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Realm Between Immanent and
Transcendent

R. P. Singh

Journal of Indian Council of

Philosophical Research

ISSN 0970-7794
Volume 32
Number 1

J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (2015)

32:45-58
DOI 10.1007/s40961-015-0003-0

1 23
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1 23
 Author's personal copy
J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58
DOI 10.1007/s40961-015-0003-0

Realm Between Immanent and Transcendent

Philosophy of K. Satchidananda Murty

R. P. Singh

Published online: 14 March 2015

# ICPR 2015

Abstract The present paper is an attempt to develop late Professor K. Satchidananda

Murty’s quest to articulate Immanent and Transcendent in his philosophical journey
from Upanishads to German idealism and Marxism. It is proposed to be achieved by
explicating Murty’s understanding of the views of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx
on human condition and its transcendence or emancipation. For this purpose, I will
discuss consciousness as the ultimate reality being transcendent and immanent in
Vedanta as well as in German idealism. The ambition and challenge of the present
article is to pursue Murty’s cross-cultural perspective to the extent that the ideas of
thinkers of very different traditions, especially culturally and intellectually distinct
traditions, are contested on the fullness of thought concerning immanent and transcen-
dent as is evident in comparing Sankara, Kant, and Hegel on consciousness in relation
to Buddha and Marx on suffering and alienation. Whereas Murty refers to them, from
cross-cultural perspective, with limited end to substantiate his position on the “realm
between” derived from Upanishads and Vedanta infused with Buddhism, I wish to
present, from the same perspective, some clarifications, annotations, and summations
from German idealism and Marxism, which may be useful for expanding Murty’s
preliminary acquaintance with them. I wish to argue that though there is antithetical
nature of these perspectives, yet the distinctions between immanent and transcendent
have been one of the fundamental conceptual linkages under different cultural
background.

Keywords Immanent . Transcendent . Consciousness . Suffering . Alienation .

Emancipation . Culture

R. P. Singh (*)
Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India
e-mail: rpsinghjnu@yahoo.com

R. P. Singh
e-mail: rpsingh@mail.jnu.ac.in
 Author's personal copy
46 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

The present paper is an attempt to develop late Professor K. Satchidananda Murty’s

quest to articulate Immanent and Transcendent in his philosophical journey 1 from
Upanishads to German idealism and Marxism. It is proposed to be achieved by
explicating Murty’s understanding of the views of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx
on human condition and its transcendence. Whereas Murty refers to them, from cross-
cultural perspective, with limited end to substantiate his position on the “realm be-
tween” derived from Upanishads and Vedanta infused with Buddhism, I wish to
present, from the same perspective, some clarifications, annotations, and summations
from German idealism and Marxism, which may be useful for expanding Murty’s
preliminary acquaintance with them. I wish to argue that though there is antithetical
nature of these perspectives, yet the distinctions between immanent and transcendent
have been one of the fundamental conceptual linkages under different cultural back-
ground. For this purpose, I will discuss consciousness as the ultimate reality being
transcendent and immanent in Vedanta as well as in German idealism. The ambition
and challenge of the present article is to pursue Murty’s cross-cultural perspective to the
extent that the ideas of thinkers of very different traditions, especially culturally and
intellectually distinct traditions, are contested on the fullness of thought concerning
immanent and transcendent as is evident in comparing Sankara, Kant, and Hegel on
consciousness in relation to Buddha and Marx on suffering and alienation.
The lifework of Padmavibhushan Professor K. Satchidananda Murty (Sept. 25th 1924–
Jan. 24th 2011) is largely the philosophical discourse and debate in India, South-East Asia,
Europe, and the USA for the last six decades. He was critically concerned and engaged with
the contemporary issues and trends in philosophy, polity, and society including interna-
tional relations from an interdisciplinary and inter-cultural perspective. With an all com-
prehensive scholarship and intellectual vision, he dealt with most of the themes on
consciousness and values, including epistemological questions raised not only by Indian
thinkers but also by Kant, Hegel, and Marx. One of his outstanding contributions to the
Indian academia has been to analyze and understand conceptual linkages under cultural
perspectives and historical contextualities. He has sought to achieve a thorough-going
synthesis of developments in philosophy and culture. It is not easy to assess the work of a
scholar whose professional competence extends from Vedic hermeneutics to Reason and
Revelation; the logic of Nyaya to the sociology of knowledge, by way of Hegel, Feuerbach,
and Marx; and the more recondite sources of the European metaphysical tradition. There is
no corner-cutting, no facile evasion of difficulties or squires enunciation of conclusions
unsupported by research: whether he is developing the intellectual tradition of India or
reassessing Nyaya, evolving and evaluating consciousness, delving into the modernity of
Kant and Hegel, or bringing Jnana into debate, there is always the same uncanny mastery
of the sources, joined to an enviable talent for clarifying intricate logical puzzles.

