Vishistadvaita Ontology

[Guest guest]

Hello All,

A short speculative note on the thinking behind the preamble to the

B.S.B. Superimposition has not come into the picture yet as a transcendental

postulate.

***********************************************************

 

How do constraints ensure a creative solution? In poetry we artificially

adopt a set of rules called prosody which give structure and by blocking the

normal avenues of cliche or the first thing or the most direct thing that

comes into your head, novelty is ensured.

 

Western philosophy has taken methodic doubt to heart and we have come to

imagine that unless we lay waste to all previous systems and assumptions our

chances of avoiding their taint is minimal.

 

Sankara does not do this. He takes it that there are subjects and objects.

This is a non-negotiable assumption. How could it be otherwise when the Vedas

which are of non-human origin exist as an object. The wisdom mediated by the

sages must be included in or act as the objective guarantee of truth.

 

When the oddness of how the object comes to be 'in' the subject strikes him

(Sankara) he does not divert into the idealist stream. This apparent paradox

must be resolved without, as it were, drawing everything into the subject.

 

The question may be put in various ways:

A: How is the object which is other than the subject (constraint) known when

its otherness is not simply collapsed into the subject in the idealist way?

 

B: If all knowledge is really self-knowledge then how operating under that

constraint can we still know the object as it really is, objectively, as it

is said?

 

Put at its broadest - there is an object and it is known and is not reducible

to my knowledge of it! The puzzle of how an object is 'in' the subject is a

core issue which we first have to feel before we can even think about it.

This should be the subject of another note.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.

[Guest guest]

Namaste Michaelji,

> The question may be put in various ways:

> A: How is the object which is other than the subject

> (constraint) known when its otherness is not simply collapsed

> into the subject in the idealist way?

>

> B: If all knowledge is really self-knowledge then how

> operating under that constraint can we still know the object

> as it really is, objectively, as it is said?

>

> Put at its broadest - there is an object and it is known and

> is not reducible to my knowledge of it! The puzzle of how an

> object is 'in' the subject is a core issue which we first

> have to feel before we can even think about it.

> This should be the subject of another note.

 

 

That is nicely worded.

 

Regards,

Chittaranjan