Homage to Kant in Kolkata

Three leading Bengali contemporary philosophers—Bimal Krishna Matilal, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen—remained devoted to Immanuel Kant throughout their academic lives. The first two, who enjoyed international renown, have passed away, while Sen is still writing and teaching. More than once, Sen told one of the authors: “You have to read the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason meticulously.” Mohanty, one of the most celebrated exponents of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, told a journalist:

I have a bookshelf just above my bed where I keep those few books which I cherish utmost. I turn the pages of these books before I fall asleep. I must tell you, three texts of Immanuel Kant have been kept on this bookshelf. These are The Moral Law, Critique of Judgement, and Perpetual Peace.

As for Matilal, who was the Spalding Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Oxford University, one just has to read his masterpiece, Perceptions, to realize to what extent he was influenced by Kant. Perceptions enacts a brilliant dialogue between occidental and oriental philosophy, and Kant is a primary figure in this dialogue. The deathless deities in the pantheon raised by Matilal are Adi Shankara, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Nagajurna from the Indian side and René Descartes, Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein from the Western one.

But, even before these three thinkers’ intense epistemological engagement with Kant, two acclaimed Bengali professors wrote excellent commentaries on his philosophy in Bengali: Krishnachandra Bhattacharjee and Rash Vihari Das. The English translation by Mohanty of Bhattacharjee’s treatise, Kantdarsaner Tatparjo (Implications of the Philosophy of Kant), was inspired by an epilogue attached to the original that was written by Das. The reverential translator pointed out that, in the latter half of the 20^th century, Indian scholars were eager to avoid an exclusively Eurocentric approach. They preferred to write “philosophy in self-conscious continuity with the great tradition of Indian philosophy.”

Accordingly, Mohanty divided Bhattacharjee’s text into three sections: Examination of Willing or Duty, Examination of Knowing, and Examination of Feeling. He explored these through the prism of Advaita Vedanta, a major school of Indian philosophy that considers Brahman the only reality. Further, Bhattacharjee did not offer a simplistic interpretation of Kant’s theoretical and practical consciousness. Rather, he presented a Varttika or constructive evaluation, to use the relevant term in Indian philosophy. Bhattacharjee’s text emphasizes the importance of theoretical and practical knowledge in the Kantian scheme as well as the reality of self. Indeed, the latter is considered Kant’s fundamental concept. He also analyzed Kant’s concept of imagination (Einbildung), whose Indian equivalent is Kalpana and which plays a crucial role in Kant’s epistemology as well as in his aesthetic cogitations.

The concept of free self as autonomous willing constitutes the foundation of Bhattacharjee’s interpretation of Kant. He reminds us that in the Critique of Pure Reason, while theoretical knowledge is limited to experience the scope of practical reason is extended further. Kant discussed the concept of self with reference to the concept of freedom: “Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation of impulses of sensibility.” In other words, says Bhattacharjee, it is natural causality that belongs to the phenomenal world while moral causality belongs to the noumenal world, which can only be cogitated upon. Kant tried to lay the foundation for the certainty of modern science as well as the possibility of human freedom in his very first Critique. According to Bhattacharjee, so far as the knowledge of self as non-object is concerned, the second Critique is the most important of the three. It is here that Kant highlights a priori intellectual feeling—that is, reverence for the moral law, which was the cornerstone of his philosophical scheme.

Das was a student of Bhattacharjee. His book is titled Kanter Darsan (Kant’s Philosophy). He admits that it is no surprise that there are differences between the interpretation given by him and that given by Bhattacharjee, because even in Germany interpreters differ regarding Kant’s original writings. Das starts the discussion in the context of empiricist and rationalist tradition in epistemology. He focuses on the issue that any independent object, according to Kant, is not the object of knowledge. Further, that which figures as object of knowledge is qualified by our sensibility and understanding. Kant’s predecessors never raised questions about the nature, possibility, and limitation of human knowledge. Das also highlights the crucial Kantian reflection that moral life is the best religious life. Ethics, according to Kant, is the gateway to religion.

These two books were followed by Mohanty’s Lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. His reading of Kant was influenced by analytical and phenomenological traditions. He was guided by the post-Kantian philosophical discourse—that is, “not only the philosophy of German Idealism but also the 20^th-century linguistic turn, phenomenological and hermeneutic movements”—though he reminded us that his lectures did not merely follow Husserl’s writings on Kant. At the same time, the crucial questions of whether Kant is a formalist, conceptualist, or intuitionist in the sphere of mathematical philosophy, and of whether his philosophy of physics needs any fundamental change, are considered by Mohanty, who received his lessons on contemporary physics and mathematics at Göttingen University.

More recently, one must also note Kumudranjan Goswami’s book, Kant’s Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Space: An Exegetical and Critical Study. An erudite Kantian scholar, Goswami taught at the University of Calcutta, and commendably captured Kant’s thesis on the metaphysics of experience.

At present, scholars in West Bengal underline the importance of Kant’s political philosophy and historical vision. Obviously, our tense and turbulent times, scarred by ravaging wars, are prompting them to seek refuge in Kant’s political classic: Perpetual Peace. In a recent seminar held at the Institute of Development Studies in Kolkata, participants pointedly referred to the categorical imperative inherent in Kant’s political doctrine. To drive home the message, which is now direly needed, an academic quoted the last, clinching line from the fifth chapter of Perpetual Peace: “But all politics must bend the knee to the principle of right, and may, in that way, hope to reach, although slowly perhaps, a level where it may shine upon men for all time.”

Sen and Matilal were colleagues at Oxford, and bound in a web of mutual admiration. While Matilal observed that Sen had “crossed the limits of pure economics a long ago, he is a philosopher in his own right,” Sen lauded Matilal as “the greatest Indian philosopher after Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,” our first philosopher-president. Matilal confessed to us in one unforgettable conversation:

I have to leave this world with one unfulfilled desire. Had I the chance, I would have engaged myself in a heartfelt dialogue with Kant. I would have discussed the baffling nature of moral dilemma with the most illustrious advocate of the moral law.

This attests to the reverence West Bengal has and will continue to have for Kant .

Manidipa Sanyal is professor of philosophy at the University of Calcutta.

Subhoranjan Dasgupta is a former professor of human sciences at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata. He was a guest at the IWM in 2023.