1
Besides Upanishads, Vedanta, and Buddhism, I will be going into the details of Murty (1973). It has been
divided into four chapters, namely, Suffering, Salvation, Religious Action, and Transcendental Philosophy. It
is an illustrious illumination of Murty’s philosophic quest. Late Professor Daya Krishna remarks, “Professor
K. Satchidananda Murty’s The Realm of Between is an extraordinary book by any standard. One is dazzled by
the wide range of reading of the author not only in the field of philosophy but in that of literature also spanning
all centuries both the Eastern and the Western traditions. He also displays deep insight and understanding of
philosophical issues both of India and the West, a combination which is rare indeed. Almost on every page one
is startled by the aptness of quotations and the diversity of sources from which they have been culled. Few
philosophers in India seem so much at home in literature as Murty seems to be” (Krishna 1995).
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 47

The philosophical insight to the realm between immanent and transcendent is

derived from many sources including Upanishads, Sānkhya, and Gītā. In
Brahadāranyakopnisad (IV. 3.9) as is acknowledged by Murty, it is said, “Standing
in this intermediate condition, one sees both the conditions; namely, being in this world
and being in the other world,” thus the realm of between falls at the juncture (tsmin
sandhye sthāne, or ubhe sthāne) of immanent as well as the transcendent. The
transition in terms of elevation from immanent to the transcendent has been stated in
Kathopanishad (13.10.11), “Beyond the senses are the objects; beyond the objects is
the mind; beyond the mind, the intellect; beyond the intellect, the great Ātman; beyond
the great Ātman, the Unmanifest; beyond the Unmanifest, the Purusha. Beyond the
Purusha there is nothing: this is the end, the Supreme Goal.” Additionally, the Taittirīya
Upanishad says: That, from which our speech turns back along with mind, being
unable to comprehend its fullness, is the Ultimate Reality. Kenopanishad says: That
where the eye is unable to go, where neither speech nor mind is able to reach—what
conception can we have of it, except that it is beyond all that is known, and beyond all
that is unknown. In Sankhya (Karika 10), there are Mūla prakriti (the unmanifest) and
prakriti (the manifest) besides number of illustrations in Gītā.
It is possible for man not only to become aware of both immanence of alienation and
transcendence as emancipation, of evil and the good, and of suffering and delight, but
also its philosophical doctrines, from cross-cultural perspective, in terms of the
vyāvahārika and the pārmārthika (Nagarjuna, Sankara, Ramanuja, and other
Vedantins) in India, the phenomenon and the noumenon (Kant), the dialectics of
transcendent and immanent (Hegel), and alienation and its overcoming in Marx in
the West. In a situation like this, one is able to see both the “evils and joys.” In the
words of Murty “… it is possible for man to become aware of both immanence and
transcendence of evil and the good, of suffering and delight.”2 It is curious that Murty
chose to reflect on one term of the pair only, that is, suffering, and since that seems to
lie on this side of the middle, that is, immanence, the two get connected in an intimate
way and form the back bone of the discourse.
Murty begins with Buddha’s saying that there is suffering and the cessation of
suffering, and this saying encapsulates not only of Indian philosophy but also of
Western philosophy specially Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx as Murty observes. He
illustrates it with Hegel’s Early Theological Writings and Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion being fully aware of the changes in the nomenclature. Some of the issues
discussed in the text, besides the issue of suffering, have to do with the concept of God,
i.e., what is the nature of this concept; whether God exists or not; and how the world is
related with God, modes of worship, and forms of salvation. As a result, there is little
discussion about suffering as a social fact except a tangential mention of Marx. I wish
to develop its implications on the doctrine of consciousness in Hegel and Kant.
In his early Berne period, Hegel invidiously contrasted the positive faith of
Christianity with that of antiquity, which he regarded as a religion of dignity and
freedom. In that connection, he remarks: “A positive faith is a system of religious
propositions which are true for us because they have been presented to us by an
authority which we cannot fault… the concept implies a system of religious proposi-
tions or truths which must be held to be truths independently of our own opinions, and

2
Murty, The Realm of Between. p. 2.
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48 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

