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CONTEMPORARY VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, I
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although in practice we always do identify them." Alternation is not a fact of the empirical world, where the empirical self has the three functions confused. But when the self reflects, it disintegrates into three possibilities. Knowing, feeling, and willing tolerate each other in the finite world of time, but reflectively each demands the subordination, rejection, or incorporation of the others. Ultimately, as an ideal, each is absolute, not simultaneously but ! alternatively-pure subjectivity (absolute knowing, Truth) or pure object (absolute feeling, Beauty) or dialectical synthesis (absolute willing, Goodness)."
There are many other applications of the principle of alternation. Thought may be understood anti-intellectually (inference only between data), intellectually (forms held a priori vet referring synthetically to data), or logically (logical construction or pure meaning). Content of perception may be understood as object, appearance, or relation. Image may be understood as change of perceptual object, withdrawal from percept, or subjectivity referring to percept. Relation may be understood as external, internal, or "happening to be coeternal." Reality may be understood as actual, ideal, or infinite. All these alternatives represent the objective, subjective, and dialectical attitudes respectively. In political philosophy, the alternative ethical ideals of right, duty," and love lead respectively to democracy (including communism), fascism, and super-political religion."
The ultimate problem of philosophy, according to Bhattacharya, is the status of alternation itself. Granting that our problems about reality have alternative solutions, must we suppose that reality itself is alternating? This question also has alternative answers. The three philosophies are alternative images
36 He rejected the suggestion that a similar argument would establish three subjective worlds, since the subject of feeling is negated and that of will is identified with that of knowledge as pure consciousness.
37 These represent, respectively, the traditional three "paths" of Hindu religious philosophy-knowledge, love, action (jnana, bhakti, karma); characteristic, respectively, of the schools of Advaita, Vaishnavism (also Nyaya-Vaiseshika), and Tantric Saivism (also Buddhism).
38 Duty, he points out, is most prominent in the Hindu tradition.
30 Alternation of political philosophies incapable of synthesis is what is now called "coexistence."
