Philosophy East and West

A reading of the Bhagavad Gītā is proposed here that shows a new way of formulating the philosophical issue of determinism and freedom, that is, not as a moral but as an existential question. To do so we first briefly draw upon the American philosopher Stanley Cavell's practice of ordinary language philosophy as a conceptual bridge to the ancient text. This leads to a revised notion of freedom, not as "self-determination" in a Kantian sense but as "existential achievement," which can be described as a form of autonomy in the sense of becoming what you are or having the will to be responsible to yourself.