the texts
dealt with in the article itself. In fact, although free will did not gain in Indian philosophy and
theology the pre-eminence it gained in Western thought, it was phrased as a problem, for in-
stance in some texts of Viśist ādvaita Vedānta. This shows that free will is at least a problem that
may universally arise under˙˙certain historico-philosophical circumstances. These circumstances
can be brief ly referred to as a strong belief in an agent subject (as opposed to what happens in
Buddhist philosophy and in some contemporary philosophical trends following recent develop-
ments in neuropsychology) and the awareness of an opposing force.
This opposing force may be, for instance, the idea of an unchanging destiny (as in the Stoics’
ref lections on free will) or of the law of karma, if this is considered (against Bartley 2014) strong
enough to jeopardise one’s autonomy. Since the Viśist ādvaita Vedānta school belongs to a phase
of Indian philosophy during which theism was frequently ˙˙ embraced by philosophers (see
McCrea forthcoming (b)), the main force opposing free will, for Viśist ādvaita thinkers and
Christian ones alike, is God’s will. ˙˙

1.1. VIŚISTĀDVAITA VEDĀNTA

˙˙

The Viśist ādvaita Vedānta is a South Indian philosophical school traditionally regarded as having
˙˙
been founded by Rāmānuja (traditional dates: 1017–1137). Its main systematiser was
Veṅkatanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates 1269–1370), who was a younger
˙
contemporary of Sudarśana Sūri ( f l. 1290). In the 17th c., the Viśist ādvaita Vedānta School split
˙˙
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
288 Elisa Freschi

into two currents, the Vat akalai and the Ten_ kalai, with the former explicitly considering
Veṅkatanātha as its founder˙ (see Raman 2007). The Viśist ādvaita Vedānta still constitutes the
˙
theological background of most Vaisnavas in South India.˙˙
The Viśist ādvaita Vedānta recognises ˙ ˙ the Brahmasūtra (henceforth BS) as its root text and
˙ ˙
Visnu as God and as the only independent reality of which everything else is a qualification. This
˙ ˙ that, unlike in the monist perspective of Advaita Vedānta, the world is recognised as
means
existent exactly insofar as it is a qualification of God. More precisely, living beings are considered
limbs of God’s body, since God can act through them at His wish.2 Within South Asian soteriology,
a karma-, jñāna- and bhaktimārga (‘path of ritual action’, ‘of knowledge’ and ‘of devotion’)
were known at the time of the dawn of Viśist ādvaita Vedānta. Viśis t ādvaita Vedānta au-
thors, especially from Veṅkat anātha onwards,˙ ˙ developed a fourth ˙way ˙ to approach the
˙
Ultimate, namely by surrendering (prapatti) to God as an alternative to the traditional
three ways, all deemed too difficult.
The doctrinal split between the Vat akalai and the Ten_ kalai schools –and their forerunners
(see Mumme 1988 and Freschi forthcoming ˙ (c))—regarded, among other elements, the issue of
free will, with the Ten_ kalai being believed to stress even more the need to abandon oneself to
God’s mercy, like a kitten carried by his mother (see Mumme 1988, especially pp. 6—7),
although the terminology concerning surrender is present, as will be shown also in the present
article, also in authors of the Vat akalai current and in their common predecessors (on this shared
background, see Freschi forthcoming ˙ (c)).
Viśist ādvaita Vedānta authors have written in Tamil (Veṅkatanātha and other authors,
˙˙ in the Ten_ kalai), Man ipravāla (a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit,
especially ˙ used by Veṅkatanātha
˙
and other authors in order to address scholarly matters in a Tamil form) and Sanskrit (the ˙ early
authors of Viśist ādvaita Vedānta up to Veṅkatanātha, the majority of authors of the Vat akalai).
˙˙ will focus on the latter sources.
The present article ˙ ˙