which even if no man has ever perceived them, and even if no man has ever considered
them to be truths, nevertheless remain truths” (Lukacs 1975).
Here, positivity entails the authoritatively imposed, rather than the voluntarily
accepted. It is that which is accepted out of deference to the position of
another, rather than for the reasons given on its behalf: It is that which is
supported by the powers that be. To that extent, the critique of positivity in
Hegel becomes the potential basis for the critique of any status quo. It is this
early critique of positivity in Hegel, then, which is one of the groundings of his
philosophy’s potential radicalism, just as Hegel’s vaunting of a kind of scien-
tific positivity later disposes him to conservatism.
In his critique of Christianity, Hegel observed that “the objectivity of the
deity increased in direct proportion to the increase in the corruption and slavery
of man, and this objectivity is in reality no more than a revelation, a manifes-
tation of this spirit of the age… The spirit of the age was revealed in the
objectivity of its God when . . . it was introduced into a world alien to us, in a
realm in which we had no share, where we would not acquire a place through
our activity, but at most by begging or conjuring our way in; it was an age in
which man was a Non-ego and his God another Non-ego.... In such an age the
Deity sheds all its subjectivity and becomes nothing but an object.”3
Hegel through “Unhappy Consciousness” criticizes the transcendent God and
its ethic of salvation. Hegel, as a Lutheran, opposes the Christian view of life
on earth as a pilgrimage on the way to heaven. The unhappy consciousness is
the extreme form of alienation between self and world. Hegel’s aim was mainly
to overcome the alienation between self and world. He still gave a fundamental
role to religion. It was religion that would reconcile the individual to his world
by showing him the immanence of the divine in nature and history. So, if the
solution to the problem of alienation was to deny a transcendent God, it was
also to affirm an immanent one. He rationalizes the concept of God, denying its
supernatural status and making it immanent in the world, so that God is
inseparable from nature and history. Self-consciousness is the process in order
to attain reason. He says, “Reason is spirit, when its certainty of being all
reality has been raised to the level of truth, and reason is consciously aware of
itself as its own world, and of the world as itself.”4 Reason is the reconciliation
of subjectivity and objectivity. The dichotomy between immanent and transcen-
dent is overcome in this stage when the finite subject arises as universal self-
consciousness.
And in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel adds, “Philosophy is itself,
in fact, worship (Die philosophie ist der selbst Gottesdienst); it is religion, for in the
same way it renounces subjective notions and opinions in order to occupy itself with
God… The object of religion as well as of philosophy is eternal truth in its objectivity,
God and nothing but God and the explication of God…In philosophy; religion gets
justification from thinking consciousness” (Hegel 1895).

3
Ibid. p. 69. There is nothing novel about the terms Entausserung and Entfrewdung. These are simply
German translations of the English word “alienation.”
4
Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Mind, p. 457
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 49

This position of Hegel is in sharp reaction to Kant. The central claim of Hegel’s
philosophy as against Kant is that we cannot speak of the Absolute without at the same
time speaking of self-consciousness of human mind nor fruitfully pursue that interro-
gation itself unless we conceive our activity in doing so as one sustained and made
possible by the Absolute.
Hegel’s Spirit is, above all, a doctrine about the relationship between thought and
objective reality. Hegel means by speaking Spirit the mediation or middle point
between the Idea (the categories and the Notion which are also known as the truth in
the most absolute and objective form) and Nature (the sphere of external existence
which the truth is “about”). Hegel designates the term “Idea” to the absolute truth.
Nature is the term which Hegel gives to that truth as we find it in the outward existence
of the world. Spirit, however, is the mode of existence of the whole in which
everything, which is known, is embodied in being. Idea and Nature are dialectical
opposites, but spirit is the unity between them. Hegel’s contention is that there is
something which is identical neither with the sphere of our thought nor with the objects
of our thought. It is the Geist that imparts an intelligible form of both these spheres.
Spirit is the active synthesis of our consciousness of the world and what we are
conscious of. This is Hegel’s epistemological quest too. In epistemology, then, we
are concerned with the object which we have with our consciousness of it. But this is of
such a nature that the distinction between what exists for us and what exists in itself is
not a distinction between what is available to us in consciousness and what is not. Both
sides of distinction fall within the grasp of consciousness. In other words, the Kantian
distinction between phenomena and noumena is not acceptable to Hegel. The basic
question, for Hegel, is how in consciousness we are related to our objects, and when
our object is our own consciousness, it is clear that there is no danger that our
consciousness should have an existence in itself which is in principle hidden from us
and separates from that consciousness as it exists for us.
In formulating his own position, Hegel applauds Kant’s discovery of the transcen-
dental doctrine of consciousness as the ultimate source of conceptual synthesis. He
approves Kant’s criticism that consciousness cannot be an object of sensibility; hence,
categories cannot be applied to it. But this is not, Hegel contends, because categories
overstep their legitimate limits, but because soul is a living and active being, just as
complex as it is self-identically simple. In fact, its simplicity is just as indivisible whole
that is constituted solely by the cohesion and inseparability of its diverse traits, aspects,
and activities. Kant’s objections, according to Hegel, are valid, but his reasons are
wrong ones.
Hegel elucidates two aspects of Spirit: first, that Spirit requires the distinction of
subject and object and, second, that Spirit overcomes the supposed distinction between
subject and object. The first is the moment of estrangement, and the second is its
transcendence or enlargement. Spirit is, thus, the locus of both estrangement and
enlargement. Hegel takes over the doctrine from Kant that consciousness is necessarily
bipolar and it is part of Hegel’s general espousal of the view that “rational awareness
requires separation. Consciousness is only possible when the subject is set over against
an object” (Taylor 1979; Kant 1973).
Kant designates the general characteristics of consciousness as “transcenden-
tal unity of apperception.” It consists of forms of intuition (space and time) and
the concepts or categories, which are not static forms, but forms of operation
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50 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

that exist only in the act of apprehending and comprehending representations.

