A Philosopher's Ruminations

  History has been unjust to Hegel but in recent times his philosophy is garnering some attention. In my opinion he is perhaps the greatest western philosopher since Plato and Aristotle. He should be counted as a Platonist who has developed the Aristotelian version of Platonism combined with Spinoza’s theory of material causality of God and the demands of critical philosophy. Below is a brief summary of his important works: 1.      Faith and Knowledge: This is work is critical of Kant, Fichte and Jacobi all of whom believed that it is important to make room for faith by limiting the pretensions of reason. Jacobi argues that reason cannot prove its own validity and so we need a salto mortale to justify reason - a faith based or poetical justification of reason. The need for such a justification arises because reason is mediated and incapable of providing immediate knowledge. What is mediate is finite and through the finite or conditioned we cannot grasp the unc...

  Philosophy at its inception was considered to be a science — a paramount science, with a distinctive method and a criterion of validation of its own. Philosophy can be regarded as a science if it has its own subject matter and method. What then is the subject matter of philosophy? Aristotle in his Metaphysics says it is being qua being. Other sciences study a particular segment of reality but philosophy seeks to study reality as a whole. But it may be objected that there is no such thing as reality as a whole, there only particular segments of reality so to say and the total number of sciences covering these potentially infinite segments will inform us about what reality is in its totality. To this Aristotle could reply the science studying one part of being would not be able to say anything about another part of being, how can physics for instance which according to him studies physical objects so far as they are movable inform us about mathematical objects that are not changeab...

Madhusudana Sarawati’s Advaita Siddhi is a polemical work - a reply to Vyasatirtha’s Nyaya-amrita who belonged to Dvaita School of Vedanta. Both works show a high level of dialectical skill and take advantage of advancement in study of logic due to Navya-Nyaya School. Madhusudana Saraswati also wrote Advaita-ratna-rakshanam a polemical work in reply to both Dvaitins and Nyaya philosopher specially Shankara Mishra’s Bhedaratna. The Advaita - Dvaita debate does not end with Advaita Siddhi. Ramacharya wrote Nyaya-amrita-tarangini criticizing Advaita Siddhi. Nyaya-amrita-kantakoddhara of Anandbhattaraka was another counter-attack on Advaita Siddhi. Madhusudnana’s disciple Balabhadra wrote a commentary on Advaita Siddhi called simply Vyakhya. Like Vijayandra-tirtha’s commentary Amoda on Nyaya-amrita it is not a reply to any other polemical work. Brahmananda’s Guruchandrika was a reply to Tarangini and Kantakoddhara. Gauda Brahmananda was a very famous logician and in Advaita tradition it is...