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 13

CONTEMPORARY VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, I
497
2. Kalidas Bhattacharya.
The third phase of K. C. Bhattacharya's philosophy is now being developed by his son Kalidas. He considers his own philosophical thought to be a continuation of and organically one with his father's. They form a single intellectual process, but it is a process, not a fixed system. Kalidas acquired from his father the fundamental principle of alternative absolutes, but in certain important theses, notably the correlation of the absolutes with the conscious functions, he never agreed with him.
Kalidas Bhattacharya, third son of K. C. Bhattacharya," was born in 1912. Educated at Calcutta, he received a P. R. Scholarship, and has alway been a student and teacher of philosophy." Since 1951 he has been professor of philosophy at Government Sanskrit College in Calcutta. He is more interested in philosophical ideas than in the textual research with which this college is concerned, but is free to pursue his own interest, having no formal duties. He does, however, give individual instruction to advanced students.25
Kalidas Bhattacharya is a friendly, pleasant, humble man interested in philosophical ideas, and not in his own standing as a philosopher. He is a serious, competent, and scholarly philosopher, perhaps the best young philosopher in India. He treats basic problems in an original and profound way, and is developing an epistemological and metaphysical system of great
» His elder brother Gopinath, of Presidency College, Calcutta, is also well known as a brilliant philosopher and teacher. He rejects their father's philosophy, especially the doctrines of indefiniteness and alternation, and is himself a realist, but has no philosophical system of his own.
23 One of his former students at Calcutta University told me that his philosophy class, ending at three o'clock, usually continued to five and then sometimes went in a body to the professor's home, thirteen miles away, to continue the discussion for one or two days.
24 He remarked to me that, although he had been in his present position for three years, nobody had yet told him what his duties were.
35 When I met him, he had five students, some themselves professors of philosophy, to whom he was teaching Vedanta, Nyaya, Tantra, Kant, and his father's philosophy respectively. When he was teaching one, the others would usually listen in, and when I called they would stop whatever they were doing and he would talk to me.