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 18

502
GEORGE BURCH
actions consequently can never be interpreted in terms of unreflective ones. This originality of reflective activity (not indeterminism, something unknown Indian philosophy) is freedom."
Thus the three alternative attitudes lead to three alternative absolutes. The dialectic is somewhat different in the three cases. Knowing subordinates feeling, feeling rejects knowing, and willing while subjective incorporates the objective." These are alternative philosophies." He says:
There is to be no preferential treatment of these three attitudes, and these themselves are related to one another in such a way that on the assumption of one the others as independent have to be either rejected or ignored. There is thus absolute alternation between the attitudes. Yet in each the unity sought for is gained."
Subjective idealism, which speaks in the language of truth (constituted by forms of thinking), objective realism, which speaks in the language of necessity (contituted by selfsubsistent Platonic forms of objective thought), and dialectic, which speaks in the language of negation, are equally correct and complete systems capable of explaining all phenomena, but they reject each other, and there is no passage from one to another. Each is correct, but all are not correct; three alternatives do not mean three facts. There are three objective worlds-objects created by knowledge, objects which cause feelings, objects which are termini of will-and these cannot be identified theoretically (unless by a superhuman "angelic" insight which we do not have),
Social laws are images of ideals, and so I must observe them (according to "my station and its duties"). Here also there is alternation-between duty (what we ought to do) and right (what we ought to be or have). 32 Asked whether truth and freedom are the same or opposite, he replied that pure consciousness by itself is truth, pure consciousness as determining the world is freedom, impure truth has an influence of the object, and impure freedom is determinate action accompanied by the feeling of I-while pure feeling apprehends only the beauty, etc., of the object and does not disturb me.
"This distinction, different from that given in his published works, is developed in his forthcoming book.
"The three alternative philosophies, he remarked, are suggested by the three Critiques of Kant.
"Alternative Standpoints in Philosophy, p. 205.