THE SEARCH FOR A NORM IN WESTERN THOUGHT

by Nataraja Guru                         

 "The Self indeed is below. The Self is above. The Self is behind. The Self is in front. The Self is to the south. The Self is to the north. The Self, indeed, is all this world. Verily, he who sees this, who thinks of this, who understands this, he has pleasure in the Self, he has delight in the Self, he has union in the Self, he has joy in the Self; he is the Self-ruler; he has unlimited freedom in all the worlds. But they who think differently have others for their rulers. They live in perishable worlds. In all the worlds they cannot move freely at all."
Chandogya Upanishad 7. 25. 2

CONTENTS

1. SOME BACKGROUND ASPECTS	1
Theology and Philosophy part company	2
Upanishads nearer to modern science	3
The amplitude of philosophical speculation	4
What is complete scientific philosophy	5
Occidental and Oriental philosophies	6
Modern mistrust of metaphysics	10
Modern philosophy begins with scepticism	11
2. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY	14
Some specific traits of modernism	15
Science and speculation	16
Varieties of certitude	19
Two proofs for the Pythagorean Theorem	20
Logical and mathematical certitudes;	21
3.THE LENGTHENING SHADOW OF SCEPTICISM	24
Inadequacy of the analytic approach;	26
Philosophy must rise above slogans and “isms”	30
4. THE ABSOLUTE AS THE NORMATIVE REFERENCE FOR PHILOSOPHY	33
The content of the term, "Absolute"	34
The content of the term, "Absolute"	37
The relational structure of the Absolute	40
The relational structure of the Absolute	44
Vertical and horizontal aspects of the Absolute	46
5. A NORMATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR ALL PHILOSOPHY	48
An overall epistemology	50
The revised philosophy of science	51
Normalisation and re-normalisation of the Absolute	54
Normative axiology	55
Science and wonder	56
Science resembles Vedanta	57
6. THE SEARCH FOR THE ABSOLUTE	59
Hegel's Absolute Idea	60
The Bergsonian Absolute of change and becoming	62
Absolutism suffers a set-back	63
7. THE ABSOLUTE IMPLIED IN EMPIRICISM	69
Locke's "tabula rasa" as the Absolute	71
The theological and philosophical Absolute in Berkeley	74
8. THE ABSOLUTE AS IMPLIED IN RATIONALISM	77
Cartesian Rationalism	77
The Absolute Norm implicit in Spinoza	80
Monadology and the normative Absolute	84
Monadic and schematic thought distinguished	89
9. THE ABSOLUTE FROM KANT TO EDDINGTON	91
Pre- Kantian and post- Kantian schematisms	92
From Bergson's schema to Eddington's structure	96
Eddington's conceptual view of physics	97
Selective subjectivism and structuralism	99
10. SELECTIVE SUBJECTIVISM AND STRUCTURALISM	103
The schema moteur	103
Bergson employs his own schematic language	108
Concluding remarks	113
11. SUMMARIZED ELEMENTS OF THE ABSOLUTE NORM	116
Advance outline of the normalised scheme	117
The Guru-position summarised	118
Index	124

1. SOME BACKGROUND ASPECTS

       Philosophy, which means "love of wisdom", refers to knowledge in general about ultimate truth, reality or value. Such knowledge must help man to lead an intelligent life. This consists of correct thinking, the cultivation of good taste, and of acting in the best interests of one and all, for life here and hereafter. Although the word philosophy only suggests "love" of wisdom, it is generally taken to cover the subject matter of wisdom itself as a whole.

       Aristotle was known as "the Philosopher", and the word itself came into vogue in the West generally after Pythagoras, who called himself "a lover of wisdom"1. In India, a philosopher is called a jnanin, "one who knows" and not one who is merely interested in wisdom at second-hand, or who just loves it. The Sanskrit word tattva-jnanin (a knower of first principles), as referring to the Absolute or Ultimate Reality, would correspond to the meaning of the word "philosopher" as used in the West.
Some branches of science such as biology used to be treated as Natural Philosophy, and only recently were annexed into the domain of science proper.

2

       Ethics and aesthetics were naturally taken to be within the scope of philosophy, although they refer to value-factors in life and thus must belong to axiology (the study of values) instead of having to do with logical reasoning or being a part of speculative metaphysics.

       Aristotle was the first to use the word  'metaphysics', which is even now treated as if it were interchangeable with philosophy. From its etymology in Aristotle's own writings, we can see that he put it after physics, and meant it to cover all aspects of thinking that refer to abstractions in reasoning.

       Philosophy, as we understand it here, is not limited by any genetic or etymological considerations. We mean it to cover the whole field of speculation, omitting neither Existence, Subsistence nor Value.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY PART COMPANY

       Theology is considered outside the scope of philosophy in the West, but in the East theology and philosophy come closer together for treatment. Eschatology (a theological term for what happens after death) too enters into Indian Philosophy by right; but in Europe, after the Middle or Dark Ages when belief was given so much primacy because of excesses practised in its name, philosophers were compelled to part company with theologians and join hands rather with the speculative theorists of science and astronomy. Philosophy could not continue undivorced from theology or eschatology as in the ancient regime.2 

3

       India did not have to pass through such periods in its history of thought. It might have had other problems such as the primacy of ritual over reason, of Vedic orthodoxy over rationalism, etc. Although the status of a God in Europe after the Age of Scholasticism changed its position epistemologically (through ways of knowing) from that of a teleological (with final end or purpose) to an ontological (pertaining to existence or being) God, theological dogma in India did not suffer any such abrupt change. Orthodoxy stressing Vedic ritualism, and heterodoxy stressing reason without acts, alternated, passing from one side of the road to the other many times during its history of three or four millennia rather than of centuries as in Europe.
Theology and dogma are found in both the philosophies of the East and the West, but differing aspects were stressed at different times in both regions, so that we cannot generalise and say that one was dogmatic and the other was not.

UPANISHADS NEARER TO MODERN SCIENCE

        Oriental philosophy is not theological in the scholastic sense. It admits of a large degree of belief in the authority of scriptures such as the Upanishads. These are more philosophical than theological in character. Such beliefs as they tacitly uphold do not detract from their fully philosophical status.

       On the other hand, beliefs enhance philosophy by treating it more wholeheartedly and in a complete form by omitting none of its normal or natural branches. Philosophy has to cover all speculation about ultimate truth. It has common ground with science in its cosmological and psychological aspects, and when systematically presented with an ontology, epistemology and axiology, it may be said to include all knowledge or wisdom as a Science of sciences.

       The natural curiosity of every thinker, as a member of the species Homo Sapiens, to understand himself correctly in relation to the physical world, may be said to cover the whole range of philosophy, whether in the East or the West. Understanding the Absolute in terms of the universe and the universe in terms of the Absolute is the supreme task of philosophy anywhere and for all time.

4

       Among modern philosophers it was given to Giordano Bruno to state the case of post-Scholastic philosophy in this very way. Although Bruno believed in God in a more correctly philosophical, rather than theological sense, he had to suffer martyrdom. His name remains, however, as one who gave to modern philosophy its new orientation and impetus after the Dark Ages. 3

THE AMPLITUDE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATION

       A glance at the pages of any dictionary of philosophy will reveal the astonishing number of "isms" comprised under the term "philosophy". Beginning from broad divisions such as between Eastern and Western philosophies, one reads of Nordic or Southern varieties. However, increased communications are abolishing such sharp distinctions, and East and West, which a century ago were supposed never to meet, are now believed, by some at least, to be coming closer together so as to yield finally what will be the integrated world-philosophy of tomorrow.

       Further, philosophies can vary in the problems they pose as most important and in the methods adopted to solve them. They can belong to different cultural contexts and have in their contents different aspects of reality presented as central subject matter. Some like to face philosophical problems piecemeal while others prefer to face problems generally in a wholesale manner. Bertrand Russell, for example, is for the piecemeal approach and for excluding ethical considerations from philosophy and, in fact, anything which involves evolutionism or time. 4

WHAT IS A COMPLETE SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY?

       Some philosophers give importance to the positive and the practical, while others emphasise the abstract and the implied aspects. A philosophy with an axe of special interest to grind can hardly be called philosophy, but nowadays it is normal to hear of officially accepted philosophies of countries with political motives behind them. Some put the limits of philosophising in favour of actualities or the given data of an empirical nature, while others admit a great deal of a priorism (a doctrine whose principles and findings are independent of the senses) into their speculations. Teleological and ontological approaches may each yield their own varieties in philosophising. Between the extreme limits of materialism and idealism we can imagine a series of possible philosophies which give primacy to bodily or mental aspects in their types of speculation. To prefer any one type to another is wrong.

       In certain textbooks it is also usual to differentiate between races and to classify philosophy according to climatic or geographical conditions. For example, we read of a "robust" philosophy as opposed to a "passive" kind, of some that have an "active" as against a "dreamy sentimental"' outlook, and of others that harmonise different elements to make philosophy perfect or beautiful.

       If this kind of classification is to be accepted seriously, we have finally to concede one type of philosophy for each philosopher, making as many philosophies as there are philosopher-types.

       Solipsism and syncretism give certain philosophies little value, and eclecticism and cyclopaedism do not face the problems but only give information about them. A metaphysics which is too axiomatic also fails at the other extreme.

