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Text: to confirm the Advaita interpretation of the upanisads, to reassure the Advaita community of the truth of its reading. |
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There is really no chance that the system will turn out to be in conflict with correct reasoning: the Advaitin is both judge and jury, and the other systems, paraphrased and rarely quoted, are allowed to speak only within the norms of Advaita's predetermined conversation. Exegesis and reasoning had been exercised together in Advaita long before the completion of UMS II.1, as a finished narration, made the relation of Brahman to the world an explicit topic of controversy; Advaita exegesis had from the start been informed by correct reasoning, and Advaita reasoning has been educated by exegesis. However useful and important the demonstration which occupies UMS II.1, it will bear no unexpected results; it is not an exercise of independent reasoning. |
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As in UMS I.1.5-11, Samkhya provides the purvapaksa in UMS II.1.4-11. According to UMS II.1.4-5, Samkhya introduces two arguments. First, reason has a legitimate role to play in delineating the objective reality Advaita claims to point to. Therefore, the Advaita position, like any other, should be submitted to rational critique. Second, that critique will show that the Advaita position fails the test of reason, since one cannot plausibly argue that Brahman, characterized by the Advaitins as intelligent and pure, is the material as well as efficient cause for a world which is demonstrably neither intelligent nor pure. |
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In UMS II.1.11 Sankara agrees with the proposition that reasoning is legitimate, inevitable and necessary for life, and that it is at work even during the practice of exegesis. But he also claims that unless it is the reasoning of the scripturally literate person, it cannot provide an adequate view of reality as a whole; indeed, it is most inadequate on the topics of the most importancethe knowledge of Brahman, and what counts toward salvation.
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Independent reason is inherently inadequate for several reasons. First of all, Brahman is not an ordinary object of knowledge: |
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As for the argument that because Brahman is an existent thing, other means of knowledge should apply to it, that too is wishful thinking. For this entity is not an object of |
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