Amod Lele has a brilliant post that has initiated a discussion that gets interesting by the day. I have had some connectivity problems since yesterday and this has indeed prevented me keeping pace with the threads regularly. I have entered into a discussion in person with a colleague of mine who has told me about his understandings of Aurobindo and is candid enough to admit his own shortcomings when talked to about SR, but on the whole is quite startled to learn the probable points of convergence between the two ways of thought. This is a post that deals mainly with the replies and opinions and would have to wait for a deeper understanding of Aurobindo's thought and thereby correlating (oops!, I believe this is taken as a dictionary lexicon) it with SR.
I had never thought of Chinese philosophy coming close to SR. I myself have had issues with coming to terms with Harman’s notion of OOO and the dismissing of Anthropocentrism and many Indian thinkers I have had the chance to discuss the nullifying of human-centeredness have directed me close to Buddhist thought, wherein at one level, the being and what is being thought become one. I also found some interesting linkages between SR and Aurobindo’s thought. But the real problem lies in ‘correlationism’ and is it ever possible to exorcise the ghost of it. One thing is for sure that Indian thought is getting more and more human-centric and there I think your analogy of moving away from Indian Philosophy and ever closer to Chinese philosophy as what the SR is doing sounds interesting. though, i must admit, Chinese philosophy is hopelessly unexplored by me and this post would get me to look into it. thanks for it. another point is, can everything be treated as objects as in Harman’s OOO. As in one of his criticisms, it is said, that Harman’s (Kvond’s blog) attempt to decenter and remove the human from the privileged point of access for any ‘first philosophy’, naturalizes the human by smuggling it through the backdoor: he takes Husserl’s transcendental starting point of the Cartesian withdrawal-into-self through universal doubt and then extends it to the propositions that “all objects withdraw into themselves” is apt. isn’t it?
Amol replied by asking to elaborate on the linkages between SR and Aurobindo, to which I have only cursorily replied at present:
The link between SR and Aurobindo is what I am deliberating on with a colleague of mine from the ashram. It is said by Aurobindo that even an inanimate object has consciousness that could act morphogenetically to evolve. This consciousness is innate/inherent and is particulate in nature: a kind of separated one at that from the cosmic consciousness. this could be looked upon as a play, albeit never a revision to determine if the particulate consciousness on its own could evolve to realize the divine plan. as of now, in the writings, man is invested with the exponential acceleration of realizing the plan, or even if he fails in his endeavour, the superman concept of Aurobindo would achieve it. Although this is to a large extent human-centric, what really interested me and is still is baffling me is the contingency invested in the inanimate object with its particulate consciousness to achieve it as well. This is where i see the link between SR and Aurobindo and Meillassoux's reaction to post-Kantian 'correlationism'. This might not have been articulated all that well, but i have just laid hands on my copy of letters on yoga by Aurobindo and this purports to strike some revelations.
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himanshu
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