/lit/ - Literature

>>16123503

That is, while the inconsistences of Bradley’s system are a result of his understanding of the Absolute as a harmonious blend of eternally existing appearances, for Śaṁkara it is illogical to speak in this manner of integrating the phenomenal world into the timeless Brahman (SB, 47). Bradley’s view that the Real is qualified by diversity, when translated into Vedantic categories, approximates to the cosmological notion of saprapañca-brahmavāda, according to which a substantially real world (prapañca) is grounded in the ultimate reality, Brahman. If Bradley had simply asserted that the Absolute is an organic unity of diverse components or even that it is not an undifferentiated unity, this view, Shrivastava claims, would at least have been comprehensible; however, Bradley contradicts his own statement that the Absolute is utterly non-relational by speaking of the many as ‘qualifying’ the one (SB, 56). Echoing Raju’s claim that we noted earlier, about Bradley ‘joining hands’ with Śaṁkara, Shrivastava too states: ‘The super-relational Absolute cannot … possess internal diversity or distinctions … If only Bradley had realized what his own premises pushed to their logical conclusions lead to, he would have come to this very conclusion and joined hand with Śaṁkara’ (SB, 246).