Samayasara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, Hiralal Jain, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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INTRODUCTION
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What the mind is when it is not so engaged in the fabrication of human experience is unknown, since it is also outside the human experience. Therefore the Ego in itself also is beyond our knowledge as the Thing-in-itself. The Ego in itself and the Thing-in-itself since both lie outside our experience.
ust necessarily be unknown to us and hence we cannot state anything about them. Nevertheless we are certain of their existence though we are not aware of their nature. This unknown region of the Thing-in-itself and the Ego in itself is the region of real existence according to Kant which is the 'Noumenal region as contrasted with the phenomenal nature of our experience. Thus our experience is confined to the phenomenal 'region whereas the Ultimate Reality is the region of Noumena of the thing-in-itself and the ego in itself. This result obtained by Kant is rather unsatisfactory. The ultimate region of reality remains unknown for ever and what we know is the phenomenal one which is merely an unimportant appearance resulting from the operation of the mind upon the stimuli supplied by thing in itself.
Thus we are destined to be shut up within the phenomenal experience never hoping to come out beyond this magic circle. Kant's attempt to salvage metaphysics from Humean scepticism thus results in an inevitable agnosticism according to which man can never know the nature of reality and inust be satisfied with the unimportant illusory appearance of the phenomenal world. In spite of this unsatisfactory conclusion, Kant proceeds with an undaunted spirit to reintroduce some of the important moral concepts which got exploded in the first part of his Critique of Pure Reason. The conclusion of the Critique of Pure Reason does not permit Kant to speak with any amount of certainty as to the nature of Ego, whether it is mortal or immortal, whether its ultimate destiny is to achieve the combination of virtue and happiness. He frankly says that according to pure reason we can never be certain about this. In his Critique of Practical Reason many of these concepts are adınitted by the back door which were driven out by the front door. He proceeds with the assumption that virtue must necessarily be associated with happiness. If virtue is not associated with happiness ultimately there can be no moral foundation at all. But in ordinary experience, virtue is not always associated with happiness. That is why in cases of weak men they forsake virtue in pursuit of pleasure, because they find that virtue is not always rewarded with happiness. This contradiction of moral experience, Kant attempts to solve by his metaphysical suggestion, the ultinate summum bonum of life necessarily be the combination of virtue and happiness. This would happen though not now ultimately in some far off future. If this proposition is accepted, it necessarily follows that the short span of life which man enjoys in the phenomenal world persists beyond the phenomenal birth and
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