English
The pragmatists lay exclusive emphasis on the mere fact of desiring or seeking in studied ignorance of the object desired or sought after, and thus preach the gospel of prac¬ tice for the sake of practice or mere doing, without reference to, and in independence of. the oualitv of what is done or the good that is to be achieved thereby. Practice or activity which has an un¬ mistakable reference to something that is yet to be (vrapi) and to the good that is the result of doing (%ut) and, as suoh, is capable of being more or less, fails to provide for the bliss that is ultimate (). Samkara perpetually harps on this very theme—and that is just the bone of contention 17 130 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA between him and the Mimamsakas—that practice or activity (fiirciT)> does not depend upon the object but is dependent on the free choice of the individual ( ). Hence, so far as practice is concerned, there is pos¬ sibility of variation in response. But jftdna ('irnw) or knowledge has always an objective basis only (), which constitutes its truth. Samkara is so far an epistemological realist out and out, and a confirmed anti-pragmatist. The uncompromising character of his anti¬ pragmatism is brought into prominence in course of the rather long-drawn controversy with the two main sections of the Mlmamsaka school. One of these, the school of Kumarila Bhatta, in strict fidelity to the radical pragmatism of Jaimini, the founder of the Mlmamsaka school, held that all Vedic texts referring to Brahman, not bearing a practical import, are useless and therefore un- authoritative inasmuch as the Vedas are known to have only a practical import.* The other school, headed by Prabhakara, represents a Voluntaristic pragmatism which recoils from this extreme form of pragmatism and justifies the authority of scrip¬ tural texts as injunctions for the act of knowing (ufaqfwfafa:), knowledge being regarded as a form of activity f %ht). Sarokara would not put up even with this moderate form of pragmatism as embodied in the Pratipatti-vidhi ( u fa q fc t fafa :) which seems to have been fashioned after the later AN APPROACH THROUGH EPISTEMOLOGY 131 Mimamsa injunction of Brahman as being needed for worship only (Hmwfafa:). Now, Indian prag¬ matism which was ousted by Samkara could not, however, be deceived by its apparent similarity to his own philosophical theory; indeed, pratipatti- vidhi (qfHqfafafa:) seems to be a half-way house, a mixed mode or a blend of intellectualism and voluntarism. Prabhakara derives the plausi¬ bility of his theory from the activity of thinkin g () which is proximate to, and in a 3 ense an indispensable prelude to, knowledge (trw0‘ This thinking, which is, doubtless, mental, and, as such, dependent on a subject, infects knowledge also with this subjective, active character and thus converts it into a mental activity Samkara was at great pains to refute in anticipa¬ tion the imputation of a subjectivism we come across in the Prabhakara school. There is, con¬ fessedly, in all knowledge, a determination by the object, on the one hand, and freedom or self-deter¬ mination of the subject on the other. Knowledge thus points in two contrary directions : the deter¬ mination of the object on the one hand and freedom or indetermination on the other. Samkara un¬ hesitatingly accepts the first alternative, while the pragmatist escapes from the ‘ block-universe ’ of the Kealist and Absolutist by way of the second. Ultimately the quarrel of Samkara with Prabha¬ kara resolves itself into a question of emphasis merely; Samkara lays exclusive emphasis on pratipatti ( ufaqfar. ) or avagati ( jjarnfa ), while che other on vidhi (fafa;). J$2 A' SYSTEMATIC SttlDT OP THE VEDANTA The pragmatists might, for aught we know, try to make capital out of Samkara’s mention of ‘ desire ’ ('f^gT) in connection with jijftasd ( ferjTPBT ) an d exploit it in a pragmatic interest. But the ‘ desire ’ in question is neither inarticulate feeling, nor a blind impulse, but a ratiocinative desire, which can hardly be dissociated from its object with which it is indissolubly bound up. By his incisive emphasis on the ‘ object ’ < efljj ), he steers clear of the excesses of vague emotionalism, morbid sentimentalism and crass pragmatism lodged in the ‘ will to believe,’ and avoids, in par¬ ticular, the aberrations of a purely psychological theory of values. In point of fact, £amkara was temperamentally incapable of desiring or pursuing a good that is purely subjective. Every object of desire has for him a bifocal existence: it is a sub¬ ject-object, to coin an expression suited to the exi¬ gencies of the situation. His re-iterated emphasis on caitanyam () leaves no room for doubt as to his idealistic persuasion in philosophy. But his absolute idealism is not at all at variance with absolute realism { ). It is, strictly speaking, a