|
The Redundant Negation How ‘Advitīyam’
Generated the Dualism of
Non-Dualism By Bodhangkur 1. Introduction: The Problem of Redundant Negation At the centre of Indian philosophical history lies a
deceptively simple phrase from the Chāndogya
Upaniṣad (6.2.1): “Ekam eva
advitīyam” — “One only, without a second.” This sentence, perhaps more than any other, determined
the future trajectory of Indian metaphysics. Yet, as Finn’s procedural
analysis reveals, it also contains a linguistic fault line — a redundancy
that, once institutionalised, generated a thousand years of semantic
confusion and theological opportunism. The redundancy is clear: ekam
eva (“one only”) already excludes multiplicity.
To add advitīyam (“without a second”)
is to re-introduce, as a denied possibility, the very duality that “one”
already refutes. The second clause, meant to reinforce unity, actually re-creates the concept of two. This
redundant negation set up the apophatic grammar — the logic of saying what
reality is not — that would later dominate Śaṅkara’s
Advaita Vedānta and turn monism into a
self-contradictory dialectic of “non-dualism.” 2. Linguistic Analysis: When Negation Begets Duality In logical terms, to assert “X, and not Y” already
posits Y as a conceivable alternative. Negation is parasitic on the concept
it denies. The word advitīyam thus presupposes
“two” in order to negate it. This is a performative contradiction: ·
The first phrase (ekam
eva) declares totality. ·
The second phrase (advitīyam)
introduces absence, hence a hidden reference to presence. By re-introducing the “second” as a hypothetical
absence, the Upaniṣadic statement converts pure
monism into linguistic dualism. What was originally the absolute
presence of the One becomes a relational structure —
One in contrast to what it is not. The result is a metaphysical echo chamber: an assertion
of unity that must always invoke duality to be spoken. From that seed grew
the long Indian obsession with a- prefixes — a-vidyā,
a-tmā, a-satya, a-dvaita — all negations pretending to affirm. 3. The Rise of the Apophatic Habit: Saying by
Not-Saying The redundant advitīyam
fostered an apophatic habit — the conviction that the ultimate can
only be described by negation. Hence neti neti
(“not this, not that”) became the formula of metaphysical discourse. In practice this produced a form of linguistic
asceticism: philosophy turned into the endless peeling away of predicates
rather than the positive definition of process. Brahman was rendered “not
finite, not changing, not known,” until it became an abstract void. Such negation-based metaphysics could be politically
convenient. It rendered Brahman unspeakable and therefore the monopoly
of priests and exegetes. By contrast, a truly monist formulation (ekam eva) would
have been self-sufficient and therefore anarchic, requiring no
mediator. 4. Śaṅkara’s
Appropriation: The Fudged Adolescence of Philosophy Śaṅkara’s Advaita
Vedānta (8th century CE) inherits this
redundancy and canonises it. He did not invent advaita;
he weaponised it. Śaṅkara’s genius
was rhetorical, not logical. He took advaita
— a negative descriptor meaning “not-two” — and inflated it into a full
system. His world was still divided into Brahman and Māyā, vidyā
and avidyā, jīva
and Īśvara. The One remained
unspeakable, so he constructed a theology of halfway negations: ·
the world is “not real, yet not unreal,” ·
liberation is “not an attainment, yet attained,” ·
Brahman is “without attributes, yet somehow
knowable.” This is precisely what Finn identifies as philosophical
adolescence — the stage between the child’s static imagination of an
omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging Origin and the adult’s mature recognition
that origination is a dynamic iteration of One Procedure. Śaṅkara’s advaita represents the mind’s adolescent
compromise: no longer mythic, not yet scientific. It senses the unity of all, but cannot let go of the inherited grammar of denial.
Like a youth who rejects parental authority only to mirror it in rebellion, Śaṅkara’s system rejects duality while
perpetuating its structure through negation. 5. The Monist Correction: From Static Origin to Dynamic
Procedure In Finn’s Procedure Monism, the One is not a
static origin but a universal algorithm of emergence — a rule set, or
constraint ensemble, iteratively generating discrete, bounded quanta. Reality
is not “not-two,” it is “serially one”: every identifiable being is a full,
local iteration of the Universal Procedure. Hence iti
iti (“this, this”) is the monist’s formula of
metaphysical discourse. Thus, ekam eva should never have been followed by advitīyam. The original intuition of unity
required only affirmation, not negation. A correct procedural translation of
the Upaniṣadic intent would be: Ekatvam eva pravartate — “Oneness alone operates.” Here, the One is an active process, not an inert block
of being. The universe unfolds as quantised interactions of that One
Procedure, not as illusion or division. In this model, the child’s myth of a
transcendent creator and the adolescent philosopher’s non-dual fudge both
dissolve into the adult insight that creation and creator are iterations
of the same code. 6. Illustrative Examples: From Quantum to Cognitive
Domains 1. Quantum
Example – In quantum field theory, there is no “second” to the
field; particles are excitations of one underlying process. To say “the field
is one, without a second” would be redundant — there is nothing else.
The physicist simply models interactions of the one field. Śaṅkara’s advaita
is equivalent to saying “the field is one, not two,” thus implying a possible
“two” and confusing ontology with language. 2. Psychological
Example – A mature consciousness directly experiences
self-coherence (“I am”). The immature mind, seeking reassurance, repeats “I
am not two, I am not divided,” thereby reinforcing the sense of possible
division. Spiritual adolescence thus resembles cognitive insecurity: unity is
asserted through denial, not lived as fact. 3. Societal
Example – A self-regulating polity functions as a coherent
procedure. A fragile society, by contrast, continually declares “we are
united, not divided,” thereby revealing its fracture. The verbal insistence
betrays the lack of systemic coherence. 7. The Procedural Reformation of Language Finn’s corrective operation is linguistic as much as
metaphysical. By removing redundant negation, discourse can align with the
structure of reality. Instead of defining Being as a-dvaita
(not-two), the Procedure Monist defines it operationally: “The One iterates locally as many,
yet remains serially self-identical.” No negation, no contradiction, no fudge — merely a
quantised expression of the universal rule. This reclaims the monist stance
that the Upaniṣads intuited but obscured
through language shaped by early dualist cognition. 8. Conclusion: Healing the Wound in the Word The word advitīyam
was an innocent redundancy that metastasised into an entire theological
architecture of “non-dualism.” Śaṅkara’s
genius was to exploit that ambiguity to build a bridge from mythic dualism to
philosophical monism — a necessary but adolescent stage. Finn’s Procedure Monism completes that evolution. It
removes the redundancy, replaces negation with operation, and recovers the
original insight in a matured form: Reality is not “without a second.” The Upaniṣadic sages
glimpsed this truth; Śaṅkara’s rhetoric
clouded it; Finn’s modern procedural vision clarifies it. The long detour
through advaita was the linguistic
adolescence of Indian thought — now overcome by the adult understanding that
the One never needed to deny a second to be itself. How
“Neti Neti” Became India’s Strategy for a
Linguistic Tautology |