The transition of epistemology and ontology from non-delimitation of human understanding to its limitation has proved to be most grievous crime committed by pundits of Western philosophy. Hegel and Kant metamorphosed the landscape of western philosophy which later had its repercussions of widest and worst possible nature. From what one can know the nature of question was now changed to what one cannot know. Locke thought that the role of philosophy was not to extend the boundaries of knowledge but was precisely to limit it. This delimited epistemology and consequently bounded ontology constricted and constrained the trajectories of human imagination. Human mind, with its sensory , rational, imaginative, intellectual and spiritual possibilities of understanding is intrinsically infinite. The infinity of human imagination is not circumscribed by the finitude of human physicality. Man’s quest for infinity with all its possible implications finds its satisfaction in the perception of God, the institution of sacred and the concept of divine.
When this infinitude of human mind is made to vibrate on the membrane of finitude and made to feast on half backed philosophies of logical positivism, materialism, existentialism, Marxism or Freudian philosophy it starts revolting its own essence-the essence of infinite and feels a sense of isolation, dread and despair. One the deleterious aftermaths of this western constricted epistemological approach has manifested itself in the form of blind scienticism and unchecked materialism that has made the entire civilization to crawl on the surface of material finitude and utterly failed to let man discover transcendental aspects of being and intuitive and spiritual aspects of learning. This has been the tragedy of prominent philosophers like Nietzsche, Heiddiger, Sartre and others who in their quest for higher possibilities of being were shackled by their own limited epistemological paradigm which led them to deny the transcendental realms of existence. This approach to reality has instead of opening human finitude into the ocean of infinite confined the human infinite within material finitude. The failure to look beyond the manifest and to fix our gaze on actuality and denying the future of possibility has made man to revolve in short circuited immanence.
World today, with all its conundrums stands in a dire need to grasp and perceive things and the realities beyond the manifest. Any failure in this direction will intellectually, morally and spiritually leave our world an ugly place to live in. World is crying for ideological and philosophical beautification and this restoration of beauty calls for look back at tradition and our glorious religious heritage. In these two perennial treasures of wisdom we shall discover panacea to the posers of existence.
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