Contemporary Vedanta Philosophy 01

SR No.: 269348
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: George Burch
Publisher: George Burch
Total Pages: 20
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

Page 12

GEORGE BURCH
no positive language: data are not-A, not-B, etc. Starting with actual object, we proceed to not-object, not-not-object (a higher concept not to be confused with the original object), and so forth." But the realm of possibility is the realm of alternation. Among possibilities either may be true, but insofar as they negate each other both cannot be true. The meaning of possibility is not this or both but either.
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It is language which makes possibilities and therefore alternation possible. The three subjective functions are an empirical fact, but there is also a fourth function, speaking, which is the unity of the others in formal logic. Besides the alternative attitudes of knowing, willing, and feeling, there is the attitude common to them all, the linguistic attitude of semantics, which studies their common structure. Although the meaning of particular words and the grammar of particular languages are empirical, that words must have both meaning and syntactical connection is known a priori. Just as in feeling the artistic creativity is basic yet requires also the subordinate beauty, so in language the semantic function of words is basic yet requires also the subordinate syntactical connection. Hence we can develop a system of semantics, in which words give not actualities but forms, semantic thought giving "mere forms" and syntactic thought "pure forms." This philosophy of language, however, is not an autonomous system independent of those based on experience, and it does not lead to a fourth absolute.
While K. C. Bhattacharya is perhaps the most influential Indian philosopher of recent times, this does not mean that contemporary Vedanta philosophers accept his system. So far as I know there is not a single contemporary philosopher who simply accepts Bhattacharya's doctrine. His influence has been organic, not systematic. He did not teach a theory to be accepted but a way to be followed, a new way of philosophizing, in spirit the ancient way of Vedanta but in content informed by his own novel genius. His disciples have not accepted his philosophy but have developed it, and in different directions.
I quote, as an example of style: "Negation applied to actualities makes them exhaustive and alternative-but my father did not say that: he spoke of double and triple negation."