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K. C. BHATTACHARYYA
er it exists, and it is understood paradoxically as what cannot be understood, the Indefinite, at once indefinite (not intelligible) and definite (yet somehow intelligible), "only negatively understood" (II 116).
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Neo-Vedanta, however, like classical Vedanta, cannot remain satisfied with this quasi-negative conclusion, but seeks, if not any definite connotation, at least a definite denotation for the Absolute. The logical approach gives way to a psychological approach. Vedanta philosophy has always had an epistemological bias. It thinks of metaphysics not as the rational analysis of being but as the rational analysis of experience. The Absolute, as indefinite, cannot be any object of experience, but as the ground of all objects it is understood as the subject of experience. The Indefinite, remaining at every level of experience as a fringe not realized but demanding to be realized, is approached by gradual inward realization of the subjective. This brings us to the second phase of Bhattacharyya's philosophy, where the absolute Indefinite is interpreted as the absolute Subject.
SECOND PHASE: THE ABSOLUTE AS SUBJECT
In his second phase K. C. Bhattacharyya defines the Absolute as Subject in accordance with the Upanishadic formula Tat tuam asi ("You are it"). The Subject is analyzed in his second book The Subject as. Freedom (lectures at the Indian Institute of Philosophy in 1929, published 1930) and related logical problems are treated in a series of four articles written and published between 1927 and 1932.
Influence of Kant
The principal non-Vedantic influence in this phase was that of Kant. His interpretation of Kant, based on a thorough study of the texts in translation and formulated in a series of lectures delivered at Calcutta in 1935, is highly original. Unlike the objective reasoning of science or ordinary philosophy, where the sequence of conclusion from data is taken as a fact independent of the reasoner's mind, Kant's
20 Neo-Vedanta offers no rational refutation of positivism. "Beliefs in science alone are formulable as judgments and literally thinkable" (II 106).
21 Chandogya Upanishad, 6:8-16.
22 The first edition of this book, which is suitable for reading in graduate or undergraduate courses on metaphysics, is obtainable from the publisher (Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner, Jalgaon).
23 "Widely different from how it has been understood by English-speaking peoples," but "amply supported by German and Continental commentaries,"
