The Philosophy of the Upanishads c8.s1: Introduction
The Philosophy of the Upanishads c8.s1
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Introduction
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By a system we understand an association of thoughts, which collectively belong to and are dependent on a single centre. A system has therefore always an individual author, whether he have himself originated the thoughts brought together in the system, or have only adjusted to one another and welded into a consistent whole imperfect thoughts derived from without. In this sense a "system of the Upanishads," strictly speaking, does not exist. For these treatises are not the work of a single genius, but the total philosophical product of an entire epoch, which extends from the period of the wandering in the Ganges valley to the rise of Buddhism, or approximately from 1000 or 800 B.C. to c. 500 B.C., but which is prolonged in its offshoots far beyond this last limit of time. Thus we find in the Upanishads a great variety of conceptions which are developed before our eyes, and which not seldom stand to one another in irreconcilable contradiction. All these conceptions, however, gather so entirely around one common centre, and are dominated so completely by the one thought of the sole reality of the âtman, that they all present themselves as manifold variations upon one and the same theme, which is treated at one time more briefly, or again at greater length, now from the starting-point of the empirical consciousness, and now in abrupt contradiction thereto. Accordingly all individual differences are so entirely overshadowed by the one fundamental conception, that while it is true that we have before us in the Upanishads no defined system, we are able nevertheless to trace the gradual development of a system. This latter then consists in the increasingly thorough interweaving of a fundamental thought originally idealistic with the realistic requirements of the empirical consciousness, which make their influence more and more felt. That this is so will appear in the course of our exposition. These tendencies reached their climax first in post-Vedic times in the general system at once theological and philosophical, which was shaped by the hands of Bâdarâyaṇa and his commentator Śaṅkara, and in which full account was taken of the demands both of the idealism and the realism (by distinguishing between a higher and a lower knowledge). As the System of the Vedânta this became in India the universal foundation of faith and knowledge, and has remained so up to the present day, though undergoing great development on every side. It falls naturally into four main divisions, as follows:—
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I. Theology; the doctrine of Brahman as the first principle of all things.
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II. Cosmology; the doctrine of the evolution of this principle to form the universe.
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III. Psychology; the doctrine of the entrance of Brahman as soul into the universe evolved from him.
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IV. Eschatology and Ethics; the doctrine of the fate of the soul after death, and the manner of life which is therefore required.
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The growth also of the System of the Vedânta, as it is disclosed to us in the Upanishads, may with similar propriety be discussed under these four principal heads, and the subdivisions which the nature of the subject suggests. We propose to endeavour to collect under each
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heading all the relevant passages of the Upanishads recognised by the later Vedânta, and where a development of thought presents itself in them we shall in many instances be furnished with a safer ground for determining the chronological position of a text as compared with earlier and later treatments of the same theme. The gain for philology therefore will consist in the provision of a more secure basis for the chronology of the Upanishad texts according to their relative age; while on the philosophical side we may hope for a deeper insight into the rise of one of the most remarkable and prolific creations of thought that the world possesses.