( Friedrich Nietzsche , 1844 - 1900 )
What gives the unique flavour to the Tamil Philosophical Tradition is the distinctive Literary Hermeneutics that we find in the end part of Marapiyal in Tolkaapiyam, the like of which are not found anywhere else, as far as I know.
It is the extesion of this to the field of metaphysics that we find in the early history of Tamil Philosophy that led to the displacement of the incomplete metaphysics of others.
What Meykandar does, certainly to his eternal credit, is to generalize the literary Hermeneutics of Marapiyal as the methodology of Philosophical Hermeneutics and applying it NOT only to the scriptural texts but to the WHOLE WORLD as a Text. He generalizes not only the notion of utti, the interpretive movements of understanding that illuminates the mind, to make a literary text translucent but also the notion of TEXT itself; it is generalized to include not only the world as whole but ANYTHING that is encountered by human understanding itself . Human understanding is there as such and such only because there is SEEING and there is seeing only because there is a SHOWING and of course that which shows is BEING. And seeing generates texts because the showing itself is TEXTUAL. For who else or what else can show in this TEXTUAL manner such that the creatures can SEE, retain it and begin to understand?
The BEING that SHOWS can show the most appropriate and relevant for the creatures only because IT stands non-alien to the selves; the BEING is with the selves, along with them and also ABOVE them. For showing requires that BEING sees exactly where the self is and in what condition it is. This cannot happen unless IT is WITH them and continuously ALONG with them. ( onRaay, udanaay). But it has to be ABOVE the selves also in order to SHOW, to project a way on Being as possibility for the self to be, if it chooses so ( veeRaay ) and articulate That I am, i. e. tat twam asi?
God is not dead as Nietzsche claimed but only we are dead to His Presence. maybe this is what Nietzsche meant in the first -- human thinking having become arid and atomic with its blindness to the presence of BEING
But despite all these ways of the presence of BEING in the Being of the creatures how is that most of the creatures are largely UNAWARE of BEING as such?
Another way of putting it , why is there IGNORANCE called Avidya, anjnjanam and so forth in Indian philosophical tradition? Not simply ignorance that is because of metaphysical blindness but even given the capacity for acute thinking, including that of brilliant epistemologists and what not, there is not admitting the presence of BEING and accommodating oneself to it?
Well we should note here that there is abconsciousness, not preconscious , subconscious , unconscious etc. but rather ABSENCE of the consciousness of the presence of BEING. This we note because of CONCEALMENT, the THIROBAVA, a casting screen by BEING itself so that the creatures can go on existing as if BEING is NOT THERE. The visions of BEING are blocked off so that the creatures are NOT AWARE and go on living blissfully in their materialism or physicalism, in the IGNORANCE of the presence of BEING.
BEING conceals Himself even from the intelligent only because such people lack aruL, the presence of Grace in their bosom that would make them LOVE and CARE for creatures other than himself / herself. BEING withdraws from loveless heart and for which reason advocates that we should pray for LOVE towards all ( attuvitu anbin tozu )
This is the origin of ATHEISM and the various logical positivisms , and materialistic idealogies of the Indian and European, the Godless metaphysics of various kinds.
However this is also an expression of the GRACE of BEING, for Godless metaphysics have a place in the evolution of Human Understanding. The physical has to be understood in its PHYSICALITY prior to understanding the BEING that is IN it and transcends it.
ULLAGANAR
( Editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
( photo above taken from wikipedia with thanks )
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