Reply to Approaches to existence

·期刊原文
Reply to "Approaches to existence"
Edith Wyschogrod
Philosophy East and West
Vol.25 (1975)
pp.347-350
Copyright by University of Hawaii Press

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p.347

Munitz has been careful to disclaim apparent affnities between his ontology and that of the Advaita Vedaata, thereby avoiding superficial and easy bridge-building between disparate traditions. However, we would not wish to err in a contrary direction, that of denying affinities by failing to discriminate fundamental similarities when they can, in fact, be found.

On the one hand, Munitz is careful to avoid a pitfall of Vedaanta, the denial of ultimate ontological status to plural particulars, on the grounds that the universe is a whole of many parts each of which belongs to the universe and without which there would be no universe at all. On the other hand, he nevertheless, develops a sense in which the term "the world" can be understood as similar to the way in which "Brahman" is used in `Sa^mkara. Thus "the world" for Munitz is used in two ways, as a whole made up of parts and as an "utterly unique individual." To emphasize the second sense, the term "the world" is replaced by the term "Existence." It is this second sense of "the world" as undifferentiated, as without parts, that interests us in relation to Vedaanta. It would be difficult to locate a substantial difference between this characterization and `Sa^mkara's: "The qualityless Brahman is devoid of all difference,"[1] or "devoid of all form."[2] There could be no dispute between Munitz and `Sa^mkara regarding Munitz' assertion:

Any attempt to explicate what [Existence] is in simpler terms or by finding what it shares by way of resemblance with something else . . . must fail . . .. We have used the analysis of "whole" and "part" as a ladder to climb to our awareness of Existence. But once we reach it we can "throw the ladder away."[3]

In addition, there is a common understanding of the task of ontology: both Munitz and the Advaita Vedaanta consider it to be the rendering of a satisfactory account of Existence and entailing an "analysis of the relation of the domain of existents to the transcendent One that is Existence."[4] The relation of Brahman to determinate entities is the central problem of `Sa^mkara's ontology: "Some indicate that Brahman is affected by difference ... others that it is without difference .... Have we ... to assume that Brahman has a double nature, or either nature, and, if either, that it is affected with difference, or without difference?"[5] `Sa^mkara denies ultimate reality to the domain of plural existents, but its central problem remains rendering a satisfactory account of Brahman such that its relation to plural existents is explained.

Despite the similarity of aim and the sense in which Existence is understood as the unique individual which the world is, it would be disingenuous to press a claim for similar ontologies in their particulars. Munitz rejects the Vedaanta's Illusionism, its denial of ontological status to the domain of plural existents. While Munitz argues that the realm of existents is the foundation for Existence, the Advaitin holds that Brahman (in this sense interchangeable with "Existence") is the basis for the domain of plural existents. The Latter proposition

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It should be pointed out, however, that the Illusionism of `Sa^mkara is a more subtle position than might be supposed. `Sa^mkara argues not that the domain of plural existents (of names and forms) must be annihilated, in the sense that it ceases to be as the realm of common experience (as a common cosmos) to all perceivers, but rather that as soon as Brahman is known by any given self the perception of names and forms disappears. Thus the question is an epistemological one, a case of erroneous perception which is corrigible upon Enlightenment. `Sa^mkara writes:

Of what nature is the so-called annihilation of the apparent world? Is it analogous to the annihilation of hardness in butter which is effected by bringing it into contact with fire? Or is the apparent world of names and forms which is superimposed upon Brahman by Nescience to be dissolved by knowledge, just as the phenomenon of a double moon which is due to a disease of the eyes is removed by the application of medicine? If the former, the Vedic injunctions bid us to do something impossible; for no man can actually annihilate the whole existing world with all its animated bodies and all its elementary substances .... And if it actually could be done, the first released person would have done it once and for all, so that at present the whole world would be empty . . ..[6]

In addition `Sa^mkara's position ought not to be confused with the Idealism of some Buddhist schools. While for these Buddhists the stream of cognition has a privileged ontological status, for `Sa^mkara the cognizing subject together with all its cognitive and volitional acts, their objects and consequences are equally real. However it must be acknowledged that for `Sa^mkara neither the stream of cognitions nor its objects can be said to "be" in the same sense as Brahman.