6

       What we wish to underline by listing the possible varieties of philosophy here, is that philosophy must be treated as a science of sciences with a central neutral normative notion for its reference. When a strictly conceived methodology, a complete epistemology, and an axiology are all brought to bear upon the subject of philosophy, then and only then can it be called scientific. All its normal limbs must be left intact. The lopping of its main branches, which some modern thinkers propose, is disastrous to the whole prospect of the philosophy of the future, which has necessarily to rid itself of all parochialisms, cultural prejudices and confusion of tongues.

       The emergence in modern times of a new branch of knowledge called the "Philosophy of Science" suggests already how the two branches are bound to overlap and encroach upon each other's domains as science becomes more theoretical and philosophy tends to adopt the strict methods of the positive sciences called "operational" or "demonstrable". In the process of such a rapprochement of the two disciplines from the poles of the a priori and the a posteriori we can even expect a “Science of sciences” to emerge. Philosophy, science and even theology can then be included under one integrated, normalised and re-normalised way of thinking in unified world-terms and not from the Babelized standpoint which prevails at present.

OCCIDENTAL AND ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHIES

       In his Introduction to A History of Philosophy John Edward Erdmann wrote as his opening sentence:
    
 "The task of apprehending his own nature in thought can only tempt the human mind and indeed it is only then equal to it when it is conscious of its intrinsic dignity - and as in the East, except among the Jews this point is not reached, we must not be induced to talk of a pre-Hellenic philosophy or worse still, of pre-Hellenic systems."

       Frederik Uberweg also wrote in a similar strain in his History of Philosophy:

 "Philosophy as a science could originate neither among the people of the North, who were eminent for strength and courage, but devoid of culture, nor among the Orientals who, though susceptible to the elements of higher culture, were content simply to retain them in a spirit of passive resignation - but only among the Hellenes who harmoniously combined the characteristics of both. The so-called philosophy of the Orient lacks the tendency to strict demonstrations and hence in scientific character." 5

7

       Hegel, even in spite of the fact that his absolutist standpoint has much in common with Indian philosophy both in matter and method, reveals a more definite prejudice against Indian Philosophy when he writes: “The Hindu mentality is pre-adolescent” and that its temperament is “sunk in childish dreaming”, concluding his appraisal with the words, “All in all, the character of spirit in a state of dream is the generic principle of Hindu nature.” He further refers to the “infantilism of China with its language like baby-talk,” and after admitting that Greek philosophy attained some maturity he goes as far as to say: “In the Germanic culture, the spirit at last becomes fully conscious of its freedom and freely wills the identification of the individual, the eternal and the universal.” 6

       Such easy generalisations, when they hold high one's own culture or country, cannot be taken seriously, especially because we find on the other side, ranged against these very European philosophers, others of such high standing as Schopenhauer, not to mention scholars like Paul Deussen, Monier Williams and Max Müller, who were disposed to speak of Indian Philosophy in another key of unstinted praise. On first reading the Upanishads in Latin translation, itself taken from a Persian translation, Schopenhauer considered it "the most rewarding and the most elevating reading which (with the exception of the original text) there can possibly be in the world. It has been the solace of my life and will be of my death".7

       Dr. Paul Deussen visited India in 1893 and wrote of the high philosophical value of the Vedanta:

"On my journey through India I have noticed with satisfaction that in philosophy till now our brothers in the East have maintained a very good tradition, better perhaps than the more active but less contemplative branches of the great Indo-Aryan family in Europe, where Empiricism, Realism and their natural consequence, Materialism, grow from day to day more exuberantly, whilst metaphysic, the very centre of the heart of serious philosophy, is supported only by a few, who have learnt to brave the spirit of the age."8 

8

       It can be said that Deussen was favourably prejudiced to Vedantism, but it cannot be denied that he was fully informed about the nature and requirements of the philosophy of India or Europe, We are therefore tempted to quote further from his 1893 address at Bombay, before he said farewell to India, when he made pointed reference to Western philosophers who had affinity with Indian thought, as he continued:

“Eternal interests are higher than the temporary; and the system of the Vedanta as founded on the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras and accomplished by Sankara's commentaries on them - equal in rank to Plato and Kant - is one of the most valuable products of the genius of mankind in its search for the eternal truth.” 9

       He concluded by saying that Vedanta was "the strongest support of pure morality and is the greatest consolation in the sufferings of life and death," 10

       Such recognition coming from a professor of a European university cannot be brushed aside as insignificant, especially when we remember that the original texts of the Vedanta were only beginning to be known in the West at that time. In the opinions of Hegel and others who minimise the status of Indian philosophy, it is not hard to discern that most of what they said was due to ignorance combined with their own pan-Germanic or other personal loyalties. It cannot be gainsaid, however, that in the West there still lingers a large body of ill-informed opinion, amounting to prejudice against Oriental philosophy in general and in respect of Vedanta in particular. At the same time it must be admitted that there is also a growing body of persons who go in the opposite direction by being too ready to admire even some of its weak points.

9

       Max Müller and Josiah Royce were other philosophers who avoided any prejudices but who still valued Vedanta.  Max Müller, in admiring Vedanta whole-heartedly, first takes the precaution to shelter himself behind Schopenhauer, so as to be in good company, when he says:

"Schopenhauer was the last man to write at random, or to allow himself to go into ecstasies over so-called mystic or inarticulate thought. And I am neither afraid nor ashamed to say that I share his enthusiasm for the Vedanta, and feel indebted to it for much that has been helpful to me in my passage through life… for fitting men to lead contemplative or quiet lives, I know no better preparation than the Vedanta. A man may be a Platonist, and yet a good Christian, and I should say the same of a Vedantist." 11

       We have quoted philosophers and professors of the subject to set at rest once and for all the usual charges levelled at all Oriental philosophies. Some condemn it by a sort of faint praise and when they do enumerate the charges, they can be brought under the designation of sentimentalism, dogmatism, or of being mythological, theological or even mystical, as against being positive, demonstrable, operational, critical or rational.

       These charges will seem quite natural when we look at philosophy as connected with its own history in the West, whose peculiarities we have referred to already. But once freed from prejudices, one is sure to see in Vedanta a noble monument of human speculation, quite in keeping with the dignity and maturity of human understanding. Speculation about the Absolute cannot be expected to soar any higher.

       The objection to a priorism in the West is a reaction due to the exaggeration of aspects of belief during the Middle Ages, as already pointed out. But pure philosophy when complete, cannot omit its normal speculative core nor favour a posteriorism against a priorism. Both have to be given their legitimate places in a common, whole or global epistemology and methodology.

10

       Instead of belief and heresy, as in Europe, India has been torn between rituals and reason, but the rivalry has lasted uniformly throughout its history, extending three or four thousand years from the days of the heterodox Vedic Guru Brihaspati to the most orthodox of pontiffs of some of the existing Vedic maths (scholastic institutions) of the present day. Normalised philosophy has to be one integrated subject. One and the same humanity cannot afford to have more than one philosophy which is in keeping with its nature and dignity.

MODERN MISTRUST OF METAPHYSICS

       Modern philosophy starts with a general sceptical attitude towards beliefs of the ancient regime. The horrors of the Inquisition and the nightmare of a witch-hunting attitude of mind still haunted the minds of people when the Age of Reason was ushered into existence by the Renaissance. Human nature demanded a life of truth, dignity and freedom. The invention of the telescope and what is called the Copernican Revolution mark the period wherein wonder about God was displaced by wonder about the physical universe. Facts got primacy over ideas at one stroke. With each triumph of scientific discovery in what was called “progress”, men began to take their stand more confidently on facts and not on theories or beliefs. This tendency became accentuated in geometric progression through the decades after the Renaissance. Today, all a priorism and the speculation depending on it tends to be discredited more and more.

       Scholastic speculation itself seemed to have gone beyond the limits of strict logical or empirical validity. The laws of rational validity and the use of intuition as an instrument of higher dialectical reasoning were matters ill-understood or only beginning to be understood after the days of the classical philosophers of pre-Christian Europe. They too depended for such matters on the philosophical tradition justly belonging to the pre-Socratic philosophers.

        To engage in philosophical speculation became a preserve of the select few. Popular imagination took an interest only in whatever could be "proved" experimentally or at least by the use of understandable, though conventional and arbitrary, mathematical operations.

11

       The French Revolution marks the period when the common man began to hold a central place in public life in a modern sense, and he preferred encyclopaedias to treatises, and information to speculation.

        The combined influence of the vitriolic pen of Voltaire and of Rousseau’s appeal to deeper contemplative ways won the masses over to the side of rationalism and natural spiritual values. But these individual writers could not stem the tide of "technocracy" and "progress" which flooded over to the detriment of deeper human values.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY BEGINS WITH SCEPTICISM

       Descartes came out with a philosophy in which God still had a place; not however, as a hypostatic entity, but as a power which had its being at the core of the phenomenal universe itself, ontologically, from whose new centre occasionalism could bring about the interaction of mind and matter. Descartes had to present such a scientifically valid God with great caution because of fear of the Church, which he is said to have revised one of his writings so as not to offend. He still had to fear persecution.

