A Philosopher's Ruminations

  I think what motivates anarchism as an ideology is a wrong concept of freedom which is seen as freedom from authority or complete self-determination but this concept is impossible. Perhaps the preachers of anarchism feel that the root of all evil is submission to authority and hence if we are free from authority we are then free from evil. But an anarchic state would be the same as Hobbesian state of nature where everyone would have a right over everything. So in such a state my freedom would exclude yours, so we would have an either-or situation. Or to put it in other words my freedom would cancel yours, so if I am free you cannot be. Clearly in such a situation there can be no rights and no freedom; you don’t get either without certain limits and a right to everything dilutes those rights and freedom that is exclusive ceases to be freedom at all. Hence the correct idea of freedom demands not exclusion but inclusion for it is inextricable bound by the idea of good. This is easy ...

  For Advaita Vedanta but not for Madhyamika, everything except Brahman is unreal. Why is it unreal? Because they lack a self or an essence. What lacks an essence has no genuine identity, because what is dependent on another cannot also be identical with itself. A chariot, for instance, is nothing over and above its parts arranged in a certain way. It has no essence, no existence that is not dependent on the parts. It has no existence outside of human conventions that treat these myriad parts as a single entity. These conventions have no foundation in reality, and everything is a conglomeration of parts to which we ascribe an essence. For Advaita Vedanta, everything different from the self or anything that is or can be an object of the self is unreal. The Self is something that necessarily exists and is unnegatable, while the existence of the world is transitory and is negated in Brahman-realization, like dreams are sublated upon waking up. Why does the world appear to us if it is ...