Still another divergence between Munitz' position and that of Advaita Vedaanta lies in the implications for moral choice entailed by any given ontological position. Munitz denies any relation of entailment between a given ontology and particular moral choices. For Munitz, moral choices are made on the basis of an assessment of a variety of alternatives presented by the special circumstances, the context, in which the contemplated action is to take place. Nevertheless, Munitz acknowledges (in his reply to Cua) that to arrive at the discernment of Existence is itself a good.

Regarding the relation between the discerning of Existence and moral choice, all the Eastern systems presently under consideration differ from Munitz. In each of these systems, the investigation of the problem begins from the standpoint of an experienced discrepancy between the world of ordinary experience and the world as it is and ought to become for us. Munitz' starting point appears to be a concern with language, with the logic of terms. Thus his inquiry proceeds by investigating what can meaningfully be predicated of Existence and by discarding all alternatives considered. Thus, for example, Munitz concurs with Aristotle that Being (Exisfence) is not a genus, even the

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most inclusive genus, since no genus may be predicated of its differentiae and Being must be predicated of the differentiae. While Munitz' conclusion that Existence is "unassimilable to any explanatory or descriptive characterization whatever" is affirmed by `Sa^mkara, the latter's investigation begins from an "interested" life standpoint. For Vedaanta "life" (ordinary experience) entails suffering, an endless round of karman and transmigration so that of the two possible gains derivable from an investigation of the ontological question, cognitive clarity (in the sense of logical coherence) and transformation of the moral subject, it takes the latter to be the greater.

But the question still remains: even if the inquiry is motivated by moral concerns, what, if any, moral consequences can be said to follow from the conclusions of the inquiry. If we mean: does a relation of logical entailment obtain between a given ontology and a particular moral choice, we must conclude with Munitz this cannot be the case. But may we not suppose the relation between ontology and moral experience can be situated in a different context, that of a broader notion of experience, one from which no single element, particularly the cognitive, may be prescinded? We mean to put forward a notion of experience in which what subsequent analysis separates is given primordially in its wholeness. In John Dewey's view, for example, the aesthetic cannot be sharply distinguished from the intellectual character of experiencing. It would appear that the boundary which Munitz is asking us to draw between kinds of experience (the experiences of ontological awareness and of moral choice) may, in context, be inseparable. John Dewey argues: "One great defect in what passes as morality is its anaesthetic quality. Instead of exemplifying wholehearted action, it takes the form of grudging concessions to duty ...."[7] Similarly, Martin Heidegger claims that only a fundamental change in the orientation of Dasein, the "anticipatory resoluteness" which stems from a recognition of the power of death over Dasein's existence, enables Dasein to make authentic choices. Heidegger writes;

If in the ontology of Dasein, we "take our departure" from a worldless "I" in order to provide this "I" with an Object and an ontologically baseless relation to the Object, then we have "presupposed" not too much but too little. If we make a problem of "life," and then just occasionally have regard for death too, our view is too short sighted. The object we have taken as our theme is artificially and dogmatically curtailed if "in the first instance" we restrict ourselves to a "theoretical subject,"in order that we may then round it out "on the practical side" by tacking on an "ethic."[8]

I do not mean to suggest similarities in the ontologies of the Advaita Vedaanta, Heidegger, and Dewey, but only to point to the integral character in each of ontology and moral experience. Thus, a fundamental alteration in ontological suppositions such that the world as a unique individual is perceived as being different from the world (in Munitz' terms) as a whole of parts, has value not

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merely as a singular type of experience or as a "supreme good" of life. But once achieved, this new awareness alters the quality of experiencing as such, including the quality of moral experience, thus affecting the character of particular moral choices. While Munitz cogently attacks the Illusionism of the Advaitin on the grounds that "to deny existence to the domain of existents is tantamount to removing the very ontological base for Existence itself,"[9] the interest of Vedaanta for us lies elsewhere: in the urgency which a new ontological standpoint is seen to have, in the attempted uniting of the question of Existence with what Munitz calls the level of discriminative practical intelligence.

NOTES

1.The Vedaanta Suutras of Baadaraaya.na with the Commentary of `Sa^mkara,trans. by George Thibaut, vols. 34 and 38 of Sacred Books of the East, ed. Max Mller (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890 and 1896), III, 2, 12; hereafter cited as V.S.S.C.