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The idea of the primacy of the Absolute’s point of view is a fundamental requirement in Advaita. Using this point of view as the criterion, Advaita declares the empirical world to be not real. But only if “the other” is truly there, such a step would be really warranted. Besides, once such a point of view is admitted, there will be several implications that logically follow from it and all such implications must also be satisfactory and tenable. This chapter is a brief examination of this important issue in Advaita.

This chapter discusses Nietzche's reading of the third Critique. It also demonstrates that the standard interpretation of early Nietzsche's development and debt to Schopenhauer generates difficulties that a more Kantian reading avoids. It then talks about Nietzsche's own edifying myth — that this world is the product of something he called the ‘Dionysian world-artist’. It explains that his myth owes more to Kant's idea of a divine transcendent understanding which projects an empirical world than to Schopenhauer's atheistic cosmology of a mindless ‘will’ that ‘objectifies’ itself in phenomena.

Chapter Eight considers putative problems that a Kantian account of meaning faces. Most striking are the relativism of the empirical world, possible plurality of empirical worlds, and possible movability between empirical worlds. In each case the chapter considers whether the putative problems are genuine and if so offers multiple replies. Hence it shows that there is even more reason to prefer a Kantian account of meaning to other such accounts. Finally the chapter shows in Kant’s own spirit that Kantianism entails a “unity of reason”—a unity among empirical concepts, terms, and properties, as well as epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics themselves.

This chapter examines the Indian affinities of Arthur Schopenhauer’s doctrine of representation. It first considers the teachings of Advaita Vedānta and Mādhyamika schools regarding the deceptive nature of the empirical world. In particular, it discusses the concept of māyā, and the likening of the empirical world to a dream; the world as a creation of mind, devoid of inherent reality; and the doctrine of dependent origination as it was reformulated by Nāgārjuna. It then explores the views of Schopenhauer, the Advaita philosophers and the Mādhyamikas about the reality-status of the world, along with the agreement between the Mādhyamika and Advaita teaching of the doctrine of Two Truths and Schopenhauer’s transcendental idealism. The chapter also highlights the link between the Western philosophical tradition and Indian thought in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the world as representation.

The Kant of the Critiques believed that it was reason and not feeling which gives us access to secure moral direction and that we moral beings are purely rational persons. However, Kant's ethical position seeks for the realization that as purely rational beings we should inhabit a world separate from contingency and the uncertainty of the empirical world of the senses instead of a world of freedom in which a human person can have a free will. Kant also develops his idea of “ends” where he identifies the determinant of the rational will between subjective and objective ends. On the other hand Scheler reacted that we must remember ethics not just simply as a theoretical pursuit, instead it helps us to understand and resolve moral problems in which our heart sees both positive and negative values as seen through a complex set of “feelings”.

This chapter examines the metaphysics that underlies the empirical world by focusing on how Śamkara and other philosophers of Advaita Vedānta conceived the process by which the world comes into being and appears as external reality. It first considers the notion that objects, and the empirical world more generally, exist not as material realities but as metaphysical facts—that is, as mental conditioning superimposed upon consciousness or Brahman-ātman. It then discusses the three “bodies” or levels of existence that make up the human individual: the physical or gross body, the subtle body, and the causal body. It also explores the concepts of karmic impressions and formative forces in Indian thought, along with the subtle and causal bodies of the cosmos corresponding to Hiranyagarbha and Avyakta, respectively. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the inverted World Tree, a different image for the cosmic vital energy that underlies and supports the manifested world.

This chapter examines how the arising of the empirical world is understood in Buddhism by focusing on the Yogācāra teaching. The Buddhist tradition shares with Hinduism essentially the same understanding of karmic impressions, formative forces, and “seeds.” The formative forces arise out of ignorance and lead to cognition as a subject aware of objects. This chapter first provides a background on the Yogācāra school before explaining what brings the formative forces into being from a Buddhist perspective. It then considers the Yogācāra doctrine of “mind only” (cittamātra), along with the concept of the store-consciousness or ālaya-vijñāna as the source of suffering. It also discusses the two aspects of karman, dubbed paripūraka and āksepa-karman.

This chapter examines Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts about the reality-status of the world and how they relate to the teaching of Advaita Vedānta regarding the doctrine of the ultimately unreal nature of the world. It first considers Śamkara’s doctrine of non-origination, in which he argues that the world has never truly come into being and exists only in appearance. It then explains how duality, in the shape of the empirical world, gives rise to a teaching of two standpoints, or drsti, in Advaita Vedānta: the standpoint of knowledge (or non-duality) and the standpoint of ignorance (or duality). It also explores the three stages of the principle of causality—satkārya-vāda, parināma-vāda, and bhedābheda-vāda—to highlight the conflicting positions with regard to the reality-status of the world.

This chapter examines the main features of Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts about the reality-status of the empirical world and how they relate to the Mādhyamika teaching of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It first considers monk-scholar Nāgārjuna’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of dependent origination and compares his views with the Mādhyamika reinterpretation. It then explores Nāgārjuna’s throughts about emptiness (śūnyatā) and inherent being (svabhāva). It also discusses the importance of the teaching of the doctrine of Two Truths (satya-dvaya), together with the doctrines of dependent origination and emptiness, for the Mādhyamika school. Finally, it analyzes the concept of the everyday truth (samvrti-satya).