Ramesh K. Sharma, J. M. E. McTaggart: Substance, Self, and Immortality (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015), pp. 544+xviii, $
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Ramesh K. Sharma, J. M. E. McTaggart: Substance, Self, and Immortality (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015), pp. 544+xviii, $130 K. C. Pandey1
© ICPR 2020
Although it is a fact that many books are stillborn, yet some run through their own time and space, and very few survive against the rough weather and regenerate themselves like the spirit of an ancient civilization. Undoubtedly, it would be merely presumptuous to classify Ramesh K. Sharma’s book as belonging to any of the abovementioned categories. However, enormity and variety of the ideas contained in it would possibly entertain at least some of those who are interested in the McTaggartian idealism. It consists of thirteen chapters, a brief preface and an exhaustive bibliography and deals with three major aspects of the philosophy of McTaggart, i.e. substance, self and immortality. As well known, McTaggart is one of the significant proponents of idealism in the west along with Bradley, Bosanquet, Hegel, and Green. His idea of unreality of time has been discussed thoroughly in the philosophy circles across the world and, as the author claims, any western discussion about the problem of time owes to Mctaggart’s argument against the impossibility of the reality of time. Whether one may agree or not, it is interesting to go through the arguments he brings forth for establishing his conclusions about the thoughts of McTaggart which in brief C. D. Broad had put as belonging to the class of ‘philosophical immortality’. The above-mentioned three philosophical issues—substance, self, and immortality—of the philosophy of McTaggart as described in his books and primarily in The Nature of Existence, which according to the author, “works out in as complete a detail as possible his final view about the ultimate nature of reality” (p. 9) constitute the significant crux of the reflections of the book under review. For the sake of convenience of review, one may classify the book into four sections roughly leaving first chapter which is Introduction and the last one which is Afterword: 1. Chapters second to fifth are on the notion of substance. 2. Chapters six to nine analyse the issues pertaining to self. 3. Chapters ten and eleven are about the immortality of the soul, and 4. chapter twelve deals with the epistemological issues pertaining to perception. * K. C. Pandey [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, University of Lucknow, Lucknow 226007, India
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research
The second chapter ‘Reality and Existence’ analyses issues related with the terms such as ‘reality’, ‘being’, ‘existence’, ‘characteristics’ and ‘possibilities’. It begins with McTaggart’s view that reality and being are equivalent. As it could be that the real does not exist, McTaggart treats real as genus and existence as species. This chapter contains another insightful discussion: how existence could not be regarded as a ‘real predicate’. It was precisely this idea which Kant used as a tool in order to criticize ontological proof for the
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