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definition. A particular object can be defined by naming it in terms of the qualities which are associated with its quantity, which is the object. Quantity and quality go together; they cannot be separated. And, everything is related to something else. The very act of the recognition of the presence of an object is due to the relation that it has with something else, a thing which no one is able to cogitate upon. When one says, Here is a white wall, does one think that he is making an innocent statement? No, the whiteness of the wall has become an object of perception because of there being non-white things around it. If there is no non-white, whiteness cannot be seen. So there is a relation of the white to the non- white, and there is an infinite series of these relations. Everything is hanging on something else, so that no one knows one thing unless the characteristics of another thing are assumed at the same time. This is another difficulty to which the mind is put in its knowledge of things so that nothing can be known isolatedly. A cannot be known without knowing B , B cannot be known without knowing C , and so on. So, no one knows where one is and what one is knowing. The objects which are assumed to be quantities and are defined by qualities are also known through relations which obtain among things. And every object exists in a condition, a situation, a circumstance, a state of affairs, which is called a mode. Everything is in some condition. A state of affairs in which anything is found is the mode of that particular object, the thing. The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda 50 49 Thus, mainly, these are the four ways in which the mind can think, viz., quantity, quality, relation and mode. There is no other way of thinking. Even when one thinks of God, the Almighty, one can think only in terms of quantity, quality, relation and mode. So, Kant tells us, there is no such thing as the metaphysics of the existence of God. Such a thing is not possible, if by God is meant Reality as such. He goes to the extent of demolishing the very possibility of knowing the existence of such a thing as God by rational investigation, on account of this peculiarity in which one is placed, namely, the conditioning of oneself in space-time and the various other categories which restrict the operation of the mind. He has formulated a list of the categories of the understanding, together with space and time, which are the spectacles through which everyone sees or knows things in perception. There is a third faculty, called reason, in man, regulating sensory operation, the functions of the understanding, and the assumptions of the intellect. Here, in his evaluation of the functions of reason, Kant is a little wrong, though he is pious in his intentions. He holds that the doctrine that God exists is only an assumption, and it cannot be anything more than an idea. The point is that reason itself is, again, an offshoot of the categories of the understanding. Then, what can reason argue about except things which are conditioned in this manner as mentioned already? If the argument, even about God Himself, is conditioned, how could one be sure that one is arguing about a real thing? Even God which is in one s mind is a part of the phenomenon of the universe of the categories. Everyone is in a world which is nothing but phenomena; and Reality, which he calls the Thing-in-Itself , cannot be known. No one can see it, because it is not an object of the thought or of the senses. It, thus, would seem to occupy a position which is assumed as a nail for the purpose of hanging this coat of the awareness of an object. It is an invisible nail that is somewhere, on which one has to fix the coat of knowledge. Why is it invisible? And how would knowledge be real if what it hangs on is only ideal? Visibility is the act of the senses and the mind, and the senses and the mind are conditioned in the way described. Hence, unconditioned things cannot be thought by the mind, and God is unconditioned, it is said. Unconditioned being cannot be comprehended by the conditioned mind. And there are but conditioned minds in this world. So, thinking God is an impossibility. And, if metaphysics is a description of the nature of Reality, such as the existence of God, it does not exist. Kant, here, forgets that it would not have been possible to know that things are phenomenal, but for the fact that the reason has in its bosom a noumenal root, which, actually, is what the adumbrated Thing-in-Itself is. WILL AND FEELING ARE NOT CONDITIONED Kant s theoretical arguments may look like agnosticism, because they strike a conclusive note that man cannot know Reality. The error committed by Kant in this way of argument can be seen if the nature of religious consciousness is studied, which he himself seems to have accepted a little later in his career. He wrote, further, two other books, called The Critique of Practical Reason and The Critique of Judgment. In The Critique of Pure Reason he demolishes all philosophy as a way of knowing Reality. But there is something in man which is not merely the mind which thinks. There is what is known as will, and also feeling. One s will decides that one should do the right, and the feeling affirms that there is something which is inscrutable in this universe. Whatever be the argument of the mind which is conditioned by the four categories, and whatever be The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda 50 51 the difficulty felt by the senses which are restricted to the operations of space and time, there is some other faculty in man, different from the senses, and different from the mind working under the heavy weight of the categories of the understanding, viz., will and feeling, whose existence cannot be abrogated wholly. The will is the deciding factor. No one works in this world as if moving in a world of ghosts, though the conditioned intellect tells us that we are in a world of chimeras. This analysis that man is conditioned in every way and he is in a world of phenomena leads to the conclusion that he is in a world of phantasms. But no one can be prepared to accept this position, and yet live. No one feels that he is looking at things which have no substance in them. If this had been the case, one cannot imagine what would be the state of people in the world. Men would not have existed even for three days continuously. There is another affirmation taking place within everyone together with the problem created by the categories. There is the ethical consciousness, or the urge towards righteousness, as it is generally called, which is supposed to be an act of the will. Man is somehow impelled to do the right and not the wrong. Now, the urge towards righteousness seems to be a phenomenon occurring in man different from what is described earlier in terms of space and time or the categories of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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