Bradley

[Guest guest]

Hi Profvk,

 

You asked about the degree to which F. H. Bradley's philosophy corresponds

with Advaita. As you may recall, I made his 'Appearance and Reality'

available to the group files a few years ago - but never succeeded in

reading it myself! However, there is a book available (in theory - though it

is difficult to obtain) that is fairly readable and is concerned with

precisely this topic. It is 'Shankara and Bradley' by S. N. L. Shrivastava,

published by Motilal Banarsidass in 1968.

 

Just a few points that might be of interest:

 

Whereas Shankara's 'Absolute reality' is none other than our own Self, for

Bradley it was a speculative inference 'from the contingent and

contradictory character of the world of appearances'. Things are

'transmuted' and 'transformed' and each contributes to the whole, whereas

for Advaitins they are merely name and form and never existed as separate

entities in the first place. Bradley believed that the very fact that we

experience objects means that they cannot be non-entities. The Absolute is

the unity or totality of all the appearances and has no reality outside

them.

 

He regards the waking world as no more real than the dream world or

imagination, whereas from the vyAvahArika standpoint, waking is real and

dream unreal. Shankara sublates waking in turIya in the same way as dream is

sublated in waking. Bradley does not recognise turIya but suggests there

might be an indefinite number of 'higher worlds' than this one. His

'immediate experience' is a 'many in one' and not a simple undifferentiated

unity.

 

Best wishes,

 

Dennis