       So instead of a theological God, we come in sight of a cosmological deity to which a first-rate scientist like Newton in England and a first-rate philosopher like Descartes in France both contributed. These contributions were both philosophical and scientific at once, because speculation and science had observables and calculables implied in them. A priori or axiomatic calculations went hand in hand with a posteriori inferences. Astronomy was the science wherein the blending with philosophy could conveniently take place. The Newtonian-Cartesian cosmos has held the field up to our own time and still holds its ground despite the spread of the ideas of relativity.

       On the other side, theology became more and more subtle from the time of Thomas Aquinas, slowly removing itself from the everyday life of the common man and his day-to-day problems. The natural reaction to this was the rise of Empiricism, particularly on English soil.

12

       The burning of Bruno at the stake in 1600 may be said to mark the point in time when new ideas, tending to be sceptical, empirical or scientific began to prevail in the West. Astronomy and the Renaissance had made Bruno a heretic in the eyes of the Church, but he believed in God and was essentially a religious man. It was only the approved theological God of the Church that he rejected and thereby suffered martyrdom.

       Philosophical Scepticism had to wait till the days of the British Empiricists, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Although David Hume (1711-76) came later than John Locke (1632-1704), his Empiricism made it impossible for him to accept any innate ideas, which were properly those of Locke. Locke's treatment of the mind as a tabula rasa (a blank tablet) was a reaction against the tendency of the Middle Ages to give primacy to such matters as the soul and sin, and thus implied the same Scepticism which Hume later was able to formulate more boldly and in fully philosophical terms.

       Although George Berkeley, an Irish Protestant Bishop (1684-1753), comes under the definition of an Idealist by the primacy he gave to the mind over matter, he accepted the same epistemological frame of reference as Locke. He spoke of primary and secondary qualities, one more internal than the other, and because of his method of starting with perception, he is grouped with the British Empiricists in textbooks, to be treated together with both Locke and Hume.

       If we do not think chronologically, the extreme sceptic of that period may be said to be Hume, whose Phenomenology and Scepticism gave the impetus to what we recognise now as the chief feature of modern Western philosophy. Even in the twentieth century, Hume's way of looking on reality is the same which the so-called Logical Positivists or Logicists of our own time have also to a large extent approved of and adopted for themselves.

       Hume wrote scathingly about the Scholastic theologians and vain metaphysicians of his time, as follows: “Chased from the open country, these robbers fly to the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices.

13

       The stoutest antagonist, if he remit his watch a minute, is oppressed. And many, through cowardice and folly, open the gates to the enemies, and willingly receive them with reverence and submission as their legal sovereigns.”

       Although Berkeley was an ecclesiastical dignitary, his philosophical starting point is empirical in character. Instead of distinguishing primary and secondary qualities in perceived objects given to the senses, he argued just at the point of generalising that esse est percipi or percipere (nothing exists except perceiving or being perceived). In other words he traced the reality of sensations to the mind and no further. How far his idealism was carried beyond into the domain of the a priori analytically or synthetically, is not clear; and whether he agreed with Duns Scotus or with Peter Abelard or went into further subtleties of Christian doctrine, adopting a classical Platonic, Aristotelian or Neo-Platonic approach, like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, is difficult to determine from his writings. All we can say is that he differed sufficiently from the sceptics and empiricists of Britain, but in his method and in the epistemology that he accepted for his reasoning, he had enough in common with the other two philosophers to justify his being bracketed with them for our purposes. When we remember that Hume had great influence on Kant and others, it is not wrong to say that Hume's scepticism in particular and the empirical and objective standpoint which went with it, was in reality the starting point and the initial impetus for what is distinguishable as modern philosophy, ranging from Realism at one end and extending, at least until the time of Hegel, to Idealism at the other end.

FOOTNOTES
1.Pythagoras invented the term Philosophos to distinguish himself as a dedicated follower of wisdom, from a mere sage or Sophos
i.e. as one who lived the life of a wise man, rather than a merely academic orator or lecturer on the subject
2. We read (p 57 in A History of Western Thought, J.B. Bury, Home University Library, London)
" The organized system of searching out heretics known as the Inquisition, was founded by Pope Gregory IX about CE 1233, and fully established by a bull of Innocent IV (CE 1252), which regulated the machinery of persecution...
This powerful engine for the suppression of the freedom of man's opinions is unique in history.
The Emperor Frederick II, who was undoubtably himself a freethinker, made laws for his extensive domains in Italy and Germany between 1220 and 1235, enacting that all heretics should be outlawed and those who did not recant should be imprisoned, but if they relapsed they should be executed; that their property should be confiscated, their houses destroyed, and their children to the second generation be ineligible to positions of emolument unless they had betrayed their father or some other heretic.
England...repressed heresy by the stake under a special statute (CE 1400), repealed 1533, revived under Mary, repealed CE 1676
3. Giordano Bruno (1548-1603)
"A Dominican monk eventually burnt at the stake for his opinions, He was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by Copernican astronomy.
For him God and the Universe were two names for one and the same reality. The culmonation of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational philosophical search for the one in the many, simplicity in in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and the temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature, re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity and changelessness."
B.A.G. Fuller, under "Bruno" in Rune's Dictionary of Philosophy. (Jaico, Bombay 1956)
4. Russel writes, "I believe that the elimination of ethical consideration
from philosophy is both scientifically necessary and - though this may seem a paradox - an ethical advance." p 29 Mysticism and Logic (Allen and Unwin, London.
And "Evolutionism...fails to be a truly scientific philosophy. A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal." p 32 Ibid.
5. pp 14, 16, (trans, G.S. Morris, Scribner, NY)
6. p 325, History of Philosophy, B.G. Fuller (Holt, NY)
7. pp 3, 4,  R.E. Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Oxford, London ed, 1951.
8. p 323, The Elements of Metaphysics, Paul Deussen (Macmillan, London)
9. p 324, Ibid.
10. p 337, Ibid.
11. p 79, Indian Philosophy, by Max Mueller, Vol II
(Susil Gupta, Calcutta, 1952)
12. p 313, Hume's Essays, (Routledge, London)

2. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

       Modern philosophers in the West claim to be critical, well reasoned, or positive and non-dogmatic. This means that they are not ready to believe too easily, as in the Middle Ages; that they are scientific in method; and are free from mythological or theological trimmings and elaborations.
       They claim their philosophy to be "objective" or to have "demonstrable" proofs, with an "operational" character: They tend to avoid too much reliance on the a priori, the imaginary or the "sentimental". Practical utility also characterises this outlook.
       These traits can be seen to be linked with technocracy and the expansion of the power of the dominant nations of Europe and America. Great cities like London, Rotterdam and New York, which stand today as visible monuments of Western civilisation, neither represent nor accentuate any contemplative value. We have already seen how pan-Germanic enthusiasms affected the outlook even of otherwise sound philosophers like Hegel, making them look down upon anything of the nature of quiet contemplation with mistrust and contempt. It goes without saying that philosophy can thrive best on contemplative soil.
       That all was not well with Western civilisation at the time of Voltaire (1694-1778) is sufficiently reflected in his writings and in the literature of his time. Colonial expansion, money-worship and mercantilism characterised the age, none of which aims can be said to be favourable to that calm philosophical outlook which needs dispassionateness in inquiry. The East had it and still retains this mental climate. There is a certain irony or even a touch of humour, when we come to think of it, when Westerners speak of eastern philosophy with contempt.
15

SOME SPECIFIC TRAITS OF MODERNISM

SCIENCE AND SPECULATION

       All speculation in philosophy, whether of the sceptic or the believer, is full of examples which are strictly neither of apodictic validity nor of the degree of certitude of common experience. When taking any philosopher seriously, it is a matter needing the greatest caution to see how strict he is in the use of his examples.

VARIETIES OF CERTITUDE

TWO PROOFS FOR THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM

       Every schoolboy knows that the truth of the Pythagorean theorem can be revealed or proved in two different ways. In the lower classes, where pupils still think in concrete terms of the visible, there is the method of cutting out squares of paper and pasting them onto the sides of the triangle that go to make up the square of the hypotenuse. In the higher classes we arrive at the same degree of certitude by starting from geometrical axioms without physical measurements. If we think of the certitude arrived at by one method and the same certitude reached by the other, we can get the notion of a central neutral certitude which is both apodictic and dialectically convincing.
       There is thus a positive, a negative and a neutral certitude involved in the two proofs plus the neutral conviction. That the conceptual certitude arrived at by the Euclidean method and the perceptual certitude arrived at by practical geometry lead to a central neutral and normative certitude, which is not wholly dependent either on the visible or the calculable only, is what we wish to underline here as an overall general rule applicable to both physics and metaphysics. There is no worthwhile certitude, whether practical, pure or intermediate (neutral), which does not combine these three elements, proportionately or disproportionately, in its essential resultant composition.

