Category Vedanta

Vedanta Categories

Ramanuja on Categories

1. Ramanuja on Categories

� Sam. kara’s Critique of CategoriesThe First StepThe Second Step: Rejection of Substance

: Vedanta Categories, 2


Substance and Non-substance

Under Vedanta, we shall discuss only Ramanuja and Samkara.

Ramanuja makes an initial distinction between substance andnon-substance (a-dravya).

Substance is that which has states, or which undergoes change.

The category of “non-substance” includes qualities, actions, anduniversals (which are the categories in the Vaises.ika system).

The non-substantial entities depend upon substances.



The List of Non-Substantial Entities

The list of ten non-subtantial entites include:

The five qualities of the five elements.

The three gunas-a la Sam. khya-which characterize matter.

Sakti or power of the cause to produce effect.

Sam. yoga or contact as it is admitted in the Vaises.ika.



The Kind of Substances

Substances are six. The fall in two groups:1 Matter2 Spirit.

Matter includes1 prakr.ti or nature2 time3 knowledge (which is both a substance and quality of souls)

Spiritual Substance include:

a pure (i.e., intelligible) matter, having only the sattva quality andwithout rajas or tamas.

b the finite souls.

c God.



Venkatanatha on Space and Time

The followers of Ramanuja such as Venkatanatha expoundinteresting theses about space and time.

Space is not a mere absence (as the Buddhists held) butsomething positive that we experience even when and where it isoccupied by things.

Time also is directly perceived as a quality of things that weperceive, it is one and eternal although it may appear to bemany.

In effect, time is co-existent with God.



The Relation of Inseparability as a Fundamental

Relation

There is one fundamental relation that Ramanuja accepts: therelation of inseparability (a-pr.thaksiddhi).

It is neither identity nor identity and difference, but which weldsa substance and a quality, or two substances, one of which isdependent on the other, into one qualified (visis.t.a) entity.

In many respects it is like the Vaises.ika inherence (samavaya),but the idea of dependence is stronger than in inherence.

Metaphysically, this is the relation between soul and body, aswell as among God, finite souls, and the world.


Sam. kara’s Critique of Categories

The Advaita Vedanta, not unlike Nagarjuna, launched a radicalcritique of all doctrines of categories.

In this brief exposition, we shall expound the Advaita thesis intwo steps:

1 Sam. kara’s Rejection of Different Types of Reals, leaving only thecategory of substance and relation.

2 Eeven the categories of substance and relation cannot becoherently stated.



Rejection of Vaises.ika Categoreis

The Vaises.ika thesis is that there are many different types ofreals.

They are nonetheless related by “inherence” (samavaya),

There is an ontological glue that respects differences of typewhile knitting those entities together

Inherence is defined as the relation between entities which are”inseparable” (ayutasiddha).



Sam. kara’s Critique of Vaises.ika Categories

Sam. kara questions the sense in which a substance and its qualityor a substance and its actions are inseparable while yet beingdistinct types of entities, and argues that none of the sensesdoes it hold good.

All these lead Sam. kara to the conclusion that it is best to saythat all these entities are, at bottom, identical.

The ”blue” and the “Lotus” - in “the blue lotus”-arefundamentally identical.

The quality is of the nature of the substance.



Non-Substantial Categories Are Mere Names for

Substance

It is the substance that, from a different perspective, is called bydifferent names, just as the sameDevadatta is sometimes referred to as ”the son of Yajnadatta,””the husband of Rukmini,” ”the father of Rucidatta,” and soforth.The guna, and likewise an action, is really, in essence, thesubstance (dravyatmakata gunasya).It would seem, then, that for Sam. kara there is only one category,namely substance, and one relation, namely ”tadatmya” (”beingits essence”).It is a form of identity that ”tolerates” differences(bhedasahis.n. u).



Substance Entails Difference

The category of substance entails “difference”:

1 difference of a substance from other substances

2 difference of a substance from its qualities and actions,

3 difference between the particular and the universals itexemplifies,

4 difference between the permanent substance and its changingstates,

5 difference between the cause-substance and the effect-substance.



Dialectical Critique of the Category of Difference

The philosophers of the Sam. kara school therefore undertake adialectical critique of the very category of ”difference”.

By this they show that it involves incoherencies such as infiniteregress and self-contradiction.

What is called into question is the ontological status anddeterminability of ”difference.”

The Central argument is that difference can neither be a relationnor a quality of the substance



Difference Cannot be a Quality of the Substance

1 Suppose that A is different from B and that A’s difference fromB is a quality of A.

2 If A’s difference from B is a quality, the it is different from Aitself.

3 If A’s difference from B is itself different from A, it cannot be aquality of A.

The same holds good of B’s difference from A.



Difference Cannot be a Relation Between A and B

Suppose difference is a relation between A and B.

Then one may ask, how is this relation itself related to A and toB?

We thus are confronted with infinite regress at all levels.



Falsity of the Theory of Category

If difference is not a real, then the entire theory of categories-ofwhichever school-becomes false

That is to say, difference is only phenomenally real, havingconceptual reality but not ontological reality.


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Category Vedanta