Ebook: Advaita and Neoplatonism. A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy

This is a study in comparative philosophy. The systems selected for comparison
are Advaita and Neoplatonism. The author of this work, Dr. J.F. Staal, came from
Holland as a Government of India scholar in 1954 and worked in the University
Department of Philosophy for three years, registering himself as a candidate for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The present publication constitutes the thesis which
he wrote in part fulfilment of the conditions for the degree which was awarded to
him. The present study does not conform to the usual type of comparative philosophy
which contents itself with comparing two or more systems as object-philosophies.
Dr. Staal, as a Westerner, approaches Advaita through a comparable tradition in
the West - the tradition of impersonalism - which is to be found in Neoplatonism.
And, his approach, further still, is from the standpoint of existentialism cum
phenomenology which is a dominant contemporary trend in that part of Europe
whence he hails. The experience he gained in British and American Universities
subsequent to his stay in India, he says, has somewhat changed his perspective.
The pages of this work will speak eloquently to the great change which India has
evidently made in his outlook.