COMMON-SENSE AND CERTITUDE

LOGICAL AND MATHEMATICAL CERTITUDES

       Definitions and proofs which relate or equate two groups which are views of the same central truth, constitute the essence of certitude in mathematics and its sister discipline, logic or logistic as it is coming to be known.
       All mathematical proofs also become reduced in terms of the two limbs of an equation. The answers to all problems in mathematics are capable of being completely stated in the form of an equation, and when such an equation is followed by the letters QED (quod erat demonstrandum - which was to be proved) the demonstration is supposed to be complete. Thus certitude resides within the pure perceptual-cum- conceptual domain of mathematics and the greater part of speculation consists of an effort to arrive at such equations.
22
       The nature of mathematics as a science and its relation to metaphysical speculation have been the subject of much discussion in recent years. Although opinions still differ, it is just possible for us, even at present, to make some simple basic generalisations. M. Edouard le Roi, an eminent professor and member of the French Academy, who has recently devoted a whole volume on the subject of the philosophical status of pure mathematical thinking, sums up his position as follows:
“Finally and perhaps above all, mathematics taken in itself, independently of its applications, is, at the highest point to which we are permitted to attain, a work of pure thought, an invention of the spirit left to its own resources. If there exists a science which proceeds a priori by reason alone and which all the same shows itself to be solid, consistent, positive, and capable of indefinite extension - that it certainly is. One calls it science of reasoning for signifying that it presents itself as a creation of the rational faculty operated, if not ex nihilo, at least after the first impetus without ultimate recourse to any exercise at all of the perceptive faculties.” 2
        To avoid going into the merits of such a claim we must be content merely to state that the science of mathematics, by grouping and juxtaposing, whether for defining or proving in its search for speculative metaphysical or pure certitude, relies on equating groups of realities or facts of two distinct or different orders. Thus it is that mathematicians arrive at certitude from two poles of reality.
        Professor le Roi, whom we have just quoted, relies on his predecessor Poincaré for two further important generalisations, which are relevant to what we have said above. Each definition, according to Poincaré, is a classification: "It separates the objects that satisfy the definition and those that do not satisfy and it ranges them in two distinct classes.3
23
       Poincaré makes another generalised statement about mathematics which also depends on relating two different classes, when he writes: "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things:" 16
       The equation of classes of things on the operational to the purely conceptual levels in physics or metaphysics is the function of mathematics, and metaphysical speculation is fundamentally no other than this.
       While it is true that speculation without a strict method and which violates laws of the theory of knowledge would give us questionable speculations, nevertheless, when there is a normative regulative principle and when the aims of philosophy are properly defined, a speculation which makes room equally for scepticism as for belief will result. Eastern philosophy excels in the a priori aspects of speculation, while Western science gives primacy to the a posteriori approach. Both can be used correctly in the name of an integrated science or philosophy. After the Middle Ages, Western philosophy started its history anew with scepticism as its keynote. Rationalism and Criticism are only milder versions of the initial scepticism, and from Bruno to Hume (or Hegel) we have the "unbelievers'" standpoint influencing the course of Western thought. Scepticism has as much wisdom to give as belief, and the contributions made by the rationalists and the idealists are here equally significant.

FOOTNOTES
1. pp 384-385, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's Essays,
Essay  XXXIX, (Routledge, London)
2. p 3, La Pensée Mathématique Pure (P.U.F., Paris 1960) Translated.
3. p 97, Ibid.
4. p 85, Ibid.

3. THE LENGTHENING SHADOW OF SCEPTICISM

       For two hundred years, from the time of David Hume to Bertrand Russell among British philosophers, we are able to see one and the same sceptical attitude, like a lengthening shadow, influencing the history of modern thought in the West.
       At the start such scepticism had a legitimate cause, but whether it is justified forever is another question. The same influence prevailed also on the Continent, but in a less evident form, as the spirit of the experimental sciences became established. Only those problems which were capable of being demonstrated in the laboratory, at least on a small scale, in other words, that "worked," were considered to be certain or proved.
       The educational system has given an experimental or mechanistic bias to knowledge at the expense of the study of its humanistic aspects. The three features of the scientific method, namely experiment, observation and inference, were given prominence in valid thinking. The calculable aspects of thinking were only tacitly taken for granted. For anything to have the flavour of dogma was enough for it to be discredited.
       But by a strange nemesis the objection to dogmatism reached a degree of rigidity as great as the insistence on the side of belief of the days of Inquisition. It is enough to say that an idea belongs to or savours of the Middle Ages to have it condemned. Neither Hume nor Russell has been able to shake off altogether the nightmarish memory of the Inquisition from their attitudes.
       In Russell we see a confirmed sceptic and empiricist who admits into his methods only those elements of logistic and mathematical principles which are derived plainly, without any element of wonder or mystery.
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       In spite of this fact he lays down categorically that, "A philosopher who uses professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery"1.  But at the end of the same chapter in his book, in which this statement occurs, he contradicts himself without admitting it when he refers to "the philosophical school of which I am a member"2
       A member of a particular school cannot be fully open-minded. He cannot treat rival schools as the same as his own except in the larger integrated context of philosophy. There is sure to be a closing of frontiers against some rival point of view in philosophy and this is against the spirit of an open-minded scientific attitude. There can be the orthodoxy of a believer and also the orthodoxy of a sceptic. Both can be over-emphasised with equally disastrous results for the future of philosophy as a whole.
       Russell's writings show that he was against theology and dogmatism, and thought philosophy should not include a "higher" way of knowing. By this he would exclude most of the fundamental questions of philosophy, shutting out anything a priori or based on intuitive or axiomatic truth. He would have philosophy advance piecemeal, i.e., "by successive approximations to truth".
       In other words, if we are to be convinced that A=A, we must have a method by which the conviction will grow within us stage by stage, and not immediately or at once all together. A deep-seated prejudice against anything of the nature of the a priori seems to persist in making Russell a sceptic for scepticism's own sake, just in the same way as some dogmatic and orthodox people insist on their own belief as being the most important. They forget that axiomatic certitude at one pole and the apodictic character of simple experiments, which work with a certain amount of inductive certitude, at the other pole, are both complementary aspects of an epistemological and methodological frame of reference in which speculation, whether called physical or metaphysical, has necessarily to live and move.
26
       That such a prejudice against a priorism is entertained by serious thinkers is astonishing to impartial observers who are themselves not influenced by its historical and geographical causes. Russell states his position regarding what he considers to be scientific philosophy as follows:
 "A scientific philosophy such as I wish to recommend will be piecemeal and tentative like other sciences; above all it will be able to invent hypotheses, which even if they are not wholly true, will yet remain fruitful after the necessary corrections have been made. This possibility of successive approximations to the truth is more than anything else the source of the triumph of science, and to transfer this possibility to philosophy is to ensure a progress in method whose importance it would almost be impossible to exaggerate."3
       The axioms and postulates of mathematics are not hypothetical approximations to truth, and yet they are widely employed in the methods of arriving at certitude in the simplest of scientific investigations. To exclude the axiomatic and the a priori would be to limit the scope of philosophy very drastically indeed.

