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CHAPTER III
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at least two considerations which weaken this principle of coordination as a basis of the argument for a co-ordinate status of difference. First sāmānādhikaranya conflicts with the most fundamental basis of satkāryavāda' which governs the entire philosophy of Visiştādvaita. It is an established fact that in any form of satkāryavāda difference is subordinate, not equal, to identity. Secondly, deriving an ontological fact from the notion of sāmānādhikaranya amounts to, as it has been rightly pointed out, taking "the grammar of language for the grammar of reality".
These various considerations point to the fact that the principle of difference is in essence subordinated to that of identity in Rāmānuja's metaphysics.
2.
by Rāmānuja. Cf. “But if there be no difference of 'modes'
there can be no sāmānādhikaranya.” Sukhtankar, op. cit., p. 290. 1. For a full statement of satkāryavāda, or the doctrine that "the
effect is non-different from the cause" (kāraņād ananyam kāryam) in Višiştādvaitism, and a comparison with the attitude of the Vedānta and other schools to the problem, see ibid., pp. 142-149. EPI, p. 179. In the twenty-fourth series (1953) of the Riddell Memorial Lectures, at the University of Durham, on Languages, Standpoints and Attitudes, (O. U. P.), H. A. Hodges observes how "insoluble problems were....created for metaphysics, merely because linguistic forms were misinterpreted into ontological theories", and how, "so much of metaphysics has consisted of errors like these, that many have come to think that metaphysics is nothing else but misuse and misinterpretation of language" (p. 20). Supporting these remarks Hodges again maintains: "Grammatical forms have been taken as evidence of ontological relations; because facts can be described in sentences, it has been thought, that the structure of a sentence reflects the structure of the existing world.” etc., p. 19; see also what follows.
