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The Philosophy of the Upanishads c4: Preface by the Author

The Philosophy of the Upanishads c4

Language
English

Preface by the Author

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The present work forms the second part of my *General History of Philosophy*. It is however complete in itself; and has for its subject the Philosophy of the Upanishads, the culminating point of the Indian doctrine of the universe. This point had been already reached in Vedic, pre-Buddhist times; and in philosophical significance has been surpassed by none of the later developments of thought up to the present day. In particular the Sânkhya system has followed out lines of thought traced for it in the Upanishads, and has emphasized realistic tendencies already found there (*infra*, pp. 239–255). Buddhism also, though of entirely independent origin, yet betrays its indebtedness in essential points to the teaching of the Upanishads, when its main fundamental thought (*nirvânam*, the removal of suffering by the removal of *trishnâ*) meets us expressed in other words (union with Brahman by the removal of *kâma*) in the passage from the Brihadâranyaka quoted below.¹

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¹ Brih. 4. 4. 6, *infra* p. 348.

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The thoughts of the Vedânta therefore became for India a permanent and characteristic spiritual atmosphere, which pervades all the products of the later literature.

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To every Indian Brâhman to-day the Upanishads are what the New Testament is to the Christian.

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So significant a phenomenon deserved and demanded a more comprehensive treatment than it had yet obtained. And my hope is to remove in some measure the cloud which hitherto has obscured this subject, and to exhibit order and consistency in place of the confused mass of contradictory conceptions, which alone had been supposed to exist. If the result is not a uniform and unified system, there is yet found a regular historical development, the key to which is an original, abrupt and daring idealism; and this in its further progress by a twofold concession, on the one hand to traditional beliefs, and on the other to the empirical prepossessions natural to us all, was gradually developed into that which we, adopting Western phraseology if not always in a Western sense, call pantheism, cosmogonism, theism, atheism (Sâṅkhya), and deism (Yoga). Chap. ix., “The Unreality of the Universe” (pp. 226–239), which by its paradoxical title attracts attention and provokes contradiction, or the final survey at the close of the book (p. 396 ff.), may well serve as a first introduction to these oriental teachings.

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A remarkable and at first sight perplexing feature in this entire evolution of thought is the persistence with which the original idealism holds its ground, not annulled or set aside by the pantheistic and theistic developments that have grown out of it. On the contrary it remains a living force, the influence of which may be more or less directly traced everywhere, until it is finally abandoned by the Sâṅkhya system. Adopted by the Vedânta it is proclaimed as the only “higher knowledge” (*parâ vidyâ*),

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and contrasted with all those realistic developments which together with the creation and transmigration doctrines are known as the "lower knowledge" (*aparâ vidyâ*), and are explained as accommodations of the written revelation to the weakness of human understanding. This accommodation theory of the later Vedântist teachers is not wholly baseless, and needs correction only in the one point that this adjustment to the empirical capacity of the intellect (which works within the relations of time, space and causality) was not intentional and conscious, but unconscious. In this shape the idea of accommodation becomes a key which is fitted to unlock the secrets not only of the doctrinal developments of the Upanishads, but of many analogous phenomena in Western philosophy. For the practice of clothing metaphysical intuitions in the forms of empirical knowledge is met with not only in India, but also in Europe from the earliest times. And for that very reason no account would have been taken of it had not Kant demonstrated the incorrectness of the whole procedure, as I hope to show in detail in the later parts of my work.

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P. DEUSSEN.

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