Proceedings of Philosophical Congress : B.H.U. - 1967 (An Old and Rare Book)

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In one of the papers included in this selection Eliot Deutsch speaks about four kinds of possible approaches to Comparative Philosophy that we find in the west today. Deutsch’s Categories, with some modifications can provide us with a basis for classifying the papers included in this selection.

Kalghatgi’s analysis of ‘Dreams in Jaina Psychology’, Bagchi’s treatment of ‘Maya, thought and subjectivity’ and K.C. Das ‘com- parative study of the Sankhya-Yoga and the Freudian conceptions of the Unconscious’ reflect, what has been called, ‘the wisdom of the East’ approach to Philosophy. They all seem to be convinced that ancient Indian Philosophy is the repository of all wisdom, and that the need of the hour is to bring to light the ancient Indian reflections on such subjects that have become important and significant in contem- porary times. Kalghatgi gives a descriptive analysis of the Jaina con- ception of Dreams and comes to suggest that it presents a problem even to the empirical Psychologists of today. He is of the opinion that in the light of the Jaina’s treatment of the phenomenon of ‘Dream’, a re-orientation of our outlook towards the study of dreams is necessary. Bagchi gives a modern interpretation of the vedantic concept of Maya, and comes to his conclusions by differentiating the vedantic position from that of the western Idealist. He appears to be convinced that in certain respects the vedantist advances beyond the western Idealist atleast in so far as the vedantic idealist is able to transcend meaning and thought in subjectivity. K. C. Das gives a comparative account of the sankhya-Yoga and the Freudian conceptions of the Unconscious and comes to feel that some of its aspects that have been emphasised in Sankhya-Yoga were not even considered by Freud or the Freudians, There are some other papers, more or less of the same kind, which, instead of emphasising the prominent aspects of Indian Philoso- ‘phy, seek to reduce Indian Philosophy to forms, epithets and models of western Philosophy. Deutsch calls this the realist technical approach The papers that are being placed under this head have all adopted the technical approach, although they are not necessarily realistic. Ramakant sinari tries to demonstrate that Sankara in the orient furnishes a unique instance of adopting the phenomenological attitude. He ‘defines the phenomenological attitude as comprising ‘a manner of dis- sention, a preserved scepticism, a penetration into the genesis of essences in consciousness and a_ persistent analysis of the ‘given’ from the standpoint of one’s own subjectivity’? Parti- cularly in the last he finds a perfect similarity between this attitude and that of Sankara. He also feels that Sankara’s avidya and Husserl’s naivete are similar in import, and therefore he does not find any difficulty in instituting a comparison between the two. H. M. Joshi tries to finda justification for the static — dynamic concept of reality, an example of which he comes across in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, andina different sense, in the philosophy of sankara also. For this he keeps on moving freely in the philosophies of some of the prominent meta- physical thinkers of the west — Bradley, Bosanquet, Alexander and whitehead.

But the most faithful illustration of this kind of technical approach to philosophical thinking is the Vedanta Lecture of Prof. N. K. Devaraja. Devaraja intends to highlight such aspects of Advaita Vedanta which are both significant and relevant for the contemporary times. The modern man, for him, is the man who is aware of "the tensions and strains characterising contemporary life ond sensibility and shares the concern of a disillusioned generation for objective evidence and verifi- able utterance." Advaita Vedanta appears to him as relevant for such a modern man, and therefore he attempts to ascertain the relevance of Advaita Vedanta from three points of view — metaphysical, epis- temological and religious. Among others the most challenging notions that Devaraja places before the modern man are those of saintly life and ‘Jivanmukti.