Reading Notes: June 27th, 2022

“That every object of knowledge presupposes a self that knows it is almost a truism which is as clear as it is innocent. Yet this apparently innocent position has latent in it one of the most baffling paradoxes with which thought has ever been confronted. What is the self that is presupposed by every object? How is the knower known? If every object presupposes a self that knows it, should not there be another knower for knowing the first self?” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 5) 

“A present fact, a past event, an idea, an instinct, the psychological complexes, the physiological glands,—these are all intelligible objects; if any of them had been unintelligible, it would have been as good as nothing for us, and the assertion of its existence would have no meaning. Now, the most universal conditions of intelligibility are just those laws of thought, the validity of which is re-asserted in every attempt to deny their universal application. Though, however, they are primarily laws of thought, insofar as thought cannot rest content with anything that contradicts itself, these laws are at the same time the universal features of things, inasmuch as every conceivable thing must be a self-consistent unity, on pain of reducing itself to nothing….The unity of a thing, however, implies not only self-consistency, but also determinateness; that is, it must be a determinate something. Determination, again, involves in turn, relations to things other than itself, and it is through these inter-objective relations—generally called categories—that all objects of thought receive mutual definiteness and clarification. There is, however, a deeper condition of objectivity than even the relational categories….[N]othing is intelligible which does not exist for a self. Even if it be granted that the world of things exists independently of knowledge, the things must have at least the possibility of entering into the knowledge-relation; and, as within knowledge, they exist as objects for a subject or self. In this sense, nothing on which we can hold intelligible discourse can exist except in relation to the self that is implied in the knowledge-situation.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 7-8) 

“Existence-for-self, therefore, is the sine qua non of all things, and there is an important sense in which it is a deeper condition of objectivity than the categories. The [categories], though presupposed by every object of thought, can themselves be made objects of reflection…and insofar as they become objects, the categories themselves presuppose the self as much as the things which they condition. Thus, the self is the deepest of the transcendental conditions of objectivity, and is presupposed by, and consequently overreaches, all distinctions between form and matter, reality and appearance, man and God, spirit and matter, and so on.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 8) 

“The conception of knowledge as a property of a particular class of things—in what Alexander has aptly called, the democracy of the universe—is indissolubly connected with the conception of the cognitive relation as a relation between two determinate entities, one being distinguished from the other by its peculiar attribute or quality. When this mechanical notion is uncritically accepted, the result is behaviorism, vitalism, pragmatism, voluntarism, or some other so-far nameless theories which may identify the self with mind, attention, reason or intellect….[This conception of knowledge] has the advantage of effectively disguising the real difficulties of self-consciousness, for then we may be said to know the self in the same way as we know, say, a chair or a table. But the price of the easy victory has always to be paid dearly. For, the mechanical theory has implicit in it the awkward regressus ad infinitum which comes to the surface as soon as the real question is rightly put. When A knows B, each of which has its peculiar property, they must first be distinguished by a self which on that very account cannot be identified with one of the distincts. This latter self, again, being itself a distinct entity, must require another self, for which it exists, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, the birth of an indefinite number of selves or an infinite series of anuvyavasāyas has been rightly considered as one of the unanswerable objections to the mechanical theory of knowledge. It might almost be called the hard rock on which every such theory must ultimately be wrecked.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 11-12) 

“The reason, however, why even an accomplished thinker has to succumb to the simplicity of the mechanical theory of knowledge is that while offering an analysis of knowledge he unwittingly drops himself out of sight and so fails to recognize the unique relation in which he himself stands to the entities which, according to him, are present in the knowledge situation as a whole. When, for instance, knowledge is reduced to a peculiar characteristic of the total process from stimulus to reaction, or when the self is described as the causal nexus among a series of events, it is entirely forgotten that the stimulus, the reaction or the events, are intelligible only insofar as his own relation to them is not reducible to any of the relations that may obtain between the stimulus and the reaction, and insofar as he himself is not the causal nexus of events. All these things are intelligible entities for him, because they conform to the general conditions of objectivity, and because his own relation to them is different from any inter-objective relation….Self-consistency is the first condition of conceivability, and every conceivable object, therefore, must a self-consistent unity. But the relation of the object A, for instance, to the law of consistency, is certainly not identical with the relation of A to B. Unity is the basis, the very life-blood, of both A and B, as of every other determinate thing. Consequently, the law which is the common basis of A as well as B is related to them in a way entirely different from that in which A is related to B. The former, in fact, is the unique relation of the universal to the particular, as distinct from any relation between two particulars. Hence, the…reduction of knowledge to the relation of compresence between the mental acts and the objects is bound to be inadequate in the long run…simply because [the universal] is not known in the same way as the particular.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 13-14) 

