Madhva (Madhvacharya)
1238-1317 · Hindu Darshanas · Prominent
Madhva was a Kannada Vaishnava theologian who founded Dvaita, the dualist school and the third great school of Vedanta, against teachers who said your soul and God are one thing at bottom. He set it on five real and permanent differences: Vishnu from soul, soul from soul, soul from matter, and so on. His school sorts souls into three eternal kinds, some of them predestined to hell.
Signature
The position Madhva is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (86 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Madhva refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil / Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence / Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal First Cause / Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Paradox
- Paradox as Error
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Sacred Law / Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Reincarnation / Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?