The forms of intuition synthesize the manifold of sensibility into spatiotemporal
order. By virtue of the categories, the results of the spatiotemporal order are
brought to universal and necessary relations of cause and effect, substance,
reciprocity, and so on. And this entire complex is unified in the transcendental
apperception which relates all experience to the “thinking ego,” thereby giving
the experience the continuity of being “my experience.”
Kant’s transcendental consciousness is the true spectator. It transcends the
validity of knowledge and has no objective correlate which could be logically
claimed to be its “expression” or “reflection” (Kant 1973). In fact, Kant warns in
the Preface to the First Edition of Critique of Pure Reason: “Human reason has
this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions
which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but
which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.” 5 It is the
witness of all the representations but retains noumenal status. Hence, there lies a
dualism between phenomenon and noumenon or between immanent and transcen-
dent (in fact, Kant draws a distinction between empirical, transcendental, and
transcendent). The noumenon as transcendent remains unknown and unknowable
because humans have no access to intellectual intuition (Kant 1973).
Fichte tries to systematize Kant’s transcendental knowing self with the nou-
menal acting self. There is but one self, according to Fichte, an active, moral,
striving self, whose primary concern is moral self-realization. Once the dualism
between the world of “knowing” and the world of “doing” is overcome by
positing one-self, Fichte proclaims the nature of self, then, is to act and its
essential goal is the realization of its own freedom. In fact, Fichte’s whole labor
is devoted to bridge the gulf between the first and the second Critique. Fichte
interprets the self he has derived from Kant’s first Critique. On the one hand, the
self is transcendental, whose fundamental thrust is its own intuition of itself; on
the other hand, it is primarily a moral self, free-in-itself, who subsumes even
knowledge—particularly self-knowledge—to its moral pursuits.
Hegel also tries to overcome the dualism between phenomenal and noumenal
consciousness. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel has this to say:
“The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating
itself through its development. Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a
result, that only in the end is it what it truly is; and that precisely in this consists its
nature, viz., to be actual subject, the spontaneous becoming of itself” (Hegel 1973a).
Strangely, Murty discusses Hegel’s view after he has discussed Feuerbach, who
came later and whose ideas seem to stem forth from Hegelian view of unhappy
consciousness. But I will follow the historical chronology. In Phenomenology of
Mind, having written on stoicism and skepticism, Hegel writes about the unhappy
consciousness which arises as a consequence of not being able to resolve the two
phases—self-liberating and self-confounding—of consciousness. In his words, “The
alienated soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and
merely contradictory being.” 6 As explained by Murty, “The self-conscious spirit

5
Ibid. Preface. p. 7, Avii.
6
Ibid. p. 207.
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 51

apprehends the objective world as alien and hostile, for all that is external to it is
experienced by it as directed against itself.”7 The basic Hegelian insight is that there can
be nothing apart from the spirit (geist). Thus, whatever appears to consciousness as not
falling within the spirit poses as other, alien or antithetical to it. It has to be got rid of
and assimilated within the spirit. This other appears in various ways. Every time it is
there, the task of consciousness is to deprive it of its otherness. In the context of life as
well as in relation to the urge for attaining a better state of being, the universal
consciousness or the self-liberating, self-identical, and unchangeable consciousness
confronts the particular self-confounding consciousness as the other. This is sort of a
contradiction within the unity of consciousness. Hence, it leads to its unhappiness
(unglucklichkeit). In Hegel’s words, “consciousness of life, of its existence and action,
is merely pain and sorrow over this existence and activity; for therein consciousness
finds only consciousness of its opposite as its essence—and of its own nothingness.”8
Murty finds Hegel’s views similar to those of Sankara; however, he has not
mentioned how far Hegel was aware of Indian philosophy in general and
Vedanta in particular. I would like to present some clarifications and annota-
tions to substantiate Murty’s cross-cultural perspective. We should, in the first
place, point to Hegel’s scarce knowledge of Indian philosophy represented only with the
help of two critical works, namely, of H.T. Colebrooke,9 1824, Essay on the Philosophy
of the Hindus and W. von Humboldt, 1825, On the Episode of the Mahābhārata Known
by the Name Bhagavad-Gitā. One of the fundamental reasons for comparing Sankara
with Hegel is that Hegel was partially aware of the Hindu religion and the Advaita
Vedanta of Sankara and the status of Consciousness in the Gitā.10 Murty believes that for
Hegel, the otherness of the objectivity of the world was not an illusion. This seems to be
misleading in view of the fact that Hegel does not reject the otherness, but insists on its
assimilation within the spirit. The negative character of reality is not annihilated but
assimilated in the later stage. This process is known as negation of negation. As Murty

