Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s19.7

v2.c26.s19.7

Theoretical philosophy, interested in deducing the world of being from the first principle of an absolute self which has nothing contingent about it, is obliged, whether in East or West, to accept some principle of self-expression (māyā), of objectivity (prakṛti). In European thought Kant contended that there was no experience apart from the transcendental unity of apperception, and yet he made this purely formal, and so failed to derive the whole of experience from it. By regarding experience as an interaction between the transcendental unity of apperception and the things in themselves, he introduced into his system an element of irrational contingency. Fichte accepts from Kant the central truth that all experience is only for a subject, and attempts to develop the whole of experience from it. He holds that in the development of the subject there is no intrusion of a foreign factor, but every step is determined from within. The absolute subject gives itself an " other " in the very act of self-positing. The self cannot affirm or posit itself except by opposing or distinguishing from itself a not-self. The element of otherness is brought about within the very being of the self. Gradually we have the differentiation of the absolute self into a multiplicity of finite egos at once other than itself and modes of itself. The self of Fichte has thus to throw up from itself a check or an impediment, a not-self, as the very condition of its becoming aware of its activity. The self limitation of the primal consciousness, or the rise of the obstacle against which the self breaks itself, has to be assumed, however incomprehensible it may be. Similarly in the conception of Īśvara we have, besides the absolute Brahman, the element of objectivity or prakṛti, self-expression or māyā.