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It is on this basis, and in order to articulate the epistemological and ontological stances which underpin upanisadic knowledge, that Sankara poses the controversial doctrines which have become synonymous with Advaita: the ultimate nonduality (advaita)of the knower and the known; the distinction between Brahman with qualities (saguna) and without qualities (nirguna); the break with the orthodox Brahmanical tradition on (some of) the prerequisites to knowledge; the view that Brahman is the material and efficient cause of the worldand all of these as pertaining to how language works and what it requires of us. These positions are held to be true, the most plausible articulations of the stated but incompletely explained claims of the upanisads. Yet they are also rules as to how to read what is said in light of what isn't being said, or can't be said. The Advaita positions map a horizon within which the performance of reading and commentary can be seen as salvific activities. |
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The project of this chapter is to examine several important aspects of the Advaita construction of the truth of the Text, and so to trace the construction of a post-upanisadic discourse which nevertheless remains true to the particular texture and demands of those texts. We begin by exploring the possibility of a thoroughly, inseparably textual truth. |
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II. Strategies Of Textual Truth |
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I begin this section with a brief excursus into the writing of Michael Riffaterre, whose observations on truth in fiction are richly suggestive of ways in which one can talk about a truth which nevertheless remains firmly inscribed in its text(s).
3 Presupposing familiarity with the commonplace notion that truth entails a reliable and adequate referential relationship between words and their objects, Riffaterre concedes that by its very nature fiction does not entail that kind of truth. However, he argues that by rethinking key terms we nevertheless can speak of a ''truth in fiction:" "the solution to the truth-in-fiction paradox evidently lies in redefining referentiality. Whereas referentiality assumes an actual or potential relationship between language |
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