Dennis's site and Bradley

[Guest guest]

Hi Dennis,

 

Like the appendix of your book, your site pulls together sources and references

on Advaita that folks would have to search far and wide to find on their own. I

can't think of any other place that has as wide a variety of angles of approach

to advaitc-style nondualism as your site and book appendix. No other place has

all the various strands represented as you do. ("He says that like it's a

*good* thing!") I did! And you make it look interesting!

 

I like Bradley a lot. I read him decades before I was interested in advaita, so

I'd have to look through the book again to see how nicely it dovetails. Another

thing I like about Bradley is that Brand Blanshard liked him very much. Brand

Blanshard is one of my favorite philosophers of all, and maybe the most graceful

and elegant philosophical writer in English. Much more accessible than

Berkeley. He has a kind of idealist-based nondualism too in his monumental

2-volume set, THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. Basically, the difference between an idea

and its object is just a matter of degree. Metaphysically, there is no

essential difference. For my money, if Blanshard likes Bradley, then Bradley

must be pretty cool! I think I'll put a link from my Western phil page to

yours!

 

I agree, these great writers discuss ideas that Benjamin is keenly interested

in.

 

Pranaams,

 

--Greg

[Guest guest]

advaitin, Gregory Goode <goode@D...> wrote:

 

Brand Blanshard is one of my favorite philosophers of all, and maybe

the most graceful and elegant philosophical writer in English. Much

more accessible than Berkeley. He has a kind of idealist-based

nondualism too in his monumental 2-volume set, THE NATURE OF

THOUGHT. Basically, the difference between an idea and its object is

just a matter of degree. Metaphysically, there is no essential

difference. For my money, if Blanshard likes Bradley, then Bradley

must be pretty cool!>

 

Namaste,

 

Thanks for introducing one of the 'giants' of 20th century

philosophy.

 

Scott palmer, another philosopher, interviewed him, and here is

one excerpt:

 

http://personal.nspalmer.com/blanshard.htm

 

Palmer: Yes, the only way to save that, as far as I can tell,

is with that sort of two-level conception of reality: apparently

distinct things on the one hand which really resolve into one thing.

 

Blanshard: Yes. Are you satisfied with that?

 

Palmer: I'm sort of schizophrenic about the whole business.

Because, theoretically, I'm satisfied. But then, all I have to

do is take a walk in the park on a sunny day, and I get to thinking,

"This is so crazy!"

 

Blanshard: Well, the Indian philosophers accept it readily enough.

Either they are much beyond us, or they are much behind us. I spent

a year in India, and it seems to me that they haven't yet learned

the distinction between mysticism on the one hand, and discursive

thinking on the other. In the end, everything does tend to blend

with everything else, in a state of things in which every

proposition, being the equivalent of every other proposition, really

is not distinct from any other proposition. And they seem to think

that the end of the seer is absorption in Nirvana, a sort of state in

which everything is so mixed up with everything else that nothing is

what it is any longer.

 

Palmer: You can see that in idealist writings.

 

Blanshard: Yes, it comes out very clearly at the end in Bradley.

And I lived for three years within a stone's throw of Bradley,

and have talked some of these matters over with him. And although

at the time, as an undergraduate, I couldn't face this tremendous

engine of thinking, I did come in time to doubt some of his major

theses.

 

I don't want to discourage you from moving along idealistic lines,

if there is any way of saving it. I am rather depressed by some of

my own results in latter-day thinking. But it's better to be

depressed and right than elated and wrong.

 

Regards,

 

Sunder

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sunderji.

 

Thanks for the interesting quote.

 

It focuses beautifully on the conflict in the Western mind. The

sunny park is really a crazy distraction. Let me therefore get back

to our Indian ponderings on the banks of the Ganges looking up at the

stars. I have to keep my head raised because I can't afford to look

at what is going on down there these days which is a crazier

distraction than all the sunny parks in the world. That then is the

Indian conflict!

 

Regards.

 

Madathil Nair

 

________________________

 

advaitin, "Sunder Hattangadi" <sunderh>

quoted:

 

> Palmer: I'm sort of schizophrenic about the whole business.

> Because, theoretically, I'm satisfied. But then, all I have to

> do is take a walk in the park on a sunny day, and I get to

thinking,

> "This is so crazy!"