1.2. ONTOLOGY VS. ETHICS

Theories concerning the nature of reality (i.e., ontology) often clash with ethical concerns when it
comes to the issue of free will. In contemporary philosophy, this is often due to ontology being
strictly deterministic. Such determinism is explained by appealing to different reasons, ranging from
(in the last century) being completely determined by one’s first years to (today) the claim that the
neurosciences seem to prove that we elaborate reasons for doing X only after having started doing it
( for instance, the neurons with the information for moving one’s arm start delivering the informa-
tion prior to the cerebral elaboration of the rationale of this action, so that the elaboration of motives
seems to be an epiphenomenon not really needed for the sake of acting, but only for rationalising
it3). However, the denial of any form of free will entails the lack of meaning of any form of ethical
theory—since nothing can be chosen anyway. Moreover, no matter how strong the arguments for
determinism are, it is hard to deny that one does psychologically feel free, e.g., to move one’s
arm. In short, ontological arguments seem to clash with ethical and psychological ones.
Within Viśist ādvaita Vedānta, a similar tension regards the opposition between the ritual per-
spective, which˙˙entails the necessity of free will (how else could ritual prescriptions make sense?),
and the Vedāntin theological perspective, which is quite clear in maintaining that the ultimate
reality (called brahman) is not only the efficient cause (nimittakārana) of the world, but also its
material cause (upādānakārana). The consequent equation is the relationship ˙ between God and
˙
the world to the relationship between a person and her body. If the world is literally the body
of God, which He can move at will, what space can be left for free will? In short, several con-
trasting trajectories (ritualistic, theological-ontological and theological-mystical, see section 2)
intersect in the Viśist ādvaita Vedānta concept of free will.
˙˙
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 Free Will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta 289
˙˙
2. State of the Field
Only few essays have been dedicated to free will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta or in one or more of
its exponents. Mumme (1985) and chapter 2 in Mumme ˙˙ (1988) focus on the tension desig-
nated in section 1 as the origin of the problem of free will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta, namely
the tension between ‘the general philosophical affirmation of the ˙soul’s ˙ agency (jīvakartrtva)
and the devotional negation of it’ as expressed in the songs of the Āl vārs. The Āl vārs˙ are
recognised as saints in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta whose most frequent topos ¯is the saint’s indignity
¯
˙ ˙
to attain God on his or her own and his or her absolute need of His mercy (Mumme 1985,
p. 99). Mumme opposes the Ten_kalai current (or its alleged predecessors, whom she calls the
‘Srirangam ācāryas’) to Veṅkatanātha, although, as seen in Section 1.1, it is arguable whether
these teachers belonged to the ˙ same tradition before Veṅkatanātha’s synthesis of various
elements within a new Vaisnava theology. Like Mumme, Ganeri ˙ (2014) is also sensitive to-
˙ ˙
wards the religious background of Rāmānuja’s philosophy —thus adopting an ‘emic’ view-
point of Rāmānuja’s thought. More in detail, Ganeri attempts to outline Rāmānuja’s
theological positions on agency, subjecthood and free will among human beings as well as
in the liberated state.
Although not directly a study of free will, Lipner (1986) contains interesting pages on the in-
tersection of ontology and ethics and thus also on free will in Rāmānuja, this time from a
historico-philosophical perspective, which does not feel the need to adopt an emic perspective.
Implicitly sharing a similar standpoint, McCrea ( forthcoming (a)) focuses on the problem of
God’s free will in Veṅkat anātha: Is God free not to deliver to a sacrificer the result he has been
˙ the Sacred Texts lie when they assert the potency of sacrifices —
sacrificing for? If He is, then
and this will also undermine the authority of God, which is directly linked to the Sacred Texts
sanctioning it. If He is not free not to deliver the sacrifice’s result, He is not omnipotent. Sim-
ilarly, Bartley (2014) dedicates some lines to the problem of the intersection of God’s will and
karma in Rāmānuja (on this topic see also below, Section 3.2). If God has to take karma into
account, He is no longer free, whereas if He does not take it into account, He is unfair.
Concerning both problems, the present author has argued that Veṅkatanātha’s solution is to
˙ and that the karma
claim that God’s being pleased by sacrifices amounts to the sacrificial energy,
is tantamount to God’s justice, so that there is nothing external to Him which could compro-
mise His freedom (see Freschi 2015). Last, Freschi ( forthcoming (a)) focuses on a reconstruction
of the positions of Rāmānuja, Sudarśana Sūri and Veṅkatanātha from the perspective of the his-
tory of theological and philosophical ideas. ˙