INADEQUACY OF THE ANALYTIC APPROACH

       Bertrand Russell is one of a large group of present-day philosophers who are sceptics in their general outlook. They believe in experimental proof. What savours of the a priori is wholly repugnant to them. They are for a piecemeal approach to truth through successive hypotheses which are only approximations to truth, but which they think will one day be established as empiricism and logic gain ground. They also distinguish and limit themselves by labelling their philosophical attitude "analytic". It is not clear what precise meaning this term has. It is probably because they oppose Kant's a priori synthetic approach that they call themselves analytic. Russell explains as follows:
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"The essence of philosophy as thus conceived (as in the quotation above) is analysis not synthesis. To build up systems of the world is not, I believe, any more reasonable than the discovery of the philosopher's stone. What is feasible is the understanding of general forms, and the division of traditional problems into a number of separate and less baffling questions. "Divide and conquer" is the maxim of success here as elsewhere. "4
       A careful study of the above paragraph reveals that, in spite of his love of dividing philosophy into bits, Russell does refer to something which he does not explain but only vaguely alludes to as "general form". This seems to provide a safety valve for him through which he can escape the charge of limiting the method, scope and content of philosophy altogether as generally understood in the world. By "general forms" he must be alluding to some structural overall peculiarity of truth, whether factual, logical, or both. This overall structural peculiarity referred to as "general forms", whatever this may be, cannot be anything within reach of the empirical and analytical approach. That this might be of a logical order is to be surmised from an article by Russell entitled "On the Importance of Logical Form" in which he says:
"The importance of logical form may be illustrated by what may be called the principle of the dictionary: given two sets of propositions such that by a suitable dictionary, any proposition of either set can be translated into a proposition of the other set, there is no effective difference between the two sets. Suppose - to take a hypothesis that I neither affirm or deny - that all scientific propositions can be tested in terms of physics, and can also be stated in Berkeleian principles in terms of psychology; then the question as to which of these forms of statement is more correct has no meaning, since both or neither must be correct. Such dictionaries which can, as a rule, only be constructed by the help of modern logic, suffice to dispose of a large number of metaphysical questions, and thus facilitate concentration upon genuine scientific problems." 5
28
       For the first time we find Bertrand Russell, the strict empiricist, using approvingly expressions like "the principle of the dictionary, " which must consist of propositions or predications with a one-one correspondence between them. They belong to two distinct domains, one of them physical and the other psychological or mental. One of these can be understood in terms of the other, whichever it may be that will finally be considered valid.
       Such a structural form, based on logic or thought, will yield some kind of certitude which will help us to distinguish the scientific from the unscientific aspects of what at present passes for metaphysics. The simple question that naturally arises in the mind of anyone after reading and taking seriously such vague statements is whether the whole of this problem treated together is of a physical or of a metaphysical order. The Berkeleian world at least, being mental, must be fully metaphysical in status. In the parenthetical clause above we can see the unwillingness of a confirmed sceptic and empiricist to commit himself to giving primacy to the mind or to matter. But in spite of this hesitation, it is not hard to see that the whole of the double-sided structure has its basis in something which is not merely of a physical order, and that the only context into which both can be fitted is that of a notion of the Absolute where the two aspects can exist without contradiction.
       How this view can be tenable in itself requires a more detailed epistemological discussion to prove. We shall not enter into such a discussion, because aspects of the same problem will become clear as we go on with the present line of inquiry, step by step. Further on we shall come to a fuller discussion of the implications of subjective-selective structuralism in the light of the modern philosophy of science. What we want to underline at present is that even strict empiricists and sceptics are being led inevitably by the developments of modern science to accept more than what is "analytical" and a posteriori. They are beginning to admit metaphysics again into their thought by the back door. A priorism and absolutism thus come to find a place, though still unofficially, in the writings of modern sceptical empiricists. Thus they begin to resemble the believers, against their own declared intentions.
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       The analytic approach for which Russell stands becomes evident in his writings. What he is really up against is the synthetic a priorism of Kant. But Kant takes care to explain in great detail the "Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic."6 
       He also has an overall epistemological scheme into which all his philosophy fits consistently. In spite of all this trouble taken by Kant, Russell finds no difficulty in calling him confused. When we look for justification for this in Russell, we find he relies on a favourite phrase only, (which we have italicised in the quotation below) which is enough to show how a priorism can be employed by philosophers quite casually and unconsciously. The relevant paragraph reads:
"Suppose we are confronted with the problem of space as presented in Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, and suppose we wish to discover what are the elements of the problem and what hope there is for obtaining a solution for them? It will soon appear that three entirely distinct problems, belonging to different studies, and requiring different methods for their solution, have been confusedly combined in the supposed single problem with which Kant is concerned. There is a problem of logic, a problem of physics and a problem of the theory of knowledge. Of these three, the problem of logic can be solved exactly and perfectly; the problem of physics can probably be solved with as great a degree of certainty and as great an approach to exactness as can be hoped in an empirical region; the problem of theory of knowledge, however, remains very obscure and very difficult to deal with...". 7
        It will be seen from these quotations from the writings of the dean of the sceptical and empirical school which persists to the present, that he wishes to curtail drastically the scope, content and methods of philosophy to suit his own partial pet notions of what it should be. His final position on philosophical method or a theory of knowledge remains exceedingly vague and questionable. How far mental factors are to enter his analytical domain of a demonstrable or visible world remains a mystery.
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        If unified science, which is the dream even of Russell and his followers of the Vienna Circle, is to be realised, the synthetic approach through the a priori of Kant and the analytic approach which discredits the a priori, must be integrated as two complementary standpoints in philosophy on the basis of an absolutist norm for all thought or speculation. The "principle of the dictionary" or rather of two dictionaries with a one-one correspondence between them, seems to us to suggest only in a distant way the lines of such an integration of physics and metaphysics. Russell and his followers cannot accept such principles and still remain empiricists.

PHILOSOPHY MUST RISE ABOVE SLOGANS AND ISMS

        A scientific philosophy must have a normalised reference with a strictly conceived methodology, a correct epistemology and with a scale of values which must be capable of referring to such a norm, implicitly or explicitly conceived. At the present time such a norm does not prevail. Instead, as in politics, the philosophical domain is torn into rival camps. We hear slogans such as "metaphysics is nonsense" 8, with which a London professor kicks off the ball, as it were, in his recent book, and in a volume called The Age of Analysis, The Twentieth Century Philosophers, the title of the opening article is "The Decline and Fall of the Absolute."  9
 
       To celebrate the fall of the notion of the Absolute has become a fashion because, even in the domain of science, relativism has come into prominence. There is also a repugnance towards absolutism of any kind in politics in the post-Hitlerian mentality of Europe. Whatever the reasons, political or scientific, they are continuations of the same long shadow of scepticism to which we have already referred.
       The Vienna School of philosophers dreams of a unified science as well as of a language through logistic. They stand for analysis as against synthesis, for the a posteriori against the a priori. They further support a variety of logic of their own which they claim to be positive, demonstrable or "operational".
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       This is based on observations and experiments with a scientific method which admits of hypothetical approximations to truth, rather than any wholesale approach to absolute truth given a priori.
       Such a limitation of the scope of philosophy and its methods too, they believe, would be conducive to philosophical progress. If a group of sportsmen preferred outdoor games, that would not mean that indoor games were not legitimate. In a unified body of knowledge of which such philosophers dream, it is unthinkable why they should limit the scope of philosophy itself in this manner. Analysis and synthesis, the a posteriori and the a priori, must all be given their legitimate places in philosophical speculation. All that anyone can insist on is to ask philosophers to conform to a stricter methodology, a more correct epistemology, and to have some normative principles to regulate the axiological (value) aspects of speculation. Even if we should think of the philosophical attitude of the West as a whole, it cannot be considered as anything more or less than a variety of world philosophy in which we have to see the co-existence of all possible "isms" that distinguish individual schools.
       If, instead of including all under an overall scheme of integration, some insist on excluding others, the dream of a unified science or philosophy will never be realised. To make statements about Oriental philosophy as being no philosophy at all, or that Kant is not a philosopher in the true sense of the term, as some are doing, can only be attributed to parochialisms and closed loyalties in the name of philosophy. Actually philosophy, whether of the East or the West, should be looked upon as one of the basic consolations of human beings anywhere in the world at any time. The scope, contents and methods of philosophy need to be properly defined and delimited.
32
       It is in this respect that it is important to determine a normative central notion for philosophy. Whether called truth, fact, reality, or the highest good, some regulative central notion must be understood before we begin the task of integrating branches of knowledge, irrespective of their belonging to the physical or the metaphysical order. In short, philosophy must rise above the stage of partial loyalties expressed by slogans and "isms", however justified in themselves they might happen to be in their respective limited spheres.

FOOTNOTES

1. The Age of Analysis, by Morton White (Mentor, NY)2. p 203, Ibid.
3. Mysticism and Logic, (Allen and Unwin, London 1959)
4. p 113, Ibid.
5. p 41, The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,
Vol 1, part 1. (Chicago University, USA, 1955)
6. pp 58-60, The Critique of Pure Reason, by I. Kant,
trans. Max Mueller.(Doubleday and Co., New York, 1959)
7. p 114, Mysticism and Logic
8. p 1, Language, Truth and Logic, by A.G. Ayer (Gollancz, London 1946)
9. p 13, The Age of Analyisis, by Morton White (Mentor, NY)
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4. THE ABSOLUTE AS THE NORMATIVE REFERENCE FOR PHILOSOPHY

       As a department of knowledge, philosophy must refer to something definite. All branches of science which have been systematised or formulated with any precision have implied in them a central unit or norm. The notion of the living cell is central in biology. Heat is thought of in terms of calories, and each kind of electrical energy has its unit by which that particular kind is fixed and normalised for purposes of discussion, definition or measurement.
       In philosophy we find that each school or each individual system is distinguishable by a central notion around which it is built. Existentialism is built around the notion of existence and not of essence. In the philosophy of Spinoza the notion of substance occupies a central and normative position. In theology God occupies a similar position. Whether in science or philosophy we are required to have some central notion for reference, both for normalisation or re-normalisation of speculations or inferences. They must go too far neither in a plus or a minus direction from the norm.
       When we think of philosophy as a whole there is the notion of the Absolute. This can be defined and normalised for the purpose of serving as a regulative principle around which all speculation can turn as its pivot or locus. Such a notion has to be necessarily of the nature of an extreme abstraction and generalisation. A certain amount of arbitrariness must attach to it in the same way as the arbitrarily chosen name 'rose' refers to the real on the one side, and on the other to the idea of a rose.
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       Similarly the notion of the Absolute must have the capacity of referring to the actual or visible physical world on the one hand and on the other to the conceptual aspect of the same world as found in the terms of a dictionary. When we approach the notion of the Absolute from the side of the notion of the relative on which it must depend for meaning, we have to make some allowances for structural, subjective and selective details which correspond to the categories of philosophy.
       From the side of the Absolute, which is self-sufficient and does not depend on any relativistic notion at all, we require a pure notion of the same Absolute treated in itself.
       When one of these aspects is equated to the other a neutral notion results. This neutral Absolute, at least for the purposes of language and semantics, must be considered as the normative reference for all speculation: philosophical, scientific, or both.
       Broadly, it is in these terms that we must think of an integrated philosophy or of a unified science. The further implications of such a normative notion, with its structural peculiarities based on the categories of thinking, will be developed stage by stage in the present study, and particularly in the next part, where it will be re-examined from the standpoint of Vedanta philosophy.

