This paper identifies the different normative ethical arguments stated and suggested by Arjuna and Krishna in the Gītā , analyzes those arguments, examines the interrelations between those arguments, and demonstrates that, contrary to a common view, both Arjuna and Krishna advance ethical theories of a broad consequentialist nature. It is shown that Krishna’s ethical theory, in particular, is a distinctive kind of rule-consequentialism that takes as intrinsically valuable the twin consequences of mokṣa and lokasaṃgraha . It is also argued that (...) Krishna’s teachings in the Gītā gain in depth, coherence, and critical relevance what they lose in simplicity when the ethical theory underlying those teachings is understood as a consequentialism of this kind rather than as a deontology. (shrink)

I explore how Vivekananda and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s development of Advaita Vedānta has an enormous impact on Neo-Hindu, and indeed, Indian, self-understandings of ethics and politics. I contend that Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan both conceive of the spirit of Hinduism as a radical form of equality that lies at the heart of an Advaitic (monistic) interpretation of the Upaniṣads. This metaphysical monism of consciousness of self and other in Advaita paves a solid conceptual road to an ethic of radical equality in both (...) the personal and the political spheres. (shrink)