Issue #46

Abstract: The problem-based study aims to clarify the meanings of the notions of the internal and the external in Utpaladeva’s ontology, which constitutes a rational core of Kashmir Shaivism, and their role in its systematization, along with the refutation of one main and two additional arguments in favor of its idealism. The first sections are devoted to analyzing what Utpaladeva understands by the impossibility for an object to exist independently of consciousness, i.e., to the notion of the internal. That required thoroughly examining the first nine verses of the fifth chapter of the first section of his main treatise. The main arguments against his so-called idealism are also stated there, and Utpaladeva’s ontology itself is proposed to be considered as a refutation of idealism. The subsequent sections focus on the analysis of the notion of the external and no longer follow the structure of the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā. They are devoted to the study of the necessary conditions for the acquisition of the external status by objects, as well as its meaning and purpose. They also refute an additional argument in favor of Utpaladeva’s idealism, which is based on a misunderstanding of his interpretation of the notion of vikalpa. The concluding sections address the issue of how the notions of the internal and the external shape the ontology of the limited subject and the “soteriology” of the Pratyabhijñā. Besides, they refute the second additional argument in favor of the idealistic nature of this doctrine and draw attention to the commonplace misconceptions on which attempts at such arguments are based, namely the tendency, on the one hand, to attribute to the limited subject the ability to cognize independently and, on the other, to deny the possibility for the universal subject to be affected by external objects. To dismantle them, an interpretation of false egoity in the Pratyabhijñā is proposed, according to which it should be considered not merely an appearance but an appearance of appearance. It is concluded that the doctrine under consideration represents the only successful attempt to confine causality within consciousness in world philosophy.