‘Speakers of highest truth’

Abstract

In Chapter 5 , Jessica Frazier argues that some dialogues in the Upaniṣads can be characterised as a collaborative search for broad, over-spanning truths. Seen in this way, these dialogues offer a distinctive Indian model, which focuses on creatively canvassing broad speculative explanations. In relation to the theme of encounter, Frazier characterises this model of dialogue as collaborative, with interlocutors working together, listening to each other and building on each other’s insights to achieve the goal of higher knowledge. Embedded within this model is a critique of the standard modern descriptions of the ‘public sphere’, in which dialogue is often celebrated as a performance of citizenship or a community-building exercise. In the Upaniṣads, in contrast, the goal is to elevate one’s understanding by assimilating diverse views into an encompassing position that is abductively derived from all of them together. In this model of dialogue as idea-building, rather than mere talk, as Frazier describes it, competition is resolved by debate rather than violence because it is the increased explanatory power of an idea that unites theories.