Phenomenology and Indian philosophy PDF
Preview Phenomenology and Indian philosophy
Page i Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy Page ii Disclaimer: This book contains characters with diacritics. When the characters can be represented using the ISO 88591 character set (http://www.w3.org/TR/images/latin1.gif), netLibrary will represent them as they appear in the original text, and most computers will be able to show the full characters correctly. In order to keep the text searchable and readable on most computers, characters with diacritics that are not part of the ISO 88591 list will be represented without their diacritical marks. Published under the auspices of Indian Council of Philosophical Research New Delhi and Center of Advanced Research in Phenomenology Boca Raton Page iii Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy Edited by D.P. Chattopadhyaya Lester Embree Jitendranath Mohanty State University of New York Press Page iv © Copyright 1992 Indian Council of Philosophical Research All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published in U.S.A. by State University of New York Press Albany For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Printed in India Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Phenomenology and Indian philosophy/edited by D.P, Chattopadhyaya, Lester Embree, Jitendranath Mohanty. p. cm. Published under the auspices of: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi; and, Center of Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Boca Raton. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0791406628 1. Phenomenology. 2. Philosophy, Indic. I. Chattopadhyaya, D. P. (Debi Prasad), 1933 II. Embree, Lester E. III. Mohanty, Jitendranath, 1928. B829.5.P452 1991 9042910 142'.7' 0954dc20 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Page v For The Pioneers of Phenomenology in India and Their EuroAmerican Colleagues Page vii Contents My First Trip to India: A Personal Introduction 1 Lester Embree Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy: The Concept of Rationality 8 J.N. Mobanty Husserl and Indian Thought 20 Karl Schuhmann Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy 44 Sibajiban Bhattacharyya Advaita Vedanta * on the Problem of Enworlded Subjectivity 77 R. Balasubramanian An Indian Interaction with Phenomenology: Perspectives on the Philosophy of 94 K.C. Bhattacharyya Kalyan Kumar Bagchi Phenomenology and Philosophy of History 103 David Carr Freedom, Interpretation and Meaning in Human Sciences 113 D.P. Chattopadhyaya Husserlian Foundations of Sartre's Treatment of Time Consciousness 126 V.C. Thomas Analysis of IConsciousness in the Transcendental Phenomenology and Indian 133 Philosophy Anindita Niyogi Balslev Phenomenology and the Transcendent: Which Way Does One Transcend? 141 Paulos Mar Gregorios The Paradox of Subjectivity and the Idea of Ultimate Grounding in Husserl and 153 Heidegger Thomas M. Seebohm Experiment as Fulfilment of Theory 169 Patrick A. Heelan 'MerleauPonty's Thesis of the Primacy of Perception and the Meaning of 185 Scientific Objectivity' John J. Compton Page viii The World as the Ontological Project of Man 198 Ramakant Sinari Technology as Cultural Instrument 207 Don Ihde Nature and Life World: Towards a Hermeneutics of Nature 216 R. Sundara Rajan Unity and Plurality of Cultures in the Perspectives of Edmund Husserl and Ernst 233 Cassirer Ernst Wolfgang Orth Human Scientific Propositions 247 Lester Embree Phenomenology of Human Relations: Some Reflections 253 S.P. Banerjee Object, Objective Phenomenon and Objectivating Act According to the 262 Vijnaptimatratasiddhi *' of Xuanzang (600664) Iso Kern Last Philosophy: Ideas for a Transcendental Phenomenological Metaphysics— 270 Eugen Fink with Edmund Husserl, 192838 Ronald Bruzina Hermeneutics in Indian Philosophy 290 Krishna Roy Reading the Rigveda*: A Phenomenological Essay 303 J.L. Mehta Speech and Writing in Heidegger's Philosophy S. Ijsseling 318 Towards a Hermeneutic of Centrality in Indian Art 332 Margaret Chatterjee Reflections on Papers 341 D.P. Chattopadhyaya Contributors 366 Index 369 Page 1 My First Trip to India: A Personal Introduction Lester Embree 'I feel I have been living many fairy tales on this trip.' SAM IJSSELING Some people probably still believe that phenomenology is about particular events individually felt. If the literature is actually reviewed, of course (and one could do worse than look over the essays contained in the present volume), it will be seen that phenomenology typically aims at knowledge that is universal and intersubjectively confirmable. The present introduction may confirm this through contrast, for it shows what a reflective description of subjectivistic and particularistic or, more concisely, a personal life is actually like and thus how unphenomenological it can be. In part, however, it is also intended to show, albeit onesidedly, something of the origins, the course, and the hope for repetition of the first major meeting of Western and Indian philosophers on the thematics of phenomenology and Indian philosophy. Since the following narrative is personal (and thus has the advantage of letting me ramble and jump about, just as memory and fantasy do), the first person form may