3. Rāmānuja: Libertarianism within Determinism

In the Vedārthasaṅgraha, an objector staged by Rāmānuja observes that if God is omnipotent,
then there can be no human being who is fully responsible for his or her action. This, in turn,
is expressed in terms of responsibility for ritual actions as prescribed in the Sacred Texts, which
also presuppose that one is free to perform them. In fact, this responsibility is something which
lies beyond each person’s possibilities, says Rāmānuja’s opponent, since one can only act if God
makes him or her act.
Common to Western speculations on free will is also the appeal to Sacred Texts stating that
there is no such thing as free will:4

He alone causes the person whom He wishes to lead out of these worlds, to perform a good deed. He
alone causes the person whom He wishes to fall down to perform an evil deed. (Kauśitaki Upanisad 3.8)5
˙
Even more striking is the conclusion derived by Rāmānuja’s opponent:

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290 Elisa Freschi

Thus, since He is the one who causes [people] to perform good or evil deeds, He is cruel. (Śāstrī 1894,
p. 138)

Rāmānuja’s answer to this (powerful) objection is that an individual can develop indepen-
dently the resolution to act or to cease to act. In other words, the individuals constitute God’s
physical body in their physicality, whereas their psychic component appears to be indepen-
dently able to conceive thoughts. Accordingly, God completes what humans have only desired
or thought. In Western terms, choices appear to be completely free (in this sense, one would be
inclined to label Rāmānuja’s position a libertarian one), whereas actions are completely bound
(in fact, animals and human beings only act insofar as God acts through them, just like the body’s
limbs are not at all free to move independently). Thus, as for actions, Rāmānuja’s position is
closer to determinism. To put it brief ly and in Rāmānuja’s own words:

He (God) rules as one who permits (anuman-) [that each conscious being undertakes the action s/he
wants to undertake]. […] Therefore, [each conscious being], having received the power [to think,
undertake or cease an action], undertakes, ceases to act or [thinks] by himself/herself alone. The
Supreme Self observes the one who does so without interfering. Therefore, everything is logical. In
contrast [to what the opponent claimed], the fact of causing to do good or evil acts is the content of
a specific arrangement, it is not generally directed to all. (Śāstrī 1894, p. 141)

This last sentence implies that God does indeed inf luence the actions performed by human
beings but that this happens in a regulated way on the basis of their intentions and not in all cases
indiscriminately. The following lines in Rāmānuja’s text explain that God is well-disposed
towards those who are themselves prone to good actions. It is especially noteworthy that
Rāmānuja includes here, in favour of his (libertarian-deterministic) view, the same lines of
the Bhagavadgītā (henceforth BhG) which will be used by another Vedāntin, namely Madhva
(1238–1317), as evidence of the absolute lack of free will:

A different case is that of a person who first undertook actions by themselves alone, which were beyond
measure in agreement [with God’s will]. God, pleased, gives them the connection to a benevolent
mind and by doing so, He puts them in motion towards virtue. A person who, by contrast, undertakes
actions which are beyond measure hostile [to God’s will] receives from God a cruel mind. By so doing,
God Himself puts them in motion towards cruel deeds. As it has been said by God: ‘To those who are
devout and constantly concentrated I, pleased, give the connection with an intention through which
they can reach me. In order to have compassion with them alone I, residing in the nature of the Self,
destroy the obscurity produced by ignorance through the brilliant flame of knowledge’ and ‘For ever
and ever I send these evil, vicious and vile people to demonic births only’ (BhG 10.10–11 and 16.19).
(Śāstrī 1894, pp. 141–142)

