A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c2.9.3

c2.9.3

Finally, when Oldenberg in his brilliant work on the Upanishads “Die Lehre der Upanishaden” tells us that the true parallel for Upanishadic Philosophy is to be found rather in the teachings of Plotinus, the Sufis, and the Christian mystics like Eckhart than in the Philosophy of Kant, and when he therefore a little superciliously disposes of the teaching of the Upanishads by saying “ Der eine der Weg der Mystik, der andre der Kants”, we are tempted to say about Kant with a little variation upon what Aristotle said about Plato, “Let Kant be our friend, but let Truth be our divinity”. When Oldenberg commends Kant by saying that the central principle of Kant's philosophy is the “Formbegriff,” while that of Upanishadic Philosophy is the “Formlosigkeit,” he is blinding himself to the fact that his Critique of Pure Reason was only the first premiss of a grand philosophical syllogism whose minor premiss and conclusion were respectively the Critiques of Practical Reason and Judgment, wherein conceptions of Goodness and Value supplemented the considerations of Pure Reason, for, on the grounds of Pure Reason, what philosophy could there be about the ultimate realities of human life, the Self, the World, and God, except a philosophy of paralogisms that paralyse, antinomies that make one flounder, and ideals which can never be realised at all?