“The self being the deepest of the conditions of objectivity, the surest way of missing it is to look for it in the wrong direction.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 15) 

“Existence-for-self, as already urged, is the highest form of objective existence, nothing can exist for me which I cannot conceive as existing. In this sense, idea and image, reflex-arc and libido, tree and table, quite as much as space and time, unity and causality, ends and means, phenomenon and noumenon, must all exist for the self, which on that very account is the center of the universe.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 16) 

“Post-Kantian Idealism has, thus, sought to solve the ego-centric paradox in a way entirely different from that of empiricism and realism, and the idealistic solution to the paradox stands to this day as the most satisfactory account of self-knowledge….[A] number of permanent contributions [idealism] has made to the understanding of the place of the self in knowledge…consist mainly in showing that the self is not a substance having knowledge as a property, that knowledge cannot be understood in terms of something other than itself, that all distinctions are within knowledge, that the subject-object relation is unique and is the presupposition of all other relations between objects and objects.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 17) 

“The self, according to the transcendentalist, exists as one self only as it opposes itself as object, to itself as subject, and yet transcends that opposition. In this sense, the self is a concrete unity, a dual unity, or a restored unity, or, again, a transparent identity-in-difference. And the puzzle of self-consciousness, it is held, is due to our tendency to separate identity from difference. Now, the question that we venture to raise at this place is whether this is a real solution of the ego-centric paradox. That unity-in-difference is the highest form to which every conceivable object of thought must conform may be true, but this by itself does not show that the subject for which such a form exists is itself a unity-in-difference; in other words, even the distinction between form and matter presupposes the subject which, therefore, cannot be identified with one of the distincts. To do so would be to contradict the principle that the self is the presupposition of all objects of thought or that all distinctions are within knowledge. Again, even supposing that the self is a unity-in-difference, it flatly contradicts the assertion that the subject is not a substance, for, such a self has at least the property of being a dual unity as distinct from an undifferentiated or unrestored unity and so far, it is analogous to the stone, though the latter has another distinguishing attribute, namely, weight. The fact is that nothing which exists by opposing itself to something other than itself can be identified with the central ego for which exist all opposites and all distincts, and which, therefore, is not to be confused with one of them.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 18-19) 

“It need not, however, be denied that there is a sense in which self-consciousness is a mediated unity, that is, the consciousness of the self and that of the not-self are correlative with each other, insofar as it is only in relation to the object determined as the not-self that I am conscious of myself. But our contention is that when the self is thus determined in relation to the not-self, it is just one thing among other things and not the central self for which exist all things and all distinctions between things.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 19-20) 

“[E]xperience [is not] a relation between two determinate entities, one of which is the subject. Such an assumption must spell disaster to every theory of self.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 59) 

“For, the question remains how, if experience always involves a subject-object relation, it is possible to experience the subject without turning it into an object. There can be no experience without a subject—this is the cornerstone of Ward’s analysis of experience, and it follows from this that the subject, to be experienced, must have another subject, and so on ad infinitum. The fact is that these difficulties are insurmountable as long as the subject-object relation is regarded as a relation between two things…” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 65) 

“The psychological theories…have been under the influence of a sort of error which may be called, after Kant, a transcendental illusion. This illusion we have seen to have its origin in the difficulty of overcoming our inveterate habit of conceiving the subject-object relation on the analogy of inter-objective relations, and thus forgetting that every relation between one object and another must necessarily imply their relation to a subject, and hence the latter relation is not on the same footing as the former. Under the influence of this habit, the subject has inevitably come to be conceived as a thing and knowledge as an attribute.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 67-68) 