THE CONTENT OF THE TERM  "ABSOLUTE"

       When Kant says that we cannot know the "thing-in-itself", he refers to the purest ultimate which does not depend for its meaning on any other notion that we already know. If its meaning should depend, even to a faint degree, on another notion; as for example in the way that the notion of light depends on darkness, it cannot strictly be called the Absolute. A notion of the Absolute which is empty of all content would signify nothing to the human mind. In spite of this difficulty the human mind is able to give some meaning to the term "Absolute", and tries to fill it with a content which depends on the various contexts in which thought concerning the Absolute becomes necessary.
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          In conversation we often hear the expression "absolutely" when a person wants to affirm or deny something with the fullest possible emphasis. Other uses of the word, as in "absolute zero temperature" and so on, point to an ultimate quality limit of some kind. When we use the word as a noun with a definite article and speak of "The Absolute" we find that it becomes a fully philosophical notion and is actually used in this sense by various great thinkers, in the East as well as in the West, ancient and modern. The wide range of the use of this term is itself sufficient reason for us to adopt it, even with its varied connotations, as the one word which can conveniently refer to a central normative notion for all philosophy.

       We have only to glance at the paragraphs under which the notion has already been examined, for example, in any modern philosophical reference book, to be convinced of the suitability of the use of the term "The Absolute" as the central norm of all philosophy. Except in the case of those leaders of schools already referred to, who have set their minds against anything savouring of the notion of the a priori for their partially conceived reasons, we find that there is a general acceptance of the term among representative philosophers the world over. We read the following extracts from Wilbur Long's article on 'The Absolute': 1
"ABSOLUTE, THE: (In Metaphysics) Most broadly, the terminus or ultimate referent of thought. The Unconditioned. The opposite of the Relative (Absolute)."
       There is a singular and a generic use of the term. Under the singular usage he states:
"While Nicholas of Cusa referred to God as "the Absolute" the noun form of this term came into common use through the writings of Schelling and Hegel. Its adoption spread in France through Cousin and in Britain through Hamilton. According to Kant, the Ideas of Reason seek both the absolute totality of conditions and their absolutely unconditioned ground. For Hegel the Absolute is the all, conceived as a timeless, perfect, organic, whole of self-thinking thought. In England the Absolute has occasionally been identified with the Real.
36
       The specific emphasis given to this all-inclusive perfection varies considerably, i.e., logical wholeness or concreteness (Hegel), metaphysical completeness (Hamilton), mystical feeling (Bradley), aesthetic completeness (Bosanquet), moral perfection (Royce)…"
       As the years pass, we note that the connotation of the term gathers to itself more and more aspects of philosophical verities, realities or values. It should be noted here that Kant uses the notion of the Absolute for a double reference both from the relative as well as from the fully absolutist side. We shall have more to say on this later. Here we shall note the growing use of the term in various senses and in various countries as an indication to show that, when the notion has been properly determined with its double aspect, both structurally and non-structurally, we have already available the possibility of finding a central normative reference for all philosophy.
       The inclusive nature of the notion is sufficiently clear from the following further remarks by the same writer:
"More recently the term has been extended to mean also (a) the All or totality of the Real, however understood, and (b) the World Ground, whether conceived idealistically or materialistically, whether pantheistically, theistically or dualistically. It thus stands for a variety of metaphysical conceptions that have appeared widely and under various names in the history of philosophy."
       As regards the notion as it prevails in different regions of the globe, we read further:
"In China the Wu-Chi (non-Being), Tai Chi (Being) and on occasion, Tao. In India, the Vedantic Atman (Self) and Brahman (the Real), the Buddhist Bhutatathata (indeterminate Thatness), Viñaptimatra (the One, pure, changeless eternal consciousness, grounding all appearances) and the Void of Nagarjuna; in Greece the cosmic matrix of the Ionians, the One of the Eleatics, the Being or Good of Plato, the World Reason of Stoicism, and the One of Neo-Platonism. In patristic and scholastic Christianity, the creator God; the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).
  37
        In modern thought: the Substance of Descartes and Spinoza, the God of Malebranche and Berkeley, the Energy of materialism, the Space-Time of realism, the Pure Experience of phenomenalism and the ding-an-sich of Kant."
       We have quoted at length here because this article brings together all aspects of the content of the term "The Absolute" from as wide a range as could be expected, both regionally and ideologically, omitting neither modern nor ancient philosophical and cultural growths. Even mysticism and religion are covered, and the void (sunya) of the Madhyamika School of Buddhism is also included under the category of the Absolute.
       It is true that as presented in a dictionary this review of the content of the term "The Absolute" requires to be further revised, corrected and co-ordinated to yield a fully normalised notion for our purposes. Some of the additions or subtractions will be found in the further remarks we shall have to make. In the meantime a rough idea of what to expect for inclusion within the wide range of connotations of the term can be gathered from the above extracts. We must add here, though in passing only, that the Absolute can be approached from the side of the Relative-Absolute or from the side of the Absolute-Absolute. This is due to innate epistemological limitations of the human understanding. We must look for the clarification of such a double-sided approach in the next and following sections.

THE IMPLIED PARADOX IN THE ABSOLUTE

        Modern scientists after Einstein are never tired of saying that Newton and Euclid were absolutists in their outlook, while they themselves, on the contrary, are relativists. This relativism is not just relativism in the ordinary context, but Relativism with a capital letter, having a rival status with the Absolutism which it opposes. Both of these rival terms have to be written with a capital letter. In other words, one of these depends for its meaning on the other, so that there is a paradox implied as between the two notions.
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       This brings us face to face with one of the most knotty epistemological problems in the domain of pure speculative philosophy. Transcending paradox is the same as the problem of rejecting the principle of the excluded middle and of contradiction. Like the thesis and antithesis of Hegel resulting in a synthesis, we have to imagine that "the Relative" which depends on its own Absolute counterpart, and "the Absolute" which depends on its own counterpart, "the Relative", cancel each other out into the neutrality of a central Absolute that knows no second.
       In Sankara's Vedanta, as we shall see, the same problem of having to resolve the two Brahmans, the higher and the lower, the qualified and the unqualified, into the unity of the final Absolute, presents itself again and again in his commentaries, although the arguments remain at least baffling and unconvincing. A delicate form of dialectical methodology is implied here which we shall not discuss at present. In the domain of modern relativistic theories this same difficulty appears in a very acute form, as evidenced in the following quotation:
"The paradox of the situation is this. On the one hand Newton professes a doctrine of absolute space and time but in his doctrine of dynamics there is implicit a principle of relativity. On the other hand the nineteenth century physicists of whom we may take Maxwell as a shining example professed a sort of relativity, but Maxwell's electromagnetic theory employs an absolute space and time. Here we have a paradox on paradox, and the purpose of the special theory of relativity is their resolution." 2
       How the special theory of relativity of Einstein resolves this paradox is not easy to follow without full training in the mathematical and other technicalities of modern physics. All that we are able to say is that the notion of the Absolute, which must be implicit in the solution of the paradox, is viewed unilaterally: not from the philosophical side, but strictly from the operational or behaviouristic aspect only. Professor Temple explains further this operational principle:
39
"The second thing which I think is worthy of consideration (concluding the special theory of relativity) is the operational principle that we, as physicists, are not concerned with philosophical discussions of the nature of space and time, but the behaviour of measuring rods and clocks." 3
       Thus it is to an Absolute of a relativistic order that Einstein as a physicist limits himself. For further light on the question, we have to turn to Eddington, who does not hesitate to call himself a philosopher and a scientist at the same time. In his book Space, Time and Gravitation he has the following remarks to make on the relation between the Absolute and the Relative:
"All physical knowledge is relative to space and time partitions; and to gain an understanding of the Absolute it is necessary to approach it through the relative. The Absolute may be defined as a relative which is always the same no matter what it is relative to. Although we think of it as self-existing, we cannot give it a place in our knowledge without setting up some dummy to relate it to. And similarly the absolute differences of space always appear to be related to some mesh-system, although the mesh-system is only a dummy and has nothing to do with the problem."4
       Here we find a new development: instead of confining himself to the physical absolute of space and time, Eddington admits a Pure Absolute which is the subject matter of philosophical speculation. He uses one as a corrective to the other. A neutral Absolute would be the resultant of the two factors, the dummy and the original cancelling each other out into a central notion of the Absolute. In order to justify this last statement fully, we must approach the same paradoxical problem of the relation between the Relative and the Absolute in greater detail.
       Suffice it here to sum up and say that there are three positions which it is possible to take: first, there is the Relative-Absolute which is that of the dummy of Eddington in the quotation above; second, there is the pure Absolute given to philosophy; and third, there is the neutral Absolute which knows no second.
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THE RELATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE ABSOLUTE