According to the text above, the precinct of free will lies at the very beginning of the process
leading to actions, even before one determines them precisely, since Rāmānuja says that God
gives a benevolent mind to those who have wished to do good (and vice versa).
A further important point regards the nature of God’s intervention, which is identified by
Rāmānuja, Veṅkatanātha (see Section 4.1) and Sudarśana Sūri (see Section 5) unanimously with
the root anuman-. ˙This is a technical term indicating the act of inciting by a superior person in
regard to his or her inferior. Accordingly, anuman- is used here as an active way of allowing
someone to do something, which includes supporting them if they are not able to do so on
their own.

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 Free Will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta 291
˙˙
3.1. FREE WILL AND THEODICY

A problem which is current in many theodicies is why does God not prevent evil, if He is
omnipotent? Rāmānuja discusses this topic with the simile of two people possessing shared
wealth. If one of them desires to give it away and the other merely consents, the merit of the
giving accrues to the first one:

If two people have shared wealth, this cannot become the property of another unless the other of the
two agrees. Nonetheless, [once] the permission of the other one is performed autonomously, the result
[of that action] belongs to that (the first) person alone. […] The fact that the one who is able to make
[people] desist from evil acts permits [these acts] does not procure that He is cruel. (ŚrīBh ad BS 2.3.41)

Then, Rāmānuja adds that God:

1. settles the distinction between good and evil acts,
2. assigns to each one the capacity to rule over their bodies, sense faculties, etc.,
3. teaches through the Sacred Texts what should be done,
4. controls each person from within, as his or her inner soul, by means of permitting them to
realise their intentions.
Therefore, there is no room for the objections concerning the fact that the human autonomy
or God’s compassion would be diminished. By contrast, God would make a mistake if He were
to have compassion for someone who does not want to receive it:

In fact, compassion independent of one’s own final goals consists in the fact that one cannot bear some-
one else’s sufferance. And this [compassion], when it is present also towards those who seek to transgress
His command, does not amount to a virtue. […] In this case (of people transgressing God’s command)
only repressing them is a virtue because otherwise there would be the undesired consequence that,
e.g., stopping a hostile person would no longer be a virtue. (ŚrīBh ad BS 2.3.41)

3.2. FREE WILL AND KARMA

A possible further question would be: Who (or what) moves people towards God or against Him?
Who, if not God Himself ? The ŚrīBh does not raise the problem in the passages quoted above.
However, one might suggest that Rāmānuja, sharing the pan-Indian belief in the system of
karma, would have answered—if asked—that one conceives good intentions because of previous
virtuous births. In the Vedārthasaṅgraha, it is in fact stated that God can only be reached through
devotion and that devotion is possible only for ‘one whose multitude of sins gathered through
endless births have been destroyed by the unsurpassed accumulation of good deeds’. However,
this statement is counterbalanced by the next one, attributing devotion to one ‘who is turned
towards Him because he has taken refuge at the lotus feet of God’ (Śāstrī 1894, pp. 142–144).
Thus, Rāmānuja suggests the need to get rid—presumably: to first get rid—of one’s accumu-
lated sins through the accumulation of an ‘unsurpassed’ amount of good deeds. This presumably
means that these need to be accumulated through a large number of previous births—a fact
which would ipso facto deprive one’s present life’s actions of their autonomy. In fact, if one
had to first accumulate endless good deeds, in the present life, one could only struggle to accu-
mulate good deeds in order to erase the evil ones, with no hope of achieving the possibility to
venerate God. However, the mention of the accumulation of good deeds is closely followed by
that of taking refuge, a juxtaposition which is present also elsewhere in Rāmānuja. More explicit

