Advaita: A Critical Study

REVIEW
Srinivas Rao: 'Advaita: A Critical Study', Jnana Bharati, Bangalore.

88 pp. Rs. 25.
It is a tempting thing to try and philosophize like Wittgenstein did:

dealing with problems in a series of pointillistic statements of inquiry
and analysis, which go to compose a canvas of balanced if enigmatic
composition, and mind-blowing sweep. Srinivas Rao has not resisted
this temptation, which I think a great many professional philosophers
feel but dare not succumb to. The chances of an imitation working out
do not seem high; depressingly, that is the case here. Writing in the
terse, aphoristic style of the Tractatus or the Philosophical Investiga-
tions is not, to put it mildly, an easy thing to carry off.
The central thread of the critique concerns the rope-thread super-
imposition. And things start unravelling from there on. For polemical
purposes, the superimposition performs as an analogy; in a more
pervasive way, one should properly look at it as a metaphor -- for
perception, epistemic grasp and the definition of metaphysical exis-
tence. Even as an analogy, its power is severely circumscribed -- it is
no proof of the Advaitic doctrine. Treat it as a literal appeal to draw
logical consequences for a metaphysical theory, and it blows up in
your face. Why, asks Rao, are only false snakes and not real ones
sublated. A fine touch of wry humour perhaps. An attempt to make an
ironic metaphysical inquiry, and it becomes an illustration of taking a
metaphor literally -- a cardinal sin, that. In consequence of this over-
extended analysis, a confusion emerges between 'sadasadvilakdana'/
'anirvacaniya' and 'asat'. Unless I am mistaken, Advaita does not hold
the barren woman's son (from the empirical point of view) as analogous
to the world (from the transcendental state), as the author seems to
claim [5.4]. Rather, the whole point of the 'inexplicable' nature of the
world is that it does not fall under either the category of the existent
or the non-existent (in effect, the existential statement being neither
true nor false, 'sat' nor 'asat'). If this is correct, then surely there is just
this confusion in Rao's account with regard to the ontological status of
the world. It is this unfortunate obfuscation that leads to talk of the
world as 'non-existent' in the favoured Indian style of 'false' (i.e.,
Journal of Indian Philosophy 1 "7:101 - - 1 0 4 , 1 9 8 9 .

© 1 9 8 9 Kh~wer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
102 REVIEW
logically false). But actually, there is good reason to wonder if the

concept of 'mithya' (or terms used with roughly the same intent) is not
a qualified doctrine which claims something other than transparently
bivalent expression. What sets Advaita apart from psychologistic or
perceptual idealism is precisely this notion of the ambiguity of the
world's ontological status, given the conceptual tension between 'sat'
and "asat'. It is from this that the whole mimicry of realism is possible
in the 'vyavah6ra' realm, in the form of objective experience. In the
light of Advaita's challenge to bivalent statements regarding existential
notions (in the form of "sadasadvilak~ana' and 'anirvacaniya'), the
author's whole project of exploiting the 'atman'-'anatman' distinction in
terms of existence and non-existence becomes questionable. Which is
a pity, because the argument as such about the incoherence of relating
the 'andtman' and the transcendental '6tman' is quite nicely dealt with.
I confess too that I do not see how Frege's puzzle of the Morning
Star and Evening Star serves as a paradigm for the "reality-Reality"
(i.e., world-Brahman) distinction [10.7--10.11], whether it be Hiriyana's
original analogy or the retelling here. Reference itself is the problematic
concept in the case of Brahman and the world. It is Advaita's point
that the 'sense' in which we talk of the world fails to refer, going by
the 'sense' in which Brahman is "Real". As the scare quotes imply, the
convoluted and misread nature of the analogy becomes apparent. On
the other hand, if it is an epistemological point that is being made (as
in the Jastrow 'Duck-Rabbit Head'), the author only states the obvious
fact that aspect-change does not change the object whose aspect
changes. So too, Rao goes on, with the rope and the snake; and, he
adds blithely, "this applies equally to 'reality' and 'Reality'". Since the
whole thrust of the Advaitic argument is the incommensurability of
world and Brahman, transition here as a parallel instance must be
carefully explained; for that would in itself show a radically different
interpretation of the Advaitic position regarding the relative natures of
the world and Brahman. It should not be thrown in as self-evident.
From a more traditional Indian metaphysical line, one wonders why
Rao repeatedly talks of 'point of view' from 'Brahm6nubhdva" (trans-
lated as 'transcendental experience'), not indeed as a conventional
verbal device, but as if it were a metaphysical state. I would tend to
think that the Advaitin would hold just that there is no such 'point of

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REVIEW

Srinivas Rao: 'Advaita: A Critical Study', Jnana Bharati, Bangalore.

It is a tempting thing to try and philosophize like Wittgenstein did:

Journal of Indian Philosophy 1 "7:101 - - 1 0 4 , 1 9 8 9 .

logically false). But actually, there is good reason to wonder if the

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