       The Absolute would be an empty word if we did not fill it with some content derived from the relative aspect of Reality, from which our experiences and thoughts have their starting point. The content of Reality as understood in the context of the Absolute has to contain both abstraction and concrete objects. They can be referred to broadly as predicables. All predicable entities will have something that stands for them in the dictionary. This is the domain of the nominal or that of the word. The word must have as its counterpart what corresponds to its meaning.
       Generally, if we say "chair" or "rose," we have the word on one side and the object on the other. Words like "'knowledge" and "love" will also have these two sides, so that we can generalise and say that Reality is filled with names and forms. These predicables are causes or effects, substances or attributes, generic or specific entities - or, in most generalised terms, they represent some relation or relata.
       The human mind is capable of thinking of all these predicables as particulars or universals; or in different groups, classes or sets; serially in contiguity or in continuity. Analytic and synthetic thought can move among these predicables in a priori or a posteriori fashion, linking them into ramified clusters of various kinds of togetherness or separateness. There can be a one-one correspondence between them and some might by association or habit suggest others as antonyms or synonyms.
       Without elaborating this, we can stop here with an initial generalisation about such a system of predicables as being a complex of relations and relata. When the time factor is introduced into this, the idea of order of succession is added to the static picture of relations and relata, and thus a process or a flux characterises the resulting phenomenological picture. Thought circulates between the poles of analysis and synthesis within the limits of the a priori and the a posteriori.
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        There is a rhythmic alternation according to life interests, and consequent attention to some items of greater interest at one given time than to other items at other times, as life unravels in individuals.
        The actual world becomes supplemented by dream or imaginary worlds, and possible worlds, depending on mere hearsay, get added to the total situation. If we give primacy to the subject or the observing self, we witness a passing show: but if we fix our attention on each predicable individually, our field of consciousness may be pictured as being filled merely with relation-relata complexes.
        When we open our eyes we see the relata, and when we think with closed eyes we have the relations given to the mind. All relations and relata refer to existents. These can be subjected to reasoning of a logical order, and since they must have some human significance or value, they must come under the category of the Good. Existence, subsistence or value-factors enter into the predicables. Sometimes conceptual aspects may dominate and at other times perceptual ones.
       When all these are made to fit into one scheme it tends to become too complicated, and therefore our aims should be to eliminate the extraneous. When this is done systematically we arrive at the fundamental remaining categories constituting a residue which cannot be further eliminated without the pure Absolute, as the substratum of the structure, showing itself transparently through the relativist mesh or dummy. When the bare categories of thought, such as time, space, or causation, are retained, the structure becomes more convenient as a reference, in our discussion of the Absolute and its content, than if we were to elaborate and fit all sorts of details, however legitimate, into the picture. We are therefore obliged to apply the principle of Occam's Razor and cut down to the minimum the items we want to include. Thus the pure Absolute and the Absolute with the structural aspects included in it may help each other in throwing light on the normative Absolute which we have to delimit and fix as clearly as possible.
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       We find to our advantage here that Eddington has himself tried to present a simplified picture of the relation-structure of the totality of reality which is not other than the Absolute. This happens to be sufficiently suitable for our purposes although, as Eddington himself admits, some of the assumptions are arbitrary and adopted only in the name of simplicity. He says:
"Relation structure: We take as building material relations and relata. The relations unite the relata; the relata are  the meeting points of the relations. The one is unthinkable apart from the other. I do not think that a more general starting point of structure could be conceived. To distinguish the relata from one another we assign them monomarks. The monomarks consist of four numbers ultimately to be called co-ordinates. But co-ordinates suggest space and geometry, and as yet there is no such thing in our scheme; hence for the present we shall regard the four identification numbers as no more than an arbitrary monomark. Why four numbers? We use four because it turns out that ultimately the structure can be brought to better order that way; but we do not know why this should be so. We have got so far as to understand that if the relations insisted on a threefold or a fivefold ordering it would be much more difficult to build anything interesting out of them, but that this is perhaps an insufficient excuse for the special assumption of the fourfold order in the primitive material." 5
       Coming from such a well-known scientist and philosopher, the above relation structure, built on what he calls "the primitive material" (which cannot be anything other than the Absolute), affords for our purposes in this study a sufficiently firm spring-board to arrive at the normalised notion that we are seeking to establish. From other aspects derived from other philosophers like Kant and Spinoza, we shall have more to add later regarding this structural aspect of the content of the Absolute, so as to make it philosophically as well as scientifically self-consistent and complete.
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       But before we pass from the structure as presented by Eddington, we must add the remark that any relations and relata are not to be looked upon as static and fixed for all time, or to be the same with all persons anywhere, irrespective of their interests or temperaments. Depending on our axiological goal, certain interests prevail which accentuate certain relations or relata aspects as more important than others. In spite of this and also because of this personal element of the thinker or observer, whatever is of interest to the individual self gains primacy over merely objective or mathematical aspects. There is a vertical relation which links the self and the non-self aspects of a relation-relata complex organically and dialectically, giving primacy alternately and in living terms, to one or other interest at a given time.
        Reserving such further considerations for future discussion and elaboration, Eddington's structure may be considered acceptable as a basis for our discussion, as far as it goes for our present purposes. We have to add that Eddington's hesitation to speak in terms of the co-ordinates of analytical geometry for the reason that this would suggest space, need not be respected in the light of modern developments in the relationship between geometry and algebra and of the contributions of topology and vectorial and projective geometry (inclusive of the Euclidean as a particular instance among them). Herein Hilbert's contributions are noteworthy.
       Space can be treated as gross as well as intuited as space spatialized and as space spatializing. These are further considerations in whose light we shall have to revise and supplement the relation-structure presented by Eddington. The physical, mathematical, logical, personal, ethical, and phenomenological versions of the Absolute are bound to differ in structural details of a specific kind suitable for each context, but the overall features of the structure will remain the same in all cases. Eddington himself admits that the scheme offered by the physicists is still of a relativistic order, and that an absolute scheme which would satisfy the requirements of both physicists and metaphysicians has still to be worked out:
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"The relativity of the current scheme of physics invites us to search deeper and find the absolute scheme underlying it, so that we may see the world in a truer perspective." 6
       In a later work Eddington refers to his "selective subjectivism and structuralism" which is more philosophical, as the title of the book indicates. Here he improves on the relation structure, and boldly sums up as follows: "In our view the physical universe is neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective - nor a simple mixture of subjective and objective entities or attributes".7

A NORMALIZED EPISTEMOLOGY NEEDS STRUCTURE TO BE RECOGNISED

       There are three aspects of speculation or investigation which must be kept in mind if philosophy is to become more scientific, or if science is to admit a more correct philosophy as its inevitable counterpart. Our last quotation from Eddington points to the fact that even the physical world is not wholly objective but is also subjective. How much more then should metaphysics be more subjective than physics, although in its turn, metaphysics cannot be without an objective reference? The total knowledge-situation, understood unitively or in an all-inclusive, self-sufficient or absolutist context, has thus to be considered as being both subjective and objective at once.
       We should not just think of a promiscuous mixture of subjectivity or objectivity. These have a subtle reciprocity of one-one correspondence. The categories of the one enter into relation with schematic aspects of the other in the pure domain of what is called human understanding. Certain innate or fundamental laws, rules, or necessities prevail in the domain of causes and effects, relations and relata, calculables and observables, facts and logical validities, which refer to the epistemological, methodological, or axiological considerations: thus making of philosophy a complicated field in which problems have to be solved by thought or research to secure the best human interests in matters big or small. Each tree has its seed, from which alone there is the possibility of its growing, and not from any other.
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       Thus a subtle law of necessity or possibility links certain causes with their effects, and there is also a world of chance or probability where certain results predominate and not others. We are therefore obliged to think of a fundamental structure of the total knowledge-situation, which in reality is none other than the normative notion of the Absolute implied in what is vaguely referred to by sceptic philosophers as human understanding. The empirical, logical, dialectical and purely mathematical or axiomatic ways of thinking refer to different aspects of what this vague term "human understanding" implies. There are levels of abstraction or generalisation possible within the overall domain of understanding.
       How a perceptual, an actual, a conceptual, and a nominal entity such as the word "chair" can all co-exist in one common human understanding, without contradiction and with or without an excluded middle ground, is a problem requiring separate and careful elaboration. Equally so is how what is "fact true" need not be logically so, and how a philosophy which has utility as a goal…  and how the self and the non-self enter into the structure of the normative notion of philosophy that we are seeking. Ontology, teleology, realism and all other "isms", too numerous to mention, have all to be accommodated within such an integrated normative notion. At the end of our studies in these essays we hope to be in a better position to undertake this task.
       The epistemological structure or the limitations of knowledge require recognition of rules, laws or necessities belonging intrinsically to categories and schematic structural peculiarities to which all thinking or speculation has to be subjected.
       Methodology too has to follow the lines or axes of reference, frames or forms implicit in such a scheme. Where axiology prevails in philosophical speculations, higher intuitive and value factors must be dialectically treated. Thus, whether philosophical or scientific; subjectivism and structuralism count in speculation.
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       In the integration of thought this kind of schematism or structuralism plays an important part. It is in recognition of such a necessity that we shall follow in these pages the implications of this aspect, which has been hitherto neglected or given inadequate attention in the domain of philosophical speculation.