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292 Elisa Freschi

is a passage of Rāmānuja’s commentary on the BhG, where the problem of who is able to start
bhaktiyoga ‘the path of devotion’ is dealt with. At the beginning of the passage, Arjuna is dejected
since he understands that he will never be able to accomplish all the ritual duties needed to ex-
piate his sins and will thus remain unworthy to start the path of devotion. Then, God drives
away his sorrows by inviting Arjuna to abandon all duties and take refuge in Him alone:

There are sins, hoarded up since beginningless time, of various types, endless, [which are] obstacles to
[your] undertaking bhaktiyoga. There are expiatory rites for each of these [actions] […], which are dif-
ficult to do for one such as you who has little time. [Therefore], renouncing all [these] ritual duties, in
order to succeed in beginning bhaktiyoga, take refuge in me alone. I […] will free you from all those
sins, which have been spoken of, which are obstacles to beginning that bhakti towards the essential na-
ture. Do not grieve. (Rāmānuja’s Bhāsya on BhG 18.66, Shastri 1938, pp. 412–413)6
˙
This seems to mean that both performing the appropriate expiation rites and taking refuge in
God leads to having all one’s sins deleted and being thus able to start venerating God. By con-
trast, one who has neither taken refuge nor performed expiations will fall prey to his or her pre-
vious sins and not be able to start on the path of veneration. This also means that, theoretically,
atheists could only regain the possibility to make autonomous decisions through the hard path
of the expiation rites. Either way, what appears to be self-evident is that one can autonomously
decide to undertake expiation rites, turn to God as one’s refuge or refrain from both. Although
accumulated sins may hinder one’s actions, they do not hinder one’s intentions.
Summing up, it seems that Rāmānuja upheld at least phenomenologically a form of libertar-
ianism (concerning will)-cum-determinism (concerning actions). Intentions need the support of
God to be turned into actions but one can conceive independently the desire to take refuge in
God and this is the root of one’s future attitudes and deeds.

3.3. POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS

Rāmānuja’s concept of free will has been criticised not only by the opponents embedded in his
texts, but also by modern scholars. Julius Lipner writes:

Similarly, says Rāmānuja, when the finite agent performs a [moral] action the Lord as the agent’s inner
entitative support consents to bring the action into existence, but he neither determines nor necessarily
morally approves of it. The indwelling Lord has regard to the ‘act of will’ (prayatna udyoga) of the agent
and consents to its realisation. This is a minimal form of consent, an ‘ontological’ consent, if you wish.
The agent is morally responsible for the deed, not the Lord.
A little reflection will show, of course, that this is hardly a resolution of our dilemma concerning the
Lord’s universal causality and the possibility of the finite free action. For is the agent’s ‘act of will’ in
the first place dependent upon the consent of the Lord or not? If it is, how is the agent really free to
initiate action? If it is not, the Lord is not the universal cause. (Lipner 1986, p. 71)

Martin Ganeri is more sympathetic towards Rāmānuja’s position insofar as he indirectly

answers to Lipner by turning the weak point Lipner highlighted into the pivotal element of
Rāmānuja’s theory:

In Rāmānuja’s account, then, the finite self is free in that it can choose to act in different ways. It is not
free in the sense that either its power of agency or any of its actions are completely independent of the
Supreme Self. […] Or, we might say, the finite self is free to act and its actions are free, not despite the
agency of the Supreme Self, but because of it. (Ganeri 2014, p. 246)

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 Free Will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta 293
˙˙
In other words, in regard to Rāmānuja, the distinction between free will and free action,
which has been deliberately neglected by some authors (see Meyers 2014), becomes greatly im-
portant. For a similar view on how the will can be free although the actions and even the
thoughts are not, see Albritton 2003.
4. Veṅkat anātha
˙
In his Tattvamuktākalāpa (henceforth TMK), Veṅkatanātha presents an objector who states
that human effort is fruitless since what God wants to˙ do He does no matter what, and what
He does not want to be the case, will never be achieved, not even through major human
efforts.
Veṅkaṭanātha answers by showing that the position of the objector is contradicted by his own
words and deeds and points to the psychological undeniability of free will:

