A. C. Mukerji, “Absolute Consciousness” (1938)

Abstract

This chapter presents Anukul Chandra Mukerji's 1938 essay, “Absolute Consciousness,” part of his book The Nature of Self (1933). Mukerji was a scholar of Western and Indian philosophy and specialized in epistemology, with a special interest in idealism and the problem of self-knowledge. Aside from The Nature of Self, he authored Self Thought and Reality (1938). In “Absolute Consciousness,” Mukerji uses the insights of British neo-Hegelians, such as E. Caird and T. H. Greene, to gain insight into Śankara's account of absolute consciousness. He postulates an unchanging, unobjectifiable, immediate, consciousness to explain the poorest type of knowledge and the facts of experience and to resolve some of the difficulties that have been repeatedly pointed out by the critics of modern absolutism which, in many respects, is an unconscious exposition of the advaita doctrine.