7
Ibid. p. 23.
8
Ibid. p. 208
9
Colebrooke (1824). Interestingly, Europe in the early nineteenth century took to classical Indian studies in a
big way. The ethnic Croat Ivan FilipVesdin (1748–1806), better known under his monastic name Paulinus a
Sancro Bartholomaco, wrote the first published Sanskrit grammar Sidharubam Seu Grammitica
Samscrdamica, Rome 1790 (Upadhyaya 2001). With the efforts of German thinkers like J.W. von Goethe,
J.G. Herder, A.W. von Schlegel, and W. von Humbolt, special Sanskrit chairs were established at German
Universities like 1818 in Bonn, 1821 in Berlin, and 1826 in Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad in Russia). Hegel
was appointed at the University of Jena in 1801. A galaxy of scholars in Europe were able to read and write in
Sanskrit—Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Paul Deussen, Max Muller, Ferdinand de
Saussure, and so on. Consequently, he was not aware of how and in what way Indian philosophy is organized
and developed. Even if we take orthodox and unorthodox division of Indian philosophy as myth, being purely
academic arbitrariness, there is still a way to classify Indian philosophy, such as logic and cognition in Nyaya,
physics in Vaiseshika, cosmology in Sankhya, psychology in Yoga, reality in Vedanta, hermeneutics in
Mimamsa, ethics in Buddhism, anti-essentialism in Jainism, and so on. The logic of Nyaya is fundamental
for the entire corpus of philosophic culture in India, and to a great extent preconditions the basic logical forms
of thinking in Buddhist philosophy, is defined as especially confused. But, by the strange play of accident, it is
the logic of Nyaya, both from the early and syncretic periods, that seems to be the only philosophic
construction able to represent the rival Eastern model to traditional logic and phenomenology in the
Hegelian sense of the word. It is the logic of Nyaya that studies the ideal Gegenstandssein of the objects of
knowledge as related to the question of transcendental grounds of illusions, deviations, and contradictions in
cognition.
10
For details, please see von Humboldt (1995).
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52 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

himself remarks, “in thus recognizing itself in what previously appeared as something,
apart from it, the self transcends (aufhebung) the subject-object relation, or self-alien-
ation, for the world came to be because of its own self-externalization.”11 So far, as my
understanding of Sankara is concerned, Sankara would not accept the proposition that
the world is the self-externalization of Brahman. This is true that on commenting of
Brahadāranyakopnisad (IV.3.21), Sankara has written of “sarvātmabhava,” but he has
also mentioned “sarvasamsāradharma varjitam” and “nānyadastyātmana,” that is, Self
is devoid of all the characteristics of the world and that there is nothing besides it.
Considering the world as sat is owing to avidyā—ignorance. The dialectics of Hegel
does not seem to be propelled by avidyā or ignorance. Its operative terms are the
disparity between part and the whole and contradiction and sublimation (aufhebung).
Hegel objects to Christianity because its deity can be reached only by supplication,
pleas, and prayers but remains “a divinity beyond the reach of our power and our will.”
Men are thus impotent, “reduced to the level of passive onlookers . . . content to wait
for a revolution at the end of the world.” What men now seek is a response to their
supplications or a voluntary gift, but is not the result of their own potency: “we wait to
receive it without our own intervention” (Hegel 1973b). Here, Hegel’s critical platform
appears to be a version of the “gospel of labor,” a this-worldly activism that overlays
and sublimates a passive millenarianism.
In viewing the “objectivity” of Christian deity as the projection of an alienated
people, Hegel’s concept of alienation is not only a psychological estrangement, not
simply a feeling of distance from the object, but entails a practical, everyday absence of
control in a world where persons have become spectators, “passive onlookers,” incapa-
ble of themselves achieving their own values by their own efforts—in effect, waiting for
the revolution. In this critique of Christianity, Hegel is grounding himself in some tacit
alternative conception of what is appropriate to humanity, or of what kind of persons are
“normal” proper “subjects,” or what “subject-hood” means to him. To be a subject, for
Hegel, means to have power and control, not simply psychological union or closeness; it
means the capacity to achieve one’s goals against resistance and without supplication.
Hegel’s critique of positivity is already a critique of alienation at the level of cultural
criticism. What Marx adds to the theory of alienation, then, is not accomplished merely
by transposing a psychology into a sociology. Hegel had clearly begun to understand
that institutions such as religion, even the positive religions, were the products of the
kind of life that people lived together, the “spirit of the age,” and that thus persons were
involved not only when they opposed these “dead” forms but, also, in the dead forms
themselves. People were thus alienated by their practical ongoing activities—the things
persons presently continued to do or make—and not simply by the lifeless residues of
the past. In Lukacs’s formulation, “the independent existence of objects apart from
human reason could be conceived as the product of the development and activity of that
very same reason.... It contains the idea that the entire developments of society together
with all the ideological formations which it creates in the course of history are the
product of human activity itself, a manifestation of the self-production and reproduction
of society.”12

