... one law and line of the higher Karma, and that in comparison with it nothing else matters. The German thinker's idea that there is a categorical imperative laid upon man to seek after the right and good, an insistent law of right conduct, but no categorical imperative of the Oversoul compelling him to seek after the beautiful or the true, after a law of right beauty and harmony and right knowledge,... in hell, but because to follow evil is a degradation and affliction of its being and a fall from its innate and imperative endeavour. This is to it a necessity of its moral nature, a truly categorical imperative, a call that in the total more complex nature of man may be dulled or suppressed or excluded by the claim of its other parts and their needs, but to the ethical mind is binding and absolute... neither the hedonistic nor the utilitarian measure, but does simply the act as the thing to be done because it is right and virtue and therefore the very law of being of the ethical man, the categorical imperative of his nature. This kind of high absoluteness in the ethical demand is appalling to the flesh and the ego, for it admits of no comfortable indulgence and compromise, no abating reserves ...
... desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual and the society, the solution that the moralist presented was that the individual Page 217 shall cherish no desires and claims that... shall hold all things cheap, even its safety and its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth justice, humanity and the highest good of the people. The moralist's ideal of the categorical imperative is basically individualistic, and when his ideals are applied to the society, the inadequacies of these ideals come to light. For justice often demands what love abhors. Man's absolute justice... and rigorous scheme or figure and claims for its totality and absoluteness and an application that ignores the subtler truth of things and the plasticity of life. The fact is that the categorical imperative of ideal law does not signify the end of human search of the truth that harmonises and delivers. We discover that the moral nature of the human being is not the last and the highest component; ...
... desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual and the society, the solution that the moralist presented was that the individual shall cherish no desires and claims that are not consistent... things cheap, even its safety and its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth, justice, humanity and the highest good of the people. Page 49 The moralist's ideal of the categorical imperative is basically individualistic, and when his ideals are applied to the society, the inadequacies of these ideals come to light. For justice often demands what love abhors. Man's absolute justice... partial and rigorous scheme or figure and claims for it totality and absoluteness and an application that ignores the subtler truth of things and the plasticity of life. The fact is that the categorical imperative of ideal law does not signify the end of human search of the truth that harmonises and delivers. We discover that the moral nature of the human being is not the last and the highest component; ...
... knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek for and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the Theoretical Reason also demands a categorical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is poor consolation to man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying... know or act, it is fundamentally a process of creation; at least, without this element of creation there can be no knowledge, no act. In knowledge there is a luminous creativity, Revelation or Categorical Imperative which Reason does not and cannot supply but vaguely strains to seize. For that element we have to search elsewhere, not in Reason. Does this mean that real knowledge is irrational ...
... Intuition of the Upanishadic times came to determine the overarching characteristic of Indian culture. Vide., Bhagawad Gita (BG), 1.28-46 Vide., Ibid., II.4-8 Kant's doctrine of the categorical imperative has great similarities with the Indian doctrine of Dharma, the special emphasis of which is on the Gospel of Duty. Kant's doctrine is anti-utilitarian, since it Page 150 formulates... history of Ethics, but we are not concerned here with those criticisms. As a matter of fact, these criticisms are largely applicable to the three formulations that he gave to the idea of the categorical imperative. The idea that there is something like intrinsic Right, which is irrespective of the consideration of consequences, seems to hold for many an unassailable position. In respect of the Indian ...
... We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened v by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to ...
... We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to ...
... which no subjective element called will is able to interfere, or is it possible to change the determinism of Nature and avoid what appears to be inevitable? Is there at work in the universe a categorical imperative which cannot be set aside by intervention either of a human or a divine will? That is one problem. And then, is the present determination of the world final? People say that it is human... towards a goal, and when an active movement is made towards the goal then it will be found that the present equation can be changed. It is not necessarily a Page 31 categorical imperative, something that you cannot oppose, something that is so fixed that there is no way out of it. In physics there is a component of forces, they say; a component of forces is the line ...
... that marvellous Page 276 and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna." The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because... But it was really that that was drawing you from the beginning and it is that that is there behind the loneliness and emptiness and need of being filled that you increasingly feel—it is the categorical imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine. I do not know why you suppose that we should be angry for this or that. If you can feel the Divine in the Guru so much the better, for that ...
... ethical philosophy came to be formulated by Kant, who discovered the presence of the Categorical Imperative in the normative part of human nature, and he derived from the deliverances of that imperative the doctrine of duty for its own sake. Kant even went farther and attempted to give formulations of the Categorical Imperative in the light of which standards of action can be determined. At that level ...
... are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute – the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always ...
... or what the highest light from above demands from the embodied spirit. Page 200 The fact is that when we have reached the cult of absolute ethical qualities and erected the categorical imperative of an ideal law, we have not come to the end of our search or touched the truth that delivers. There is, no doubt, something here that helps us to rise beyond limitation by the physical and ...
... purify and elevate themselves, they become an intense and special need of our higher nature quite apart from the results our actions bring with them; finally they exalt themselves into a sort of categorical imperative of our being, and it is through our obedience to this that we arrive at that supreme something self-existent in us which was all the time drawing us towards it, first by the lures of our egoistic ...
