Advaita and Neoplatonism

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy

8. Comparative philosophy and Advaita

Advaita also presents an inner possibility of Western philosophy (this does not mean that we are entitled to affirm dogmatically that the West has its own Advaita; but it means that what we can philosophically understand of Indian Advaita can only be the development of a possibility of Western thought).⁴⁸ Some material will here be presented which may contribute to the solution of the problem of the philosophical foundation of ‘Western Advaita’. It may be suggested as a tentative solution to this problem that modern Western interest in philosophies like Advaita, is only the latest form of an ancient ‘counter-tradition’ of impersonalism. This tradition starts with Neoplatonism (according to Emile Bréhier),⁴⁹ or at least contains Neoplatonism as one of its earliest manifestations. It re-appeared regularly and has been repeatedly criticised and rejected. In a similar manner as Augustine rejected Plotinus, the medieval church rejected Meister Eckehart, Muslim orthodoxy⁵⁰ rejected Ibn 'Arabī and, in only a partly secularized way, Kierkegaard rejected Hegel.⁵¹. We look through Neoplatonic eyes at Advaita, and the attitude of Western thought with regard to Neoplatonism predetermines our attitude to Advaita.

Finally a few remarks may be added about Schopenhauer and Deussen, the first philosophical interpreters of Advaita in Europe, for they do not seem to belong to the impersonalist tradition. The incorrectness of their historical perspective, which nowadays seems

48 Moreover it is not at all against the spirit of Advaita to be expounded in different ways: cf. T.M.P. Mahadevan, Western Vedänta in: Vedänta for modern man, New York, 1951, 15-19.

49 La philosophie de Plotin, Paris 1928, Chap. VII: ‘Avec Plotin, nous saississons done le premier chaînon d'une tradition religieuse, qui n'est pas moins puissante que la tradition chrétienne....’

50 e.g. Ibn. Taimīya.

51 see e.g. M. Bense, Hegel und Kierkegaard, Kōln-Krefeld 1948.

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evident, can be easily gathered from a booklet by Deusson entitled ‘Vedänta and Platonism in the light of Kantian philosophy’.⁵² There Indian thinkers are regarded as subjective idealists, especially Sankara, notwithstanding the essential differences between Advaita and subjective idealism.⁵³ Moreover, Parmenides and Plato are also interpreted in a Kantian way: for instance, when Parmenides speaks about being as indivisible and unchanging, it is argued that indivisibility excludes space and time from being and immutability excludes causality (which is true), so that these entities have to be attributed to the human subject in the Kantian sense. Lastly, Kant himself is interpreted in a Schopenhauerian (i.e. metaphysical) way, through the identification of will as the thing in itself. Through all these interpretations and interpolations a unified and apparently final world view has come into being. No major difficulties are left for a philosopher like Deussen. But in fact we have not gone beyond the philosophy of Schopenhauer, itself only one of the possible developments of Kant's thought, the latter itself only one of the various outcomes of Greek philosophy combined with later reflection and analysis. And likewise an interpretation of Advaita is given, which tells us more about Schopenhauer than about Advaita.

52 P. Deussen, Vedänta und Platonismus im Lichte der Kantischen Philosophie, Berlin 1922.

53 See below II, 11: 123.