“In insisting on the impossibility of subsuming the subject of knowledge under those formal conceptions of which it is the source, in repudiating the notion of knowledge as a quality of a particular substance, in showing the self-refutation of every attempt to represent knowledge in terms of something other than itself—[T.H. Green] has laid the foundation of an epistemological analysis which may truly be called the prolegomena to every system of sound metaphysics….Nature, according to his analysis, presupposes a unity of consciousness which is the source of those conceptions through which the world of facts exists. This consciousness or principle of unity is the ultimate condition which explains the possibility of that mutual relations or determination without which knowledge of objects would be unrealized and unrealizable. For that very reason, however, the ultimate principle of unity cannot be one of the related facts….Now, whether this ego should be called an empty form or not depends upon the extent to which we have succeeded in avoiding the confusion of the principle of unity involved in all knowledge with one of the knowable objects, or, what is the same thing in a different language, the confusion of the subject-object relation with an inter-objective relation.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 71-78) 

“[G]ranting that mediated self-consciousness is a restored unity, is a return of the self upon itself, do the conditions of this mediated self-consciousness remove the puzzles as they are seen by those who distinguish between this type of self-consciousness and that self which is the ultimate principle of all knowledge and experience? The answer will clearly depend upon the meaning of self. If the self can be shown to be real only insofar as it returns upon itself, then, of course, there is no room for any serious difficulty in accounting for self-consciousness. The self, in this sense, may well be called a dual-unity, or a unity-in-duality, and it may perhaps also be said with some amount of truth that it is in the return of the self upon itself that “the ego, strictly speaking, comes into existence,” and that “only that being is truly to be called an I which calls itself so.” But can we identify this self with the ultimate unity presupposed in experience? As an account of the development of self-consciousness from the stage of an “undifferentiated unity” to that of a “dual-unity,” this idealistic theory may be true. But can it identify the developing self with the subject without committing itself to a view of the self which is pre-Kantian? Evidently, all talks of development and grown are intelligible only in respect of a thing which is in time, and is subject to the categories through which alone any object exists for us. And it follows from this that the self that develops from consciousness to self-consciousness must be under those very conditions of space, time, and categories which are the conditions of objectivity. This self, therefore, cannot be the subject in the true sense of the term.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 87-88) 

“All distinctions are within knowledge, and so A and B as objects on which we can hold intelligible discourses must fall both within knowledge, irrespective of the nature of the relation obtaining between them. A, for instance, may be either the cause or the effect, the antecedent or the consequent, the ends or means, the substance or attribute, in relation to B. But all these multifarious relations which are but the different ways of determining A and B must ultimately fall within the subject-object relation, or, which is the same thing in another language, must fall within knowledge. A subject, therefore, that can be regarded as an object, or a self that is derived from something other than itself, is an entirely inconceivable and self-contradictory notion, whatever may be the ultra-logical grounds on which its claims to a respectful hearing be justified.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 93-94) 

“A thing apart from its relations with other things is incomprehensible and unintelligible, and it is through the relations alone that the things get those mutual determinations which are indispensable for the existence of everything on which we can make intelligible assertions….Two objects, such as father and son, husband and wife, are in correlativity with each other, so that there is a sense in which one cannot exist without its relation to the other. More precisely, as every object receives its determination from the relation in which it stands to other objects, it cannot exist in the absence of the latter. A thing, in other words, owes its being to the relations—spatial, temporal, causal, etc.—in which it stands to other things, so that to take away all the relations from a thing is to reduce it to a pure nothing.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 97-100) 

“All that is thinkable or knowable…presupposes the thinking ego. So, the world of intelligible reality must presuppose the ego for which it exists, or, in other words, the world is an existence-for-self. But if this be recognized, then the self for which the world has a meaning cannot itself be regarded as forming an element within the world….[F]rom the doctrine that every object must exist for a subject it does not follow that the subject itself must be an object; or, what is the same thing in different words, from the truth that the world of objects has no meaning apart from its relation to the subject, it does not follow that the subject must somewhere be in the world. This would make the presupposition of the world itself a part of the world. And the position remains essentially unaltered, if we were to substitute for the world in space and time the term universe which includes a number of other worlds than the spatio-temporal world. Because, in that case, even the universe must be supposed to exist for the self, on pain of being reduced to nothing.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 111-112) 

