The Ethical Thought of the Bengal Renaissance:A Discovery of Morality in Indian Tradition (1815–1870)

Abstract

The origin of Modern Indian ethical thought is described in the article. The author depicts the genesis of ethics as originated from the works by key personalities of the Bengal Renaissance XIX – early XX century. The juxtaposition with traditional Indian thought permits to present the intellectual process in Modern Bengal elite minds as ‘discovery of morality’. Based on hermeneutic analysis of the texts on moral problematics from Rammohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj thinkers to Krishnamohun Banerjea, the author reconstructs the becoming of Indian ethical thought in the context of their striving for the moral regeneration of traditional society. For the first time the genesis and becoming of thinking of Indian intellectuals about morality in its connections with the present condition of social decline in colonial India are disclosed in the research. The experience of Bengal thinkers of 1815–1870th demonstrates the solution of super-task to find ethics in ancient sacred texts and next to build religiously based ethics. The super-task had been settled by the method of interpretation that permits to see high moral precepts in high faith in One God of original religion as it opposed to polytheistic Hinduism. The result of applying the method was embodied in the creative and high conception of Hindu morality based on ethical God Creator. The Bengal thinkers are firmly convinced that displaced into periphery of Hindus’ consciousness morality as a code of normative ethics must be revived and turned into leading imperatives of consciousness of people.