This essay proposes śraddhā as a philosophical category: lucid trust, or disciplined attunement, through which the human being becomes oriented toward truth before truth is fully articulated conceptually. Placing Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum and the Cartesian gesture of the cogito in dialogue with the Bhagavad Gītā, the essay formulates śraddhā quaerens intellectum as a third gesture: the heart recognizes, and the mind translates. The essay argues that the “evidence of the heart” should not be understood as private infallibility, emotional certainty, or anti-rational intuitionism. Recognition becomes trustworthy only when it is translated, tested, corrected, and deepened through reason, dialogue, consequence, and lived responsibility. This text is an English conceptual transcreation developed from the Portuguese essay Uma Tese de Filosofia sobre Śraddhā na Bhagavad Gītā, published on the Śraddhā Yoga Darśana portal. It is also a companion text to A Thesis on Śraddhā — The Bhagavad Gītā, Philosophical Inquiry, and the Living Test of Truth.
Rubens Turci (Tue,) studied this question.