Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek philosophy
- 2 The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda
- 3 Harmonia and ṛtá
- 4 Ātman and its transition to worldly existence
- 5 Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the Upaniṣads
- 6 Plato and yoga
- 7 Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India
- 8 Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought?
- 9 Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides
- 10 Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?
- 11 ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian Sources
- 12 New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy
- 13 The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece
- 14 Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
- 15 On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek and Indian religion
- 16 The justice of the Indians
- 17 Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek philosophy
- 2 The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda
- 3 Harmonia and ṛtá
- 4 Ātman and its transition to worldly existence
- 5 Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the Upaniṣads
- 6 Plato and yoga
- 7 Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India
- 8 Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought?
- 9 Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides
- 10 Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?
- 11 ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian Sources
- 12 New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy
- 13 The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece
- 14 Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
- 15 On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek and Indian religion
- 16 The justice of the Indians
- 17 Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere … The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.
William James, ‘What Pragmatism Means’
This chapter focuses on a similar argument made by Parmenides and Śaṅkara involving the claim that boundaries between everyday entities are superimposed and not real. I hereby continue my exploration of the similarity of the arguments of the two philosophers, who, so far, have been compared only either as adherents of monism, or in order to show historical dependence, mostly of Greek thought on the Veda. I will show how Parmenides and Śaṅkara argue that any boundary that we believe to be real and capable of separating the many individuals and things can be proven to be superimposed by humans on being rather than being real.
As a foil, I will mention an alternative metaphysical framework – which has been adopted for instance by Descartes, and which might be regarded as part of the default everyday Western metaphysical framework – according to which reality is fundamentally fragmented in separate things and individuals.
Parmenides and Śaṅkara acknowledge the existence of a fundamental reality: undivided being or Self. The other side of the coin of an undivided being is the lack of reality of the boundaries superimposed on being. The question is: what makes them regard anything that differentiates one thing from the next as a superimposition, which is less real than undivided being? I will show that the argument involves the ‘epistemological weakness’ of what is superimposed on undivided being. This argument points at the impossibility of ‘knowing’ – in a special sense that is radically different from having opinions – anything other than being, which involves the impossibility of knowing any boundary. The step from the impossibility of knowing anything other than being to the lack of reality of any second being might sound like a fallacy, since it takes an unwarranted step from epistemology to ontology.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought , pp. 134 - 148Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016