Abstract

The article examines the concept of God presented in the teachings of the world famous Indian religious reformer and public figure Swami Vivekananda. The thinker seeks to reconcile the understanding of God in Hinduism and Western religious traditions, and therefore argues that God has both personal and impersonal aspects at the same time. The purpose of the research is to reveal the essence of the idea of a personal impersonal God proposed by Vivekananda, as well as to clarify the possibilities and conditions for the predominance of one aspect of God over another. Modern philosophers distinguish three approaches to the consideration of God as a person: God is a person and so personal, God is non-personal, and so is not a person, God is a personal non-person. The article takes the characteristics of the personal existence of God in Christianity as the basis for understanding God as a person in the views of the Indian thinker. To estimate the presentation of the personal aspect of God by Vivekananda, a combination of approaches is used: declarative, anthropocentric, attributive, substantive-hypostatic and biographical. The declarative approach points to the equivalence of the personal and impersonal aspects of God in Vivekananda's views, the anthropocentric and attributive approaches speak of the predominance of the personal aspect of God. The substantial-hypostatic approach demonstrates the philosopher's attitude to God as a substance, but not a hypostasis, which is characteristic of Indian religious metaphysics. The biographical approach indicates the displacement of the impersonal aspect of God by the personal aspect. The study concludes that Vivekananda's views on the idea of a personal impersonal God must be placed between the ideas of proponents of the impersonal Absolute and theistic personalists who consider God as a person and so personal. The author considers the influence of socio-historical conditions of the formation of Indian society at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries to be the reason for the closeness of the philosopher's views to theistic personalism. The philosopher built his religious and philosophical teaching taking into account the need to educate a free personality for a future independent India. Therefore, God in Vivekananda's views has acquired the characteristics of a personality in its modern understanding.

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