Abstract
This essay discusses the notion of Absolute as developed by Hiralal Haldar in response to Hegel and British neo-Hegelians of late 19th and early 20th century. The first section situates Haldar in the broader intellectual context of colonial India. The second and the third sections deal with the complexities of the notion of Absolute and its relation to finite selves . The fourth section addresses the question of the nature of Absolute (God ) and its relation to Man (human persons) and whether personality can be ascribed to Absolute . The fifth section discusses the issue of idealism and realism . Haldar develops the notion of Absolute which serves as dynamic principle of spiritual reconciliation between appearance and reality, between real and ideal, between matter and mind, and between science and spirituality . He critiques both subjective idealism and realism and develops what is called ‘realist idealism ’ which is the most favored metaphysical position prevalent in colonial India both among academic philosophers and public intellectuals.
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Notes
- 1.
This is Jonardon Ganeri’s claim that there was pre-colonial modernity in Indian philosophy in new research program of Navya-Nyāya .
- 2.
This fact is underlined at the very beginning of Contemporary Indian Philosophy edited by Radhakrishnan and Muirhead (1936). The blurb of the volume states: “The most momentous phenomenon of our times is the mingling of East and West. Though it is impossible to foresee the outcome of this process, the contributions to this volume by writers representative of Indian thought as M.K. Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore , Radhakrishnan and Ananda Coomaraswamy , Dasgupta and Bhagavan Das among others, indicate the direction in which this process is advancing. Apart from its technical value in the field of philosophy, the publication has a certain political importance, as India stands to-day both in politics and in philosophy at the opening of a new era in her history. The book, it is hoped, will contribute to a better mutual understanding between the whole mind of East and West.”
- 3.
Hiralal Haldar (c. 1865–1942) like Brajendra Nath Seal was a renowned neo-Hegelian of his time though both Seal and Haldar in the later part of their life renounce Hegel and Hegelianism for different reasons. Haldar departs from Hegel’s notion of the Absolute on the question of the relationship between thought and reality. He studied (c. 1882) under William Hastie (then principle of General Assembly, now known as The Scottish College, Calcutta). Like B.N. Seal, he was the George V Professor of philosophy at Calcutta University during 1931–1933. He was considered as one of those teachers of Calcutta University who was best liked by their students. He was initiated in studying Hegel by Edward Caird’s book, Hegel (Blackwood Philosophical Classics Series), William Wallace’s Prolegomena to Hegel’s Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and Bradley’s Ethical Studies. His magnum opus is Neo-Hegelianism (1927) wherein he summarizes the British neo-Hegelian movement with his own critical comments on major British neo-Hegelian philosophers such as T.H. Green, Caird, William Wallace, Bradley, Bosanquet, John Watson, Muirhead, Mackenzie, Haldane, and McTaggert. The book is appended with his own independent reading of Hegelianism (see Appendix, “Hegelianism and Human Personality”, pp. 438-486). Haldar’s contribution to neo-Hegelianism is acknowledged as very significant even in Cambridge and Oxford of his times. Haldar is instrumental in popularizing neo-Hegelian thought among Indian philosophers working in Indian Universities. His Realistic Idealism in Contemporary Indian Philosophy (Radhakrishnan and Muirhead) is one of his most important statements of his philosophical position, giving a comprehensive account of realist idealism, which was a dominant metaphysical position of Anglophone philosophers in modern India. Haldar wrote several articles in the journal Philosophical Review .
- 4.
According to Haldar, consciousness of effort is an essential attribute of Will, and for this reason Will cannot be equated with attention. Haldar is defending the thesis that Absolute or God is also Will (Haldar 1899: 264).
- 5.
In this context, Haldar criticizes Josiah Royce for reducing will only to attention. Will includes conscious feeling of making effort as an essential element of will. Thus, it cannot be considered only as attention (Haldar 1899: 264).
- 6.
“Professor Royce does not say by what sign the present is to be distinguished from past or future in the eternal instant. This sign, I maintain, is that while the present contains actual expression of force, or, from our point of view, manifestations of the Absolute Will , involving but transcending experiences of resistance and effort, the past and future are only intuited and presuppose attention alone. Unless you make a real distinction between past and present other than that which depends on succession, succession itself loses all its meaning” (Haldar 1899: 268).
- 7.
“…the individuals in which the Absolute is expressed, possessing its nature, are subordinate wholes realized in their own differences which, parts of parts as they are, retain, as integral elements of the Absolute, their inalienable property of being whole and Infinite” (Haldar 1918: 376).
- 8.
The relation between Absolute, Infinite and particular individual constituent is like the relationship between State and the individuals. “State is other than the aims and ideals of its citizens which are brought into coordination with each other through their sub-ordination to it” (Haldar 1918: ibid).
- 9.
“Mind, according to pan-psychism , is the self-appearance of matter and matter in the appearance of one mind to another. A thing, as seen from within, is a conscious being, but in so far as it is the object of knowledge of another conscious being, it is what we call matter. But if each object has a separate mind of its own, a mind which is itself from another point of view, how is it possible for it to go beyond itself so as to bring other things within the fold of its knowledge? How can pan-psychism explain the self-transcendence of a conscious being without which the combination of minds into a larger mind would not be possible?” (Haldar 1918: 380–381).
- 10.
“Man,” observes Hegel shrewdly, “if he wishes to be actual, must be there and then, and to this end, he must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality” (Hegel 1892, 173).
- 11.
“Eternal Being-in-and-for-itself is something which unfolds itself, determines itself, differentiates itself, posits itself as its own difference, but the difference, again, is at the same time eternally done away with and absorbed ; what has essential Being, Being-in-and-for-itself eternally returns to itself in this, and only in so far as it does this is it spirit ” (Hegel 1895, 46).
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Biswas, T. (2015). The Notion of Absolute: Hegel and Hiralal Haldar . In: Deshpande, S. (eds) Philosophy in Colonial India. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 11. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2223-1_6
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