... demand of the higher law. Right ethical action comes therefore to seem to man at this stage the one thing binding upon him among the many standards raised by the mind, the moral claim the one categorical imperative, the moral law the whole of his Dharma. At first however the moral conceptions of man and the direction and output and the demand of return of the ethical energy in him get themselves i ...
... supreme good will work itself out in the end. The difficulty remains why that good should use evil as one and almost the chief of its means or the dominant moral law, sovereign, unescapable, categorical, imperative, the practical governor, if not the reason of our existence, should be compelled to fulfil itself through so much that is immoral and by the agency of a non-moral force, through hell on earth ...
... of standards of conduct that have developed at various stages of human history and will aim at establishing the clarity of the concepts of Freewill versus determinism, of goodwill, of the categorical imperative and others in the attempt to understand how this clarity is a great aid in the Page 133 practice of ethical values, virtues and austerities that aim at purification, strengthening ...
... ion. • It is at this level that we attain to the concept of absoluteness and objectivity of the good and the right, and we have the concept of love, justice, right reason, or of the categorical imperative. • From a certain point of view, the answers given by rationalistic intuitionism, may meet the criticism that morality is relative and subjective. Shastras of Dharmas have often ...
... It is at this level of a value-system that we attain to the concept of absoluteness and objective of the good and the right, and we have the concept of love, justice, right reason, or of the categorical imperative. From a certain point of view, the answers given by rationalistic intuitionism, may meet the criticism that morality is relative and subjective. Shastras of Page 408 ...
... But shraddha as described in the Gita is basically a perception that sparks out from the deepest soul of man, from something that is other than the operations of the three gunas; it is the categorical imperative that is unconditionally brought forth from the profoundest recesses of the being, from the Purusha; and yet that perception is not an unquestioning acceptance, but it has deep impulsion of ...
... nature almost unreal until it becomes experience." 18.These supra-sensuous fields are the fields or ideas, imaginations, supra-physical visions, mystical voices, and experiences of the categorical imperative, presence of God, presence of invisible God, and other experiences of relationship with the divine reality. 19.God is normally conceived to be an invisible reality and he is not normally ...
... said, "One can write a volume on this question. But let me make a brief remark. Ethical life is governed by ideas of good and right in terms of utility, duty or deliverances of conscience or categorical imperative. The criteria of judgment here fluctuate between various extremes of the social good and the individual good and of the harmony or compromise between the individual and the society. It opens ...
... given up to Me." 65 (b) These three steps prepare the seeker for a more advanced and integral sadhana. "To action alone hast thou the right"— was the first formulation of the categorical imperative. But now comes the second, the higher imperative; it says in effect that one has to realise that even to action one has no right; for the individual is not the doer of action; action is engendered ...
... this Call, from where does it come? It is none other than the call of your own inmost being, of your secret self. It ¹Brihadaranyaaka, IV. 2. 23 Page 71 is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed, the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists ...
... ess at work in the world. The mistake was to feel that Overmind was the Highest plane of consciousness. There is a plane of Supermind above the Overmind the highest action of which is the "Categorical imperative of the Divine." The world is not left to chance and merely to a play of infinite possibilities. Through the play of possibilities a definite, decisive movement is acting all the time. Of all ...
... seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna." The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because ...
... history of the world contradict. But still there is a truth in this ancient superstition or imagination which the rational denial of it misses and the rational confirmations of it, whether Kant's categorical imperative or another, do not altogether restore. If man's conscience is a creation of his evolving nature, if his conceptions of ethical law are mutable and depend on his stage of evolution, yet at the ...
... conduct erected by moral or normative conscientiousness, hedonistic, altruistic, or utilitarian or else in the light of standards of universal principles formulated under the light of the categorical imperative. But these standards of conduct are not found to be based on any claims of the certainty of knowledge. Moreover, these standards of conduct, in their application by a bewildered and an imperfect ...
... zealously the dispassionate inquiries of science, probe the 'fourth' dimension, examine evolution and mutation, and dream of a new physics, a new biology and a new psychology. He may hear the categorical imperative, practise the austerities of morals, and knock at the doors of churches, temples and mosques. He may endeavour to set his feet on the paths of spiritual experience. He may imitate or live with ...
... It is at this level of a value-system that we attain to the concept of absoluteness and objective of the good and the right, and we have the concept of love, justice, right reason, or of the categorical imperative. j. From a certain point of view, the answers given by rationalistic intui-tionism, may meet the criticism that morality is relative and subjective. Shastras of Dharmas have often ...
... fact that the more one advances in the theory and practice of Value, the more is one obliged to overcome selfishness, egoism and subjectivity, and the more is one led to the discovery of the Categorical Imperative, the criterion of which is translatable in some kind of objectivity and universality, as Kant showed—although not entirely satisfactorily, and as shown by the Bhagavadgita in its concept ...
