The Philosophy of the Upanishads c7.s2.3

c7.s2.3

There have been three occasions, as far as we know, on which philosophy has advanced to a clearer comprehension of its recurring task, and of the solution demanded: first in India in the Upanishads, again in Greece in the philosophy of Parmenides and Plato, and finally, at a more recent time, in the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer. In a later work we shall have to show how Greek philosophy reached its climax in the teaching of Parmenides and Plato, that this entire universe of change is, as Parmenides describes it, merely phenomenal, or in Plato’s words a world of shadows; and how both philosophers endeavoured through it to grasp the essential reality, τὸ ὄν, τὸ ὄντως ὄν, that which Plato, in an expression that recalls the doctrine of the Upanishads no less than the phraseology of Kant, describes as the αὐτὸ (âtman)