The Mahābhārata holds a special place in the Indian imagination as an epic, a philosophical treatise, and a literary masterpiece. It is one of the early texts in the Samkhya tradition with deep philosophical reflections on the real world, the otherworldly, and the individual. For scholars, the Mahābhārata is a tour de force, at once forging a harmonious alliance between the spiritual, the real world, and the philosophical and literary plains. The epic has been the subject of philosophical interpretations in both Indian and Western traditions, leading to modern renditions and contemporary adaptations of the Mahābhārata. For instance, the core message of the Gītā (one of the fundamental teachings of the Mahābhārata) is viewed to be broadly revolving around two strands of engagement and disengagement, which manifest in the interpretation of Krishna as both a warrior and a philosopher.
In Freud's Mahābhārata, Alf Hiltebeitel engages with the...
