Jackson/Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice, 3. Lord over this Whole World

Anna-Pya Sjödin addresses the conceptualization of agency in Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad by outlining the metaphors used in this text to capture notions of sacrificial and epistemological agency. At the same time as this Upaṇiṣadic text elaborates the then-emerging ideas of self (ātman) and the consequences of knowing that self, it also carries impressions of discussions and speculations that were formulated within a culture of sacrificial ritual. Traces of the Upaṇiṣadic expressions are then shown to have a structural continuity in later systematic philosophy, a continuity expressed mostly in terms of epistemological agency and formulated within a discourse on the self as the acting and knowing subject.