as well be employed. In January 1988 I led a delegation of fourteen Westerners to New Delhi to meet with a comparable number of Indian philosophers. I did this in my capacity as President of the Centre for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. I am aware of four factors behind this meeting on the side of the Western delegation. The oldest and strongest was fellow CARP director Jitendranath Mohanty's longstanding wish to bring a group of phenomenologists back to his home country. He went to the West in the 1950s, first to Germany then back to India and later to America, but never forgot where he came from. The second and precipitating factor was Dr Krishna Roy of the Jadavpur University, Calcutta. She came to the Summer Programme in Phenomenology held by CARP, with the University of Ottawa in August 1985. I remember coming out to enjoy the cool evening after hot day, and finding Jiten and Krishna and others sitting about and talking, and joining. them. At some point, Krishna said something like 'You ought to organize a group of phenomeno1ogists to come to India for a conference.' I replied with something like 'That would be wonderful, lots of people we know would love to go, but how could this be done ?' Jiten said he thought that there might be people in India who would invite us. We talked about people and timing but beyond that my recollection fades. Many possibilities in the mode of 'Wouldn't it be great if...' arise for our little Center but do not work out because of 'ifs' that cannot be fulfilled. Krishna went back to India and spoke to Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Chairman of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, an institution Page 2 funded entirely by the Government of India. Later, when Jiten went in fall 1986 to give his Presidential Address to the Indian Philosophical Congress, he and D.P. also spoke. By the way, Indians use initials to refer to people and institutions a bit more than I was used to. Perhaps this is derived from British habits, but then again, since I was twice told by Indians with considerable glee of a columnist in India who has argued for years that the British got cricket just like polo from India, perhaps naming by initials went the other way! Let me jump ahead and mention that I went to India expecting things British to have been widely rejected in a long exploited former colony and, as a phenomenologist, I know that expectations, frustrated or fulfilled, coconstitute what we perceive. I had been taught in school about all the gold that English pirates like Drake took from the Spanish but I had only recently learned that England capitalized herself over centuries even more with wealth taken from India. Among my many happy surprises was how many good things British were not rejected in India. The boys play cricket madly and I saw school for girls let out in knee socks and blazers. Anyhow, when J.N. came back he told me that he thought something was going to develop and hence it was not totally a surprise when the first letter came to me from D.P. Organizing such affairs is largely a matter of writing letters. I have rather a pile of these but more important here are two things, the impression I quickly got and how something I did automatically was received. These show the third factor for the event called 'Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy' which is the ICPR—CARP interaction. Firstly, the impression I quickly got was that I was dealing with very competent people, which is to say that once both sides were committed, we got down to the administrative details. Secondly, I do not know whether to be more proud of successes that result from careful research and planning or those that arise by themselves from a well established outlook. The case in point is my automatic expectation that approximately equal numbers from each side would have equal participation in the programme. Through the letters I gathered that this is not what the other side originally had in mind but the reaction to my assumption was not consternation but delight, which I did not quite understand. Only when we were finally there and got to know people and talked personally did I gather that we were different because we wanted at least as much to meet Indian philosophers and hear what they thought as to express our own ideas. I do not know whether it is something particularly American to presume equality, but I do know this was not just my view. It was clearly shared by our delegation from the beginning and manifest at the preparatory session we held. There we had read Jiten's article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on 'Indian Philosophy' and then, when he sketched its history and present state, the rest of us took notes and asked questions like good undergraduates. We knew little, but we knew that, and were going to start making up for our deficiency. The fourth and final factor was, as just intimated, the group of people who went. In many ways, India was far. All of us had travelled in the West, the Europeans to America and the Americans to Europe, but India is not in the West. People had to find help from their universities for travel costs: There
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