K. C. Bhattacharya

Agora

K. C. Bhattacharya

1875–1949

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

The self is freedom that steps back from every object it can think about – and Indian thought must free itself from borrowed Western ideas.

Placement

South Asian & Tibetan Philosophy · South Asia · Metaphysics, Existence & Self, Epistemology

Calcutta philosopher in dialogue with Kant and Vedanta: subjectivity as a progressive freeing from the object; his lecture “Swaraj in Ideas” called for decolonising thought itself.

Key ideas

Subject as freedom
Swaraj in ideas
Theory of alternation

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Influence

Influenced by 3

Kapila

influenced by
K. C. Bhattacharya’s Studies in Samkhya Philosophy reinterpreted the Samkhya ascribed to Kapila, with its distinction of conscious self and nature, as a living philosophical option. K. C. Bhattacharya, “Studies in Sankhya Philosophy”, in Studies in Philosophy I (1956)
Evidence: AI draft
Kapila › legendary figure
Adi Shankara

influenced by
K. C. Bhattacharya’s first book, Studies in Vedantism (1909), interpreted Shankara’s Advaita, with its doctrine of maya, in modern philosophical terms. K. C. Bhattacharya, Studies in Vedantism (1909); N. Bhushan & J. L. Garfield (eds.), Indian Philosophy in English (2011)
Evidence: AI draft
Adi Shankara › c. 700–750 · conventionally dated 788–820
Immanuel Kant

influenced by
K. C. Bhattacharya started from Kant’s limits of theoretical knowledge but argued in The Subject as Freedom (1930) that the subject is realised through progressive freedom from objectivity. K. C. Bhattacharya, The Subject as Freedom (1930); N. Bhushan & J. L. Garfield (eds.), Indian Philosophy in English (2011)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804

Works

1928Swaraj in Ideas
A lecture against the “cultural subjection” of the Indian mind: Western ideas should be assimilated critically, not taken over by imitation.

Position

Bhattacharya treated Kant, Vedanta, Samkhya and Jainism as living philosophical options. In The Subject as Freedom he described subjectivity as a progressive freeing from the object: from the bodily subject through the psychic to a spiritual subject that knows itself only by turning away from all objects. Philosophy, unlike science, does not state facts but elaborates contents that can be spoken of yet not perceived. In his theory of alternation the Absolute appears as truth, freedom or value – alternatives irreducible to one another. His lecture “Swaraj in Ideas” diagnosed the “cultural subjection” of the colonised Indian mind and called for critical, independent thinking instead of imitating the West.

Life & context

Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya was born in 1875 in Serampore in Bengal and studied philosophy at Presidency College, Calcutta. For decades he taught at government colleges; later he worked at the Indian Institute of Philosophy in Amalner, and from 1935 to 1937 he was King George V Professor of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. He died in 1949; his son Kalidas Bhattacharyya also became a philosopher.