Ram-Prasad (???)

While reading the Ram-Prasad selection on pramāna theory, I found myself pretty consistently confused. Sometimes the actual wording used by the author confused me; some of those sentences made no sense to me no matter how many times I read them. Other times, however, I was able to understand his writing and explanations of Sankara’s philosophy, but I still do not understand the goal. The shorter reading mentioned that Sankara’s goal was “the freedom of the authentic self (ātman) from rebirth,” but I did not see how this tied into the longer, more conufusing reading (Advaita-Vedānta 141).

 Sankara theorized heavily on the concept of experience, I think in an attempt to explain cognitive life (cognition) through an idea known as the subject-object relationship. For his argument, subject and object are fundamentally different, with subjects possessing “ ’I’-ness” and objects possessing “ ‘you’- ness” (Ram-Prasad 31). “ ‘ You’- ness” in this sense merely means “ ‘non-I’ or ‘other thatn the self’ ” (31). This part of Sankara’s theory I understand, but after this is where I started to get lost. Ram-Prasad begins dicussing how subject and object are interrelated and that object conditions subject. Primarily, I do not understand this concept, which made the rest of the reading difficult. What does “condition” mean in this sense? If an object does not have a “self” or atman, how can it condition the subject. Or does conditioning refer to the thoughts and ideas that form a subject’s experience with various objects?

Looking forward to understanding more in class tomorrow.