“The most important and far-reaching of Sankara’s contentions is to be found in what may be called the foundational character of knowledge or consciousness. It ought to be accepted as a universal rule, he insists, that there can be no object of knowledge without knowledge. None can prove something that is not known, and the attempt to prove it would be as absurd as to maintain that there is no eye though the form is apprehended. The objects may change their essence, but consciousness cannot be said to change inasmuch as it witnesses all objects irrespective of the place where they may happen to be; the fact-of-being-known is thus implied by all objects without exception. Even when something is supposed to be non-existent, this very non-existence cannot be proved in the absence of knowledge. The second feature of the Advaita analysis of consciousness lies in its insistence that consciousness is always distinct from the object of consciousness. The things, therefore, should on no account be identified with the consciousness which makes them its objects. From this follow two corollaries, namely that consciousness cannot be its own object, and that every object of consciousness is unconscious or material….In fact, the development of post-Kantian idealism bears eloquent testimony to the vitality of the Advaita position, and the former may in this respect be regarded as an elaborate exposition and ramification of the latter. Consciousness, when regarded in this light, is the ultimate principle of revelation for which alone the world of objects has a meaning, it is not a relation between two elements, on the contrary, it is the light which manifests all objects and all relations between objects.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 118-120) 

“To put it in the language of modern idealism, existence-for-self is the highest category to which must conform all objects. Matter, mind, electron, proton, etc., have meaning for us only insofar as they stand in relation to the conscious self whose reality, therefore, has to be presupposed by every intelligible entity. In this sense, consciousness is the prior principle or the foundational fact which cannot be reduced to something other than itself except through a confusion of thought….[E]ven if it could be admitted that matter and motion had an existence in themselves, it would still not be by such matter and motion, but by the matter and motion which is known, that the function of the soul can be explained by materialists. [Footnote: Prof. R.B. Perry does not appear to us to have done full justice to the doctrine of the priority of consciousness…in his admirable book, Present Philosophical Tendencies…To limit things to what can be experienced may be groundless and misleading (Ibid, p. 316), the things may not require any home, yet the independent reality, call it a thing, or a neutral entity, could not be revealed to us and so could not be used in explanation of anything if it had not been known at all.].” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 122-123) 

“The only philosopher whose nihilistic perfection approaches the radical skepticism of the Indian Buddhists is F.H. Bradley, who has so far been rightly characterized as “a genuine Madhyamika” by F.TH.  Stcherbatsky in his Nirvana, p. 52. But the difference between these positions is at least as great as their similarity. Bradley, in spite of his condemnation of the self and self-consciousness as mere appearances, is anxious to find a home for them in the life of the Absolute, though they have to undergo transformation and transmutation before they can enter it. Moreover, the self, for him, though not a true form of experience, is the highest form of experience which we have (Appearance and Reality, p. 103). For Nagarjuna, on the other hand, the self is as unreal as the son of a barren woman, and, consequently, has no place in Reality.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 124) 

“The most fundamental point in the contemporary attempts at denying the reality of consciousness lies in their unanimous rejection of the idealistic procedure of assigning a supreme place to consciousness and knowledge. Things, it is urged, are not only independent of knowledge, but knowledge is nothing more than a specific type of relation into which the things enter under various certain conditions. These things are no doubt variously named in the various theories, but the central contention remains identical in all of them, namely, that there is no consciousness outside or apart from the things and their relation. The internal paradox of the contemporary theories of consciousness may be best exposed by enquiring whether the elements, the neutral events, or the bits of “pure experience” into which consciousness is reduced are themselves unknown or known. The former alternative would evidently render them undistinguishable from pure nothing or mere naught, and, as such, they must repel all predicates. And in that case, they cannot be brought in for explaining anything. The only alternative, therefore, would be to admit that they are objects of knowledge and, as such, presuppose the reality of knowledge or consciousness. The skepticism of Descartes, as it is well known, was arrested by the cogito, and it is this very fact which is denied here. When I doubt, I cannot doubt that I doubt, and as doubting is a mode of consciousness, it would be paradoxical to doubt, and more so to deny, the reality of consciousness. It is this fact which, as we have seen above, is emphasized by the epistemological priority of consciousness. All objects, no matter what they are in detail, are, insofar as they are appealed to in explanation of something, known objects, and must have their prius in “I think,” “I know,” or “I am consciousness.” They are, as put by Suresvara with his characteristic terseness, atmapurvaka.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 126-128)