11
Ibid. p. 23.
12
Ibid. p. 75.
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 53

Gradually, says Lukacs, Hegel began to distinguish between the process by which
objects are brought into “positive” being, which he calls objectification or externaliza-
tion (Entausserung or Entfremdung), and the social institutions thereby created and
which have an objectivistic character as alienated things. Out of his own studies of
classical political economy, Hegel came to conclude that “work not only makes men
human . . . it not only causes the vast and complex array of social processes to come
into being, it also makes the world of man into an ‘alienated’, ‘externalized’ world… In
the concept of ‘externalization’, we find enshrined Hegel’s conviction that the world of
economics which dominates man and which utterly controls the life of the individual is
nevertheless the product of man himself,”13 even if it has this dead, alien character.
For Hegel, then, the everyday world in which persons live consists, at one and the
same time, of objects which are necessary to and express human life, but from which
they are alienated and which, in both cases, are the products of people’s activity,
without which neither objects nor persons would be. For Hegel, alienation is the
inescapable fate of humanity and its object world. Alienation is thus inherent in human
life which necessarily and everywhere creates the social world by making and using
objects, while making and transforming itself in that very process. At some point,
however, these objects no longer coincide with human purposes, the object world and
the inner world are no longer in gear, and men cease to recognize the object world as
having been brought into existence by their own human activity. Hegel thus indicates a
foundation for the materialist critique of religion subsequently developed by
Feuerbach, Strauss, and Marx, which views deity as a projection formulated by people
and specifically by persons living in a world “alien” to them, i.e., by alienated men.
Feuerbach has proposed a critique of religion from a humanistic-atheistic perspec-
tive. He says, “God is man, man is God. Atheism is the secret of religion. Religion
itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its
own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth
and divinity of human nature. Theology is Anthropology. While reducing theology to
anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology, very much as Christianity, while
lowering God into man, made man into God. Religion takes the apparent, the super-
ficial in Nature and humanity for the essential, and hence conceives their true essence
as a separate, special existence. Religion is the dream of the human mind…in these
days, illusion only is sacred, truth profane” (Feuerbach 1957).
Let us furnish a brief analysis of the passages quoted above. Humanity is wonderful
beyond measure. It is wonderful enough to be worthy of the same kind of lofty
evaluation we accord to God in religion. Taking the wonder of humanity seriously
means that we ought to try to explain the world in terms of human self-consciousness.
When we do this, several conclusions follow.
First, religion can be exhaustively explained as the result of the projection of human
needs and desires onto the universe; it can only survive so long as the projective
process is unconscious.

13
Ibid. p. 333. “In themselves there is nothing novel about the terms Entausserung and Entfrewdung. They are
simply German translations of the English word alienation. This was used in works on economic theory to
betoken the sale of a commodity, and in works on natural law to betoken the loss of an aboriginal freedom.”
Ibid. p. 538.
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54 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

Second, God can be exhaustively explained as the result of self-alienated projection

by humans of their own infinite self-consciousness (cp. Hegel, for whom humanity was
the result of God’s self-alienation). Each attribute of God expresses an aspect of the
hope humans have to be free from their limitations. The influence of Feuerbach is
enormous. There are connections from his thought to existentialism, atheism, psychol-
ogy, history of religions, Marxism, etc.
Writing about Feuerbach’s idea of alienation, according to which man postulates an
ideal image of God and then contrasts himself against Him, he finds himself as
worthless. Murty wonders how that could be possible? The fact that one is not as great
as some other great or greatest being need not cause any kind of wretchedness. “On the
contrary, knowledge of them and admiration or repugnance for one or the other or them
may make me do things which are worthwhile, in doing which I feel fulfillment and find
significance… If I know that the morally Perfect Being exists, that is a guarantee that
perfection can exist in its plenitude, and that at least somewhere the several kinds and
degrees of perfection could coincide with reality, and striving could bring me nearer to
that.”14 Feuerbach’s point of view would suggest that no striving would enable one to
become that being and that would make one miserable. Murty has fitting answer: “as a
philosopher I am overwhelmed and awed by the achievement of a Plato or a Kant but at
the same time such a thinker stirs and inspires me, makes me emulate him by attempting
to philosophize, but all the time I know my attempt is futile, for I cannot become a Plato
or a Kant. But that does not make me miserable or unhappy or my attempt worthless.”
Before coming to Murty’s account of alienation as conceived by Marx, it would be
convenient to go through a few interesting points which Murty discusses about
suffering in the addendum to his chapter on suffering. This piece is studded with
numerous quotations both from philosophers as well as poets and both from the
Western and Eastern sources. These sources relate to both ancient and modern times.
One set of quotes is meant to emphasize the general tenor of suffering, that it is
everywhere and all over. Few examples are the following: Vatsyayana: janma is
dukkha; Menander: being man and having suffering are same; Beckett: I suffer,
therefore I am; Sartre: being of human reality is suffering; Schopenhauer: all is unstable
hence happiness is inconceivable.15
On suffering, Murty concludes by considering the views of Marx who is supposed to
have remarked that he made Hegel to stand on his feet. Marx detached the notion of
alienation from the speculative context of Hegelian dialectic and brought it into focus in
the realm of social dynamics. As Murty observes, for Marx, proletariat expresses a total
negativity of the reality of reason in universal suffering and bondage. The principle of
suffering is rooted in the historical form society, in the relations of production, and
requires social action for its abolition. Marx explains how the dynamics of social forces
of production alienates workers from their nature, identity, work, and its product as well
as the process involved.
Marx’s analysis of alienation is firmly embedded in the recognition of the material
conditions of the wageworker under early capitalism. This separates Marx most
emphatically from all those writers on alienation from Hegel to the existentialists
who see alienation as a necessary characteristic that haunts people through all time,