The one who says that all efforts are fruitless, why does he try to attack the one who says that they are
fruitful? And why does he employ [his own] sentence about the fruitlessness? For which purpose does
he run [towards something pleasant or away from something fearful] when he wants to eat or when he
is scared? (SS ad TMK 9)

His next and final argument has ethical import:

You cannot establish that your effort will be fruitless in regard to a certain part. Yet, the
content [of the action you envision] has to be realised, [thus, you need to take care of it].
(SS ad TMK 9)

4.1. KARMA AND PERSONAL AUTONOMY

In his Tātparyacandrikā, Veṅkaṭanātha quotes several passages to the effect that evil deeds need
to be overcome before undertaking the path of devotion. But then he also states that this is
impossible. In a similar way, he explains that Arjuna’s grief (see Section 3.2) is due to the fact
that he knows he will never be able to realise the many ritual performances he should
perform.
However, the emphasis on seeking refuge as the only feasible path, does not mean for
Veṅkatanātha that one should give up all sacrifices and just ask for God’s compassion. As seen
˙ of Section 4, one does not know God’s will and therefore it is better to try hard in
at the end
each case nonetheless. If God wants it, He will give one the power to accomplish what one
has undertaken, and He will not be offended if one tries and fails.
Thus, one’s inability to undertake the paths of ritual action, knowledge or devotion
(see Section 1.1), which may be due to one’s karmic past, does not completely eliminate
the possibility to choose one’s destiny. After all, one can still decide to surrender to God
and this will open a completely new path which one’s past karmic traces cannot interfere
with.
Nonetheless, Patricia Mumme has observed that in Veṅkat anātha, the precinct of free will
has become smaller than in Rāmānuja: ˙

Veṅkatanātha, on the other hand, while also affirming the freedom of the finite self, suggests more
˙ that the Supreme Self should be said to cause the initial choice and effect, in the sense that
strongly
the Self is the common cause of all actions including the initial act of will and effort, with the finite self
the cause of particular actions. (Mumme 1985, p. 107)

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294 Elisa Freschi

5. Sudarśana Sūri
Sudarśana Sūri (also called Sudarśanācārya or Vedavyāsa Bhatt ārya, f l. 1290) wrote commentar-
˙˙ as a much older contemporary of
ies on several works of Rāmānuja. He is traditionally regarded
Veṅkaṭanātha. In his commentary on the passage of Rāmānuja’s Vedārthasaṅgraha quoted above
(Section 3), Sudarśana Sūri asserts that God will not change His opinion concerning human
freedom:

Since the connection [of living beings] with the power to think is grounded in the fixed will of the
Lord there is no obstacle to the fixedness of it. (Śāstrī 1894, p. 140)

Next, Sudarśana explains the compounds ‘power to think’ and ‘power to undertake actions’,
found also in the text by Rāmānuja he is commenting upon (see above, Section 3):

The meaning is that He confers, in general to all conscious beings, the power to undertake or cease
external [acts] and the power to know, to desire to act and to endeavour. [He does so] for the sake
of their autonomy. (Śāstrī 1894, p. 140)

God’s controlling power and the fact that it does not conf lict with free will, since it rather
supports it, is further elaborated on in the following passage, in which Sudarśana explains again
how God does not interfere with one’s initial intention but rather permits it. Sudarśana also
brief ly hints at the ontological problem in the background, i.e., the relationship between
God and the world (the latter including conscious beings):

In this way, although [He uses] no specific way of control, it is well established that [God] is the
sustainer and the one to whom everything relates, thus there is no diminishment to the fact that the
relationship between [God and everything else] is like the one between self and body. (Śāstrī 1894,
p. 141)

