Advaita Vedanta

Author(s): Kalidas Bhattacharya, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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order and the central distinctive feature that places him in that higher order is exactly his freedom-his capability of standing aside Nature and knowing it from outside, if not also of rearranging its items into new set-ups, man being considered in either case as, so far, a centre of subjectivity as against the whole world as a system of objects. Pan-objecti vism could justify itself if, and only if, the distinctive feature of man-his subjectivity-freedom-could be denied. Few-and least of all, the Advaitins-have denied it.
A Modern Understanding...
Pan-objectivism rejected, there is no question of getting rid of subjectivity. There is also no conceivable possibility of subjectivity, understood as subjectivity proper, forming any sort of unity, to be called the individual person, with any object understood explicitly as object. For, subjectivity understood as subjectivity is at least its dissociation from, its not being one with, object. The only alternative left is, then, for object to be reduced to subjectivity in the way we have been suggesting. Here, in our present case, the apparent objectivity of the mental states has to be understood as what has to be transcended, the new states to be realized being that of subjectivity. This means, in effect, that the objectivity to be transcended is at its best only a symbolic construction. 11
For the pan objectivist, objects are independent things (padarthas). For man-centric philosophers, on the other hand, object (viṣaya) is necessarily what is perceived or imagined to be perceived. They need not deny that there are things: the minimum they intend is that object, at the lowest level, i.e. in perception, coalesces with the thing. For them, in nonperceptual knowledge object is what is only imagined to be perceived, a mental presentation somehow midway between
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This is, of course, from the point of view of subjectivity as knowledge. If, as by some philosophers, it is understood as (transcendental) will, the mental states-and, therefore, everything that is at any lower level-have to be understood as created by that will. The Advaitin has not understood it as will. At the transcendent level he reduces will to knowledge.