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL ASPECTS OF THE ABSOLUTE

       Now, after grasping the significance of the relation-structure as presented by a scientist - Eddington - and the schematisation as presented by a philosopher - Kant - if we keep in mind that modern geometrical postulates have corresponding to them valid algebraic axioms or theorems which are making for an exact discipline now known as the algebra of geometry, we shall be sufficiently justified here in taking one step beyond what both the above eminent authorities have suggested. This is to say that the total knowledge situation, which is the subject matter and the object matter at the same time, has always two complementary sides which are related to each other in the form of a one-one structural and complementary relationship.
        Whether we call these two reality and appearance; noumenon and phenomenon; quality and quantity; time and space; the conceptual and the perceptual; the self and the non-self; cause and effect; etc., these two aspects are always present. They constitute the central problem that philosophy in general is called upon to solve.
       With a little practice in scrutinising these and other such pairs, which different philosophers employ in stating their positions clearly, we shall soon be enabled to see that where the principle of contradiction and excluded middle are admitted, and all is included, we have another aspect of such a dual pair.
       Two things or bodies cannot occupy the same space, or in other words, matter in space has the property of impenetrability. Conceptually, however, one circle can be contained in another. This latter we can appreciate with the eyes shut, while the former needs the eye to be kept open.
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       The visible and the intelligible worlds, referring to the body and the mind, belong therefore to these distinct twin orders which co-exist in the common substance of the Absolute. Space and time, one objective and the other subjective, co-exist in the pure being of the substance of the Absolute.
       This participation and separation implies a structure which can be represented by two intersecting lines like Cartesian co-ordinates, with four limbs. The point of intersection is where the two aspects have common ground in the Absolute. If we think of relations and relata we have to put relations of contiguity in the horizontal and those of continuity in the vertical. At each point of intersection we have to relate schematically and structurally a plurality of relata with its component limbs at each point. Each of these complexes can pass for a monad.
       This representation offers us the barest skeleton of the schematic structure with whose help the normative notion of the Absolute required for the integration of knowledge can tentatively be arrived at, even at the present stage of our inquiry. Further justification and elaboration will be found in the light of other authoritative writings such as those of Spinoza, which resemble this scheme, as we have once mentioned.
       Further, such a scheme offers us a nuclear notion combining characteristics of thought processes, which should enable us to build round it a language common to all sciences and from local or traditional limitations of linguistic frontiers.8 This itself would be a great advantage, merely by the de-Babelisation which would result.

FOOTNOTES
1. Following quotations are from Rune's Dictionary of Philosophy,
(Jaico, Bombay, 1956)
2. p 70, Turning Points in Physics - From the Relative to the Absolute,
Lecture by G,Temple. (Harper, NY, 1961)
3.  p 82, Ibid.
4. p 82, Space, Time and Gravitation, by A.S.Eddington. (Harper, NY, 1959)
5. pp 225, 226, The Nature of the Physical World, by A.S. Eddington.
(Dent, London,1947)
6. p 43, Ibid.
7. p 27, The Philosophy of Physical Science (Michigan University Press, 1958)
8. The author has devoted a separate monograph to this subject.

5. A NORMATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR ALL PHILOSOPHY

       Speculative philosophy and experimental science each have their methods proper to the problems that they have to solve, and belonging to whichever aspect of total or absolute reality is their proper domain.

       In each case the method must depend on the kind of knowledge and its structure in each branch of knowledge. Methodology thus depends on epistemology and vice versa. Hegel's methodology is specially suited to the extremely idealistic position that he takes; but, in the domain of the physical sciences, Hegelianism or even Socratic methods would have no applicability because these sciences give primacy to empirical aspects of reality and not to any subtle essence of reality. Bacon pointed out that scientific method depends on experiment, observation and inference. Inference in science is inductive in character. The truths of science are the laws that are tentatively and hypothetically arrived at within the limits of the empirical world of so-called positive realities. When we go beyond the limits of the empirical we leave laws of nature and turn inwards into the world of cogitation, reasoning, logical or mathematical calculations and the like, so as to arrive at solutions, convictions or certitudes in respect of problems of truth.
       Fact-truth is not the same as logic-truth. Here again we could confine ourselves to a form of syllogistic reasoning, which would admit of the principle of contradiction and of the excluded middle. Or we could use still higher reasoning called the dialectical. This consists of equating counterparts which give us certitude by revealing that one set of facts, truths or realities are the same as another, thus disclosing some fundamental relational aspect having significance in human life.
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       Between a posteriori inferences from experimental data, we pass thus into the domain of such propositions as the famous Cartesian dictum, cogito ergo sum, and build rational or theoretical speculations upwards till we touch a region in pure higher reasoning which employs dialectics, called by Plato the highest instrument of reasoning, independent of all visible or sensible facts.
       This kind of reasoning, the dialectical, which takes us to the threshold of higher idealistic values in life, is the third and the last step in philosophical methodology taken as a whole. The laws of nature refer to the world of existence. Rules of thought, whether axiomatic or based on postulates, refer to the world of subsistence. The third step of reasoning lives and has its being in the pure domain of human values, those referring to the True, the Good or the Beautiful, which are values in life and thus belong to the domain of axiology.
        The visible, the intelligible, and the value worlds, which we can mark out on a vertical line, represent levels of higher and higher reasoning culminating in the dialectical. It is like soaring or resorting to ascending dialectics, as spoken of in certain circles. This level has, just inferior to it, the world of formal or syllogistic reasoning admitting of the limits of contradictions at its lower limit, and of tautology at its higher limit, where logistic and propositional calculi are employed.
       At the lowest level in this vertical axis where empirical or at least ontological factors prevail, referring to existent aspects of the physical world, actually, perceptually, or even conceptually understood, we have a region where certitudes naturally take the form of laws such as that of gravitation or the conservation of matter or energy. When the observer and the observed, the operator and the operated, are treated together, we have the method of modern relativism. Otherwise stated, these are methods which are more absolutist in outlook. In fact these terms seem to be used interchangeably at present, being used against each other as between Newtonians and Euclideans on the one side and Einsteinians on the other. Relativism must presuppose absolutism, as everyone can guess independently.
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       Electromagnetic and thermodynamic laws belong to the Einsteinian physical world, whether treated epistemologically as real or ideal. Thus existential, subsistential and value aspects of the Absolute have three different methodological approaches proper to and compatible with each.
       A normal methodology applicable to integrated knowledge, whether philosophical or scientific, has to accommodate within its scope these three kinds of approaches to certitude, each in its proper domain. The experimental method suits existent aspects of the Absolute; the logical suits the subsistential; and the dialectical suits the value aspects of the Absolute. Interest in the physical world gives place in the second stage of ascent to logical psychology or phenomenology, where ratiocination plays its part. Finally we ascend higher into the third aspect of the Absolute where value relations hold good and the instrument or methodology used is that of dialectics.
        As in mathematical equations where the terms are interchangeable, the dialectical counterparts in the context of the Absolute refer to the Self or the non-Self aspects and cancel each other out in favour of the Absolute Self, where we reach the term of all speculation or reflexive contemplation. The so-called Socratic or the synthetic; the ascetic or the mystical; the psychological; the critical or the transcendent; the dialectical or the intuitive; the reflexive or the eclectic; and the axiomatic, inductive, or deductive methods  could all be given their legitimate places in a total overall schematic view of the normative notion that we should keep mind here.
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AN OVERALL EPISTEMOLOGY

       Epistemology is a Greek word often translated into English as "theory of knowledge". It is a fairly recent branch of philosophy. Epistemology may be said to be a more global and conceptualised view of reality. Instead of saying "I know" we seem to take a step backwards here and say, "I know that I know". The subject matter and the object-matter of knowledge are both comprised within it.

        Now if we put the questions of "how", "why" and "what" to the person who claims to "know that I know" we arrive at a rough understanding of the scope and limits of this new way of philosophy. When we consider the status of this department of philosophy we see that it belongs to the order of self-introspection. Thus it belongs to the contemplative context. As epistemology examines the Self in terms of the non-Self, and vice versa, covering not only the origin, methods, and validity of knowledge, but also the structure of knowledge which can exist only on something which is behind, as a basis of the structure, we come nearer than ever in epistemology to the norm of the Absolute, neutrally conceived, with its plus and minus sides treated together. The structure needs teaching on some tabula rasa, which can only be human understanding in its most ultimate, abstract, or general sense.
       The normative Absolute must be accepted here again as a regulative notion. The rival claims of other branches or other divisions of epistemology should not distort or minimise the importance of this overall view of the knowledge-situation. Both the Self and the non-Self have to be within the scope of the epistemological view. Whether we call these aspects of the Self and the non-Self subjective or objective; observer or observed; operator or operand; psychological or cosmological - a balance has to be struck between them to avoid the egocentric or extreme forms of solipsism. The a priori and the a posteriori aspects also have to be correctly equalised in a normalised epistemological outlook proper to philosophy as a whole. When epistemology becomes thus properly normalised and renormalised from both the poles of the total knowledge-situation it can easily become the foundation of a Science of all sciences, including both the physical and the metaphysical.
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THE REVISED PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

       Among philosophers of science it is Eddington again who has recognised the need for normalisation through epistemological revision of the status given to scientific knowledge. He paves the way for an integrated or unitive science which is neither subjective nor objective, nor a mere promiscuous mixture of the two, but a science having a correct neutral epistemological status of its own, normalised and re-normalised as between the a priori and the a posteriori. The following extract from Eddington's writings will show how even physicists resort to epistemological revisions in respect of the reality which is their subject:
"Selective subjectivism, which is the modern scientific philosophy, has little affinity with Berkeleian subjectivism, which if I understand rightly, denies all objectivity to the