Samayasara

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

Page 48

INTRODUCTION
33
the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer". Deussen adds : "Al great religious teachers therefore, whether in earlier or later times, nay even all those at the present day whose religion rests upon faith are alike unconsciously followers of Kant. The new testament and the Upanişads, the two noblest products of the religious consciousness of mankind are found, when we sound their deeper meaning, to be nowhere in irreconcilabe contradiction, but in a inanner the most attractive serve to elucidate and complete one another." The purport of these words of Deussen is that Kant's philosophical agnosticism is the last word in philosophy and that a religion not associated with Kantian metaphysics is far from being a genuine religion. It places the philosophy of the Upanişads on a par with that of Kant and Plato. If he wants to express his admiration of the philosophy of the Upanişads by comparing it to his own national philosophy we have nothing to quarrel about. He is at liberty to choose his own method of critical appreciation. He may quite well regard the philosophy of Kant and Plato as the only genuine philosophy. But when he says that the philosophy of the Upanişads is the same as that of Plato we have to protest. This is an unwarranted philosophical attitude with certain European scholars who started the study of Indian thought with the unwarranted assumption that the Advaita Vedāpta was the one fruit to produce which the whole of Indian life and culture conspired. This bias was further strengthened by the tendencies of European thought moulded by such German thinkers like Kant and Hegel. It requires no serious argument to show how unfounded the assumption is even if we admit for the sake of argument such an interpretation of the Upanişadic philosophy. We cannot consistently explain the claims put forward by other systems of Indian philosophy that they are also resting on the Upanişadic authority. The real fact is that all the Indian systems whether orth or heterodox are based upon the fundamental concepts of Upanişadic thought and that all have the right to claim the authority of their source. This simple fact of History cannot be denied in the face of so much preponderating evidence. To maintain that the Upanişadic thought is the Indian counterpart of Plats or Kant is quite an uuwarranted dogma sustained more by personil predilection than by objective evidence. Further Prof. Deussen justified in maintaining that Plato-Kantian idealis'n is the best system of philosophy. In spite of the beauty of conception and grandeur of diction Plato's idealism is but a temporary aberration of Hellenic thought which was brought to its equilibrium by his friend and disciple Aristotle. Similar is the case of Kant's transcendental agnosticism. It is but an episode in the career of modern thought quite unconnected with the course of modern culture. As against Deussen's obiter dictum we take the liberty to state that the idealism of Plato or Kant is distinctly of a modern thought and