To sum up, God does not interfere with one’s initial decision to act. This does not mean that
he is unconcerned and away from each person’s mind while they decide to act. In contrast, God
is always present within each human being, He is their inner ruler (antaryāmin, see Oberhammer
1998) and cannot be separated from them (apr thaksiddha). Consequently, God’s non-
˙
interference with human decisions can only be interpreted as His free decision to do so.
Succeedingly, during the actual action, He supports the human agents, who would otherwise
be powerless. It is, however, the human agent and not God, who is connected with the good
or evil final result, since she/he was autonomous in her/his initial decision to act (see above,
Section 3.1).
6. Conclusion
Turning back to the controversy, discussed at the beginning, about the universality of the prob-
lem of free will, the case of Viśist ādvaita Vedānta shows that free will tends to emerge as a
˙˙
problem whenever the contrast between a thick concept of the subject’s agency opposes an-
other force, and even more predictably if this contrasting force represents the will of an
omnipotent God. One is reminded of Daya Krishna’s stress on the fact that philosophical prob-
lems are such only for a consciousness, so that ‘universal problems’ become such when one starts
pondering them (Daya Krishna 1955, p. 217).
More in detail, in the case of Viśist ādvaita Vedānta, free will is considered as the pre-
condition of Vedic and Vaisnava ritual˙˙prescriptions, since prescriptions can only make sense
˙˙
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 9/9 (2015): 287–296, 10.1111/rec3.12163
 Free Will in Viśist ādvaita Vedānta 295
˙˙
if their addressee can choose to fulfil them. However, the Vaisnava-Āl_vār background suggests
that one would nonetheless most probably fail to stick to one’s ˙ ˙ action, if it were not for God’s
supporting them. This freedom of the will and neediness of the acts lead to the conclusion that,
left to one’s own devices, one will be unworthy of being saved. Thus, in Western terms,
Viśistādvaita Vedānta authors faced at the same time the constraints of Luther’s and of Erasmus’
˙˙
approaches. Their solution is, however, different.
In fact, one’s despair to achieve salvation will lead one to surrender. This is possible because,
given that human beings need God’s assistance to perform actions but not to conceive them, one is
free to surrender. At this point, as explained by Rāmānuja and Sudarśana Sūri, God can step in
and lead one’s actions according to one’s good intentions.
From an ontological point of view, our being part of God’s body entails that we can act only
according to His will, but this metaphysical background does not block the possibility to direct
one’s mind towards God. God controls our actions, not our wishes. And He does not control
them, because He does not want to (see Section 5).
It remains open to question why this is so, but one might speculate that God wants to be
freely loved and thus endowed human beings with enough free will to decide to turn towards
Him, although they still need His assistance to actually move towards Him.

Abbreviations

BhG Bhagavadgītā
BS Brahmasūtra
ŚrīBh Śrībhāṣya by Rāmānuja
SS Sarvārthasiddhi, Veṅkatanātha’s autocommentary on the TMK
˙
TMK Tattvamuktākalāpa by Veṅkatanātha
˙

Notes

* Correspondence address: Elisa Freschi, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of
Asia, Apostelgasse 23, Wien, 1030, Austria. E-mail: elisa.freschi@gmail.com

1
The research for this article has been financed through the FWF project M 1437.
2
More on the Viśist ādvaita Vedānta’s understanding of God’s body in Freschi (forthcoming (b)) and McCrea (forthcoming (a)).
3 ˙˙
See Wegner (2002) and Libet (2004), and, for a different perspective, cf. Mele (2009).
4
A similar selection of texts by Rāmānuja is discussed also in Ganeri (2014). A more detailed analysis of this and the next
passages by Rāmānuja, Veṅkat anātha and Sudarśana can be read in Freschi (forthcoming (a)).
5 ˙
Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own.
6
This passage has been translated in Raman (2008, pp. 38–39).

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