Amartya Sen Quote
The Vedas may be full of hymns and religious invocations, but they also tell stories, speculate about the world and – true to the argumentative propensity already in view – ask difficult questions. A basic doubt concerns the very creation of the world: did someone make it, was it a spontaneous emergence, and is there a God who knows what really happened? As is discussed in Essay 1, the Rigveda goes on to express radical doubts on these issues: ‘Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? … perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.’ These doubts from the second millennium BCE would recur again and again in India’s long argumentative history, along with a great many other questions about epistemology and ethics (as is discussed in Essay 1). They survive side by side with intense religious beliefs and deeply respectful faith and devotion.
The Vedas may be full of hymns and religious invocations, but they also tell stories, speculate about the world and – true to the argumentative propensity already in view – ask difficult questions. A basic doubt concerns the very creation of the world: did someone make it, was it a spontaneous emergence, and is there a God who knows what really happened? As is discussed in Essay 1, the Rigveda goes on to express radical doubts on these issues: ‘Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? … perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.’ These doubts from the second millennium BCE would recur again and again in India’s long argumentative history, along with a great many other questions about epistemology and ethics (as is discussed in Essay 1). They survive side by side with intense religious beliefs and deeply respectful faith and devotion.
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About Amartya Sen
He is currently a Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He formerly served as Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and in 1999, India's highest civilian honour — Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to welfare economics. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association awarded him the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his pioneering scholarship addressing issues of global justice and combating social inequality in education and healthcare.