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This chapter examines Mehta's late work on the Hindu tradition. After engaging Heideggerian ontology and Gadamerian hermeneutics, and having critiqued the facility with which many have too easily engaged in comparative philosophical projects, Mehta presents a post-metaphysical reading of the Hindu tradition. He does this obliquely, to be sure, but all the same this chapter teases out what Mehta considers to be a uniquely Hindu logic. From the aggressive subject of the ègveda to the devoted subject of the Bhàgavata Puràõa, Mehta presents a Hindu logic that recognizes that the transcendental subject's other is not coming but rather is withdrawing. To make this case, Mehta privileges the particular scene in the tenth canto of the Bhàgavata Puràõa wherein Kçùõa has withdrawn from his loving devotees. Mehta suggests that this is the true nature of the religious subject, that is, the one for the whom the other is always, already withdrawn from the subject's intentional activities. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the gender of this devoted subject. Significantly, both Mehta and Emannuel Levinas employ the feminine gender to challenge the supposed masculinity of transcendental subjectivity.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5231-3_5

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