... conduct erected by moral or normative conscientiousness, — hedonistic, altruistic, or utilitarian or else in the light of standards of universal principles formulated under the light of the categorical imperative. But these standards of conduct are not found to be based on any claims of the certainty of knowledge. Moreover, these standards of conduct, in their application by a bewildered and an imperfect ...
... of standards of conduct that have developed at various stages of human history and will aim at establishing the clarity of the concepts of Freewill versus determinism, of goodwill, of the categorical imperative and others in the attempt to understand how this clarity is a great aid in the practice of ethical values, virtues and austerities that aim at purification, strengthening of will-power and ...
... intuitive insight obtained at the level of the highest practical or pure Reason. But the standards of conduct erected by moral consciousness, even the so-called universal principles of the categorical imperative, cannot be determined with certainty, and these in the present application by a bewildered and imperfect humanity come easily to be conflicting principles. Justice often demands what love abhors ...
... tend to base our decisions on personal or social ethics without trying to understand the subtleties and complexities involved. We have hedonistic ideas or utilitarian ideas or ideas of the categorical imperative, and often a mixture of all three, and we apply them in accordance with certain fixed attitudes, without examining the scope and province of their application. We are not aware of their in ...
... Western wisdom; Socrates spoke of the "Daemon" which always warned him against doing anything that deviated from virtue and the good; the ethical experience speaks of inner conscience and of categorical imperative; the yogic experience has discovered the psychic or soul personality, the competent architect of self-being that Page 24 overcomes the ignorance of the self. It is this overcoming ...
... fact that the more one advances in the theory and practice of Value, the more is one obliged to overcome selfishness, egoism and subjectivity, and the more is one led to the discovery of the Categorical Imperative, the criterion of which is translatable in some kind of objectivity and universality, as Kant showed although not entirely satisfactorily, and as shown by the Bhagavadgita in its concept ...
... themselves have declared frankly and freely and loudly enough, without any hesitation or reservation. Hitler's Mein Kampf has become the Scripture of the New Order; it has come with a more categorical imperative, a more supernal authority than the Veda, the Bible or the Koran. When man was a dweller of the forest,—a jungle man —akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his ...
... is this Call, from where does it come? It is none 1 Brihadaranyaka, IV. 2.23 Page 19 other than the call of your own inmost being, of your secret self. It is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists ...
... frankly and freely and loudly enough, without any hesitation or reservation. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' has become the Scripture of the New Order; Page 6 it has come with a more categorical imperative, a more supernal authority than the Veda, the Bible or the Koran. When man was a dweller of the forest, — a jungle man,—akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage ...
... themselves have declared frankly and freely and loudly enough, without any hesitation or reservation. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' has become the Scripture of the New Order; it has come with a more categorical imperative, a more supernal authority than the Veda, the Bible or the Koran. When man was a dweller of the forest, – a jungle man, – akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and ...
... problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is also a problem Nature has set before herself, has been dealing with through the ages, ...
... will have all the newness Page 195 and novelty that he needs and seeks. If the soul-consciousness is burdened with a special and unique vision, it will find its play in the most categorically imperative manner. What the modernist usually expresses is his brain or a part of it, his small vital desires and velleities, his sensational reactions or some sections of these. He can do that ...
... petrified or at least losing its more free and subtle action. But still in order to accomplish all its future this idea and religion of humanity has to make itself more explicit, insistent and categorically imperative. For otherwise it can only work with clarity in the minds of the few and with the mass it will be only a modifying influence, but will not be the rule of human life. And so long as that is ...
... that it may be developed in the life of the race. "But still in order to accomplish all its future, this idea and religion of humanity has to make, itself more explicit, insistent and categorically imperative. For otherwise it can only work with clarity in the minds of the few and with the mass it will only be a modifying influence, but will not be the rule of human life. And so long as ...
... and technique of wise and happy living as well. Theirs was a self-poised and balanced polity, in which the urges of self-interest and hedonistic desire were effectively held in check by the categorical imperatives of Dharma. The political and economic structure was supported by the social compact, which in its turn was reared on immaculate spiritual foundations: The spiritual mind of India... monarchical idea became the nucleus of the larger political formations. But till the arrival of the Muslims, the ruler in India was very seldom a pure despot, and he had always to submit to the imperatives of Dharma - "the religious, ethical, social, political, juridic and customary law organically governing the life of the people" 49 - which was the impersonal, sacred and eternal authority. An unjust ...
... Queen. All Mahasegn's calculations go wrong, all Ungarica's prophecies come true. Thrown together again and again by ? he pretence of music lessons, Vasavadutta and Vuthsa enact the categorical imperatives of romantic love, - in this, of course, abetted by Munjoolica who as good as locks them up together one night. Having thus advanced Vuthsa's interests and achieved her own revenge, Munjoolica... the latter the old Pagan ethic associated with Thor and Odin gives place to the new Christian ethic, - in Sri Aurobindo's plays too the new force (compassion, love) has to emerge triumphant as an imperative of the evolutionary march. A "king-idea" and a "master-act" - Andromeda's, Aslaug's - can start the chain-reaction that ensures and encompasses a decisive evolutionary change, taking humanity to ...
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