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GEORGE BURCH
1946 he has been Lecturer in Philosophy at Calcutta, except for two years at Saugor and one semester at Harvard.
Professor Das's secluded life has left him innocent in the world of affairs but wise in the world of books. An omnivorous reader in many languages, he is learned in the philosophical and other literature of India and the West. His familiarity with all sorts of ideas has bred a certain contempt for them, which prevents his embracing any philosophical system. He is never dogmatic, but always critical.
His English works, written in a fine literary style, include four books (all now out of print and scarce)-Essentials of Advaitism (1933), The Self and the Ideal (1935), The Philosophy of Whitehead (1937), and A Handbook to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (a condensed free translation for use as a textbook, 1949-and many articles. 29
Professor Das's philosophy has passed through two stages, a youthful speculative stage and a mature critical stage. The youthful speculative stage has its fullest expression in the book The Self and the Ideal. This work, although developed in Western concepts, is clearly within the Vedanta tradition, but it is an original theory which eludes classification in any of the traditional Vedanta schools."
"Philosophy aims at the knowledge of reality that can be attained by rational thinking," this book begins, but the data for such thinking are supplied by the facts of experience," which implies that "the reality which philosophy seeks to know must be intimately related with the facts of experience." Experience, however, includes not only physical but also moral experience, and a rational philosophy must include the facts of morality in its
28 A free translation of the Vedanta classic Naiskarmya-siddhi by Sankara's disciple Suresvara. Authentic because by Suresvara and clear because by Das, this book is in my opinion the best introduction to Advaita Vedanta.
29 He considers his most important contribution to Indian philosophy an article (Modern Review, April, 1934) which called attention to the previously little known K. C. Bhattacharya and led to his appointment as professor at Calcutta.
50 He answered "Perhaps" to my suggestion that his theory could be called "qualified non-dualism" (Visishtadvaita).