blend of idealism and realism—a system of ideal-realism proper. Now, the logic of prag¬ matism as presupposed in its way of dealing with ‘ the desire to know ’ (femrei) is at best sophistical. Making ‘ want ’ or ‘ need ’ (jpfarsrsj) the settled point of departure in the contest, it might however be shown that there can be no knowledge and no truth, for the matter of that, except in so far as an -‘ interest ’ or ‘ need ’ is operative in this regard, AN APPROACH THROUGH EPISTEMOLOGY 133 V, H,* • -CA. J? 1 f, and just because this interest or need is practical, it follows that everything .in the end is practical (pragmatism), or that no interest in the end can be purely theoretical (anti-intellectualism). But it requires no extra ingenuity to realise that if the free use of the intellect (which alone is the precon¬ dition of knowledge) be one aspect of our nature we must needs have a desire for that use. There is evidently a tendency here to pass surreptitiously from ‘ my need ’ which, as directed towards the attainment of a result, is as yet unrealised or prac¬ tical (irspf) (an incontestable proposition) to the fallacious conclusion that ‘ the object (fqsrn:) of my need is itself practical ’ (farqThn) (a false proposi¬ tion). It is, as Samkara would argue, a case of pure non-sequitur, since my need or interest although practical in its inceptive stage, may nevertheless have for its object something that in itself is not practical, far less practice itself. One might as well argue that I cannot desire to act for the sake of another because such an other-regarding desire is a part of myself. Samkara’s pronounce¬ ment on the point is well worth quoting here: “men do act for the fulfilment of the interest of others, although inspired by self-interest.’’* One need not stop here to enquire whether it is suspi¬ ciously similar to the hedonistic interpretation of ‘ duty ’ as ‘ enlightened self-interest ’ only. What is of crucial importance is the meaning and status * rt*g# r <fr * ff i*ri jMS—C om. on V.S. II.2. xxxvii. 134 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA of ‘ self ’ in the phrase * self-interest ’ on which such vital issues are staked from the standpoint of Advaita-Vedanta. But we cannot enter into a dis¬ cussion on this topic without anticipating the future course of our reflections. Accordingly, Samkara would emphatically re¬ pudiate the contention that all needs in the end are of a practical nature, and that, therefore, truth is also made—as claimed alike by James’s ‘ prag¬ matism,’ Dewey’s ‘ instrumentalism ’ and Schiller’s ‘ humanism.’ He repeatedly declares* with a Bradleyan emphasis that ‘ truth does not depend upon me ’t fa ^jirreTr*5rgT* ), truth is dependent upon a thing that is eternally ac¬ complished (), and not contingent upon any activity whatsoever. “ Every truth,” says Bradley after the manner of Samkara, “ is eternal, even, for instance, such a truth as ‘ I now have a toothache.’ Truth qualifies that which is beyond mere succession, and it takes whatever it contains beyond the flux of mere event.As the concluding reflection on the theme, one might take the following statement of Samkara’s ‘ meditation and reflection, although mental,—depending, as they do, on the person (meditating or reflecting)—may either be made or not made or modified. Truth, on the other hand, is the result of the application of the different sources of valid knowledge, and these, * Com. on Y.S. I. i. ii. t Cf. Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 841. | Ibid, p. 840. AN APPROACH THROUGH EPISTEMOLOGY 135 again, have for their objects things as they are in themselves. Hence truth is incapable of being either made or not made or modified.”* This leads us to the very heart of the problem of Truth and Knowledge. Knowledge is knowing with certitude, and Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge is, therefore, primarily a theory of certitude. Almost all systems of Indian philosophy—to which the Samkara- Vedanta forms no exception—begin with an elabo¬ rate enquiry into the nature of pramanas (jrar<WT%) or self-evidencing sources of knowledge, pramd (tot) or valid knowledge, i.e., truth (as the result of the employment of pramanas) and prameya ( ) or object of valid knowledge, that is, Reality. This fact, at least, is sufficient to absolve Indian philo¬ sophy—Samknra’s philosophy in particular—from the charges of ‘ dogmatism ’ and the like. But European philosophy, as its history shows, univer¬ sally began with metaphysics ; and epistemology, or the nearest approximation to it, was a much later product. This unmistakable emphasis on the sub¬ jective side, is the individuality, the peculiar trait or excellence of Indian philosophy, and the much- maligned ‘ brooding East ’ has. in this respect a redeeming grace. Now the problem of criteriology is to ascertain the validity of mental assents.