14
Murty, The Realm of Between. pp. 20–21.
15
Ibid. pp. 30–40
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 55

irrespective of their material conditions. Instead of seeing alienation as part of the

human condition, Marx argues that it is the result of a specific set of social relations
where human productive activity is reduced to wage-labor and where the worker has no
control over the means of production or productive activity. In short, for Marx, the
worker’s alienation is the direct result of capitalist relations of production. Hence, for
Marx, there is a solution. If alienation is caused by capitalist relations, then, the removal
of those relations will remove the alienation itself. Marx’s solution, then, was not one of
metaphysics, but the revolutionary transformation of social relations.
But there is one strand of thinking derived from Feuerbach that Marx had not
completely discarded in the 1844 Manuscripts 16—the humanist notions of what it is
to be “truly human.” Marx argued that under capitalist social relations workers were
prevented from leading “truly human” lives and that only a socialist/communist
revolution could secure a “truly human” existence for them. The problem is this. If
according to the materialist conception of history, it is argued that human nature is not
pre-given to society, but is formed by it, and that the ideas prevalent in any age are
largely determined by the material conditions of that age, then, how can a humanist
position be accepted with its notions of “species-being” and “truly human” activity
determined abstractly for all time? In directly political terms, this issue questions
whether socialism is not only a means for ensuring control over the material means
of life but also represents a more “human” form of society in a broader sense.
There has been considerable controversy as to the value of Marx’s early works such
as the 1844 Manuscripts and the theory of alienation in particular. Some have argued
that they represent an important supplement to Marx’s later works on political economy
and politics where, they argue, the theory or alienation is itself still much in evidence
and represent a forceful insight into the human problems of living under capitalism.
Indeed, the notion of alienation has been broadened to include many of the personal
problems felt by people living and working under capitalism, from the boredom of
work to the loneliness of the concrete jungles where they have to live.
Others however would regard the theory of alienation as a piece of juvenile criticism of
the very Hegelian-Feuerbachian framework that Marx had still not completely rejected at
that time. It is then argued that Marx himself later rejected these earlier works. Specifically,
it is argued that Marx later rejected all remaining Feuerbachian notions when, together
with Engels, he began to work out the materialist conception of history. For example, in
the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx is said to have directly repudiated any humanist
notion of a human essence. “Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human
essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its
reality it is the ensemble of the social relations” (Marx 1976).
Here, Marx is saying that there is no such thing as the human essence. What people
have taken to be the human essence has actually been dependent on the material and
general conditions of that society, the “ensemble of the social relations.”
Hence, it is argued that, in spite of the presence of the notion of alienation in Marx’s
later writings, Marx abandoned his early theory of alienation. The presence of the
notion of alienation in the later works is then explained away in some way. For
example, it is argued that the concept of alienation shifted and no longer refers to its
earlier formulation but instead refers only to the alienation of the worker from the

16
Marx (1973). Also available in Marx and Engels (1975).
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56 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

product in that the worker does not own the product. Alternatively, it is sometimes
argued that the later presence of the concept of alienation represents some kind of
sentimental attachment to or vestigial remain of Marx’s earlier thinking and as such is
largely redundant, having no place in the theoretical framework of the later works.
As compared to Hegel and Feuerbach, Murty finds the approach of Marx to
alienation much sounder. But the kind of transformation of society and the desire to
end suffering do not necessarily involve materialistic view or dialectic. Against mo-
nistic approaches of Hegel and Sankara, Murty insists on the significance of empirical
experience and plurality in the world. As he has expressed elsewhere, he is much in
agreement with the approach of Madhva who said that to apprehend something is to see
it as unique. Perception shows that what is perceived is distinct from the perceiver.
Murty has devoted a chapter to the notion of atheism and has also discussed the
debate relating to the problematic of God’s existence in another chapter. His discussion
of these issues indicates that he is moving out of the theological frame within which he
began his investigations on suffering. Some of the main results from discussions are the
following: belief in God is not the same as belief in the transcendent; the relation
between theism, idealism, and materialism is contingent; similarly, the relation between
moral concern and moral effort and the religious belief is also contingent; and the
relation between suffering and unhappiness is also not necessary one.
As Murty observes, “When some men are in extremity of anguish and have nowhere
left to turn, they tend to believe in God, though it is not the only consideration that leads
men to God. Some believe in God and immortality in order that they may live this life,
endure it, and give it meaning. Other without a belief in God or immortality can live,
endure, find meaning, and engage themselves in ethical endeavor of the highest type. The
Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist sages are witnesses to this.” And again, “There may be
some who are certain that he does not exist and be therefore unhappy because reality is not
otherwise. On the other hand, those who experience him or believe in him may also be
unhappy, because of the fear of his judgment, of their inability to fulfill his demands or
obey his commands, of their imperfection as compared to is perfection, or of their
unworthiness to receive his love or mercy.” Regarding the distinction between belief in
God and belief in the transcendent, notice his remarks, “I do not think that now a lesser
number of people believe in God that ever before at no time did all men in any country
believe in God. In no country and at no time have all people been without a sense of the
Transcendent.” He concludes his work by the remark, “The Transcendent still triumphs.”17
Murty presents a cross-cultural synthesis of these issues which have been dealt with
in East and West in different ways. In the Indian context, “God only shaped the world
and … souls are eternal.” Greater concern of Indian religions is with “Dharma rather
than with a being who creates and governs the universe…” “If Dharma is of paramount
importance, knowledge of it naturally becomes very essential. This they believed was
contained in Veda because, (they argued) the Veda is of such a nature that no finite
intelligence could have composed it” On the other hand, Jainism and Buddhism did not
bother about the belief in God. They believed that the eternal norm was rediscovered
and revived by Jinnas and Buddhas, and it is possible for anyone to do so, if he treads
the same path.18

17
Murty, The Realm of Between. pp. 186, 207–212.
18
Ibid. pp. 162–189
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J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58 57

Thus, the dynamics of Dharma was conceived as independent of God. Human

beings reaped the fruits as a consequence of what they did. It was not required of a God
to govern them or regulate them. God did not interfere in the chain of action and its
consequences. So is declared Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisesika, and Mimamsa, as Murty
points out. Thus, the position that God was moral Governor of the world was not
tenable in the Indian context. However, in the domain of devotion or bhakti, God was
looked at differently. In that, realm action and knowledge were not significant. What
was necessary was dedication and surrender. Here, God took care of all actions. He
would dispense with them as was considered the arbiter of human destiny.
Such a position implied that if human being suffered, they suffered because of their
own doings. It was generally believed that if the cause or source of misery could not be
found within the present life of an individual, then, it must be found in some previous
birth or life. But then, question would arise why at all a human being had to suffer. One
widely accepted solution was that an individual did not know or realize his true self.
The true self was supposed to be different or distinct from the body. Suffering really
belonged to the body. The real self was eternal, imperishable, and not subject to any
physical causal impact. On the status of consciousness as the ultimate reality being
transcendent and immanent at the same time, the Taittirīya Upanishad says: That, from
which our speech turns back along with mind, being unable to comprehend its fullness,
is the Ultimate Reality. The Kenopanishad says: That where the eye is unable to go,
where neither speech nor mind is able to reach—what conception can we have of it,
except that it is beyond all that is known, and beyond all that is unknown. Śankara says
the same in these words, “Existence or Being, it is urged, is pure, subtle, indefinable,
all-pervading, one, taintless, indivisible, knowledge.” 19 As Murty puts it, “The inner
self in all beings, is one, but is not touched by the suffering that is the world which is
external to it, just as the Sun is not touched by the evil of the world though it shines
upon it and illuminates” it and further, “Unaware of himself as spirit, overpowered by
ignorance, desire and the results of his own actions, sunk in mundane existence,
identifying himself with the body and perishable things, and buffeted by the ups and
downs of life, man is deluded by the several false notions. He consequently suffers
from anguish (santapyate) and grieves (cintam apadyamanah) (Sankara).”20
What is most interesting and appealing is Murty’s realistic and common-sense
approach to human situation and human suffering. However, placing himself within
the realm between immanent and transcendent in a certain specific way and talking his
way through the domain of philosophy of religion have led him to concentrate on the
darker and pessimistic aspect of the human situation. For example, notice his remark on
Greek culture, “Pessimism occupied a central position in Greek culture.” If we con-
centrate on Greek tragedies alone, then, this remark seems to indicate a fact, but what
about the comedies of Aristophanes, bacchanalia of Dionysus, and a poetry of Sappho
and Pindar? Murty himself began with the statement of Buddha, “Only one thing I
always teach … Suffering and the cessation of suffering.”21 Now, the “one thing” also
includes the cessation of suffering. This means that there is not only despair but also
hope, and Indian philosophers of his generation were deeply familiar.

19
Sankara in his Commentary on Chhāndogya Upanishad, VI. 2.1.
20
Ibid. pp. 4–5.
21
Ibid. p. 186.
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58 J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (January 2015) 32(1):45–58

To bring the paper to close, one can state that the realm between immanent and
transcendent has given rise to contending philosophical positions both in the East and
the West. The Upanishads, Buddha, Sankara, and Ramanuja have advocated their
positions in one way or another in the East, and Kant, Hegel, and Marx have done
the same in the West. From cross-cultural perspective, Śankara and Hegel, in particular,
would agree with each other that the comprehension of Being as immanent and
transcendent in all other categories is the most fundamental category of all things.
Sankara says that Being is pure, subtle, indefinable, all-pervading, one, taintless,
indivisible, and knowledge. Hegel has also to say the same thing: Pure Being is
complete indeterminacy, absence of all qualities, a vacuity, and an empty concept.
Being as immanent and transcendent is the most irrepressible category for both Hegel
and Śankara. Hegel’s Spirit is the unity, which realizes itself in the differences, and it is
not in which all differences are lost like that of Schelling. For Hegel, nothing could be
external to Spirit; but as Spirit exists through its opposition to the “other” which it at the
same time sublimates and this process goes on until it reaches to the Absolute Unity, the
Absoluter Geist. Whether the transcendent as noumenon is to be comprehended by
intellectual intuition as Kant proposes or as Absolute Monism is to be dialectically
apprehended as Hegel propagates or expressed in self-realization or anubhava as
Śankara does, cessation of suffering or Nirvāna in Buddhism and communist society
in Marxism as Murty vindicates; all are the cross-cultural perspectives of the same
immanence.

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