Metaphysics can be deceptive. At first sight it can seem to be removed from concrete life. In reality it plumbs most deeply to grasp the real nature and meaning of what generally is perceived only on the surface. This ability is a hallmark of great thinkers.

Professor Vensus George in this masterful work takes us deeply into the thought of two of the world’s great thinkers. Shankara is the leading thinker in the great metaphysical traditions of India. According to one chronology, after Hinduism had been reformed and replaced by Buddhism, and after this, in turn, had served for the thousand years predicted by the Lord Buddha, a new reformation was needed. It was Shankara who reargued the original truths of the Hindu vision and brought about its restoration throughout India. The acuity of his philosophical insight has remained the basic point of reference for Indian metaphysics ever since. This enabled it to retain its spiritual insight regarding the deep meaning of human life, which it plunges definitively into eternity so that all of life is suffused with divine meaning.

Heidegger has performed an analogous service for modern thought. After the Reformation and a long exploration of the capacities of human reason, rationalism had come to the limits of its forces. By mid 20th century it had degenerated into totalitarian forces engaged in massive pogroms and holocausts within, and in attempts at mutual destruction without. It was essential that the mind be able to break beyond this conflict and to plumb anew the sources and meaning of being. This was the contribution of Martin Heidegger who received the phenomenological relay from Husserl and transformed this exploration of intentionality into the study of Being as emerging into time. Indeed as he moved to Being itself in the second stage of this project he approached ever closer to the areas and issues treated so long before by Shankara.

Both thinkers confront directly the key question of authen-ticity for human life: is this realized by closing in upon itself as self-sufficient or does it require a transcendence of self to absolute Self in terms of which relations to others acquire a sacred meaning. In response, where Shankara takes us into the depth of Being as Self, Heidegger renews our understanding of beings as emerging

therefrom into time, and of the Being they thereby express. Rarely has the depth and meaning of being been so incisively and clearly illuminated as by these two thinkers. Never, also has their thought been brought together in so mutually enlightening a manner as in the present work.

It might be objected that it is difficult to compare the thought of persons so different in time, but as this line of argumentation is advanced it threatens to result in the loss of the ability of humanity to learn from the past -- or to learn it all. This cannot be.

What Professor George does is rather to analyze the method and metaphysical structure of the thought of each of these thinkers, thereby enabling the reader to obtain a solid grasp of their des-cription of the path of authentic human destiny to absolute Being and life in the divine opened.

This done, he proceeds to the work of comparison, showing their points of convergence and thereby enabling the reader to appreciate anew the force and depth of the insights of each. Finally, he analyses the differences between the two which makes it possible to appreciate empathically the limitations of the approach of each.

The result is magnificent insight along with a humbling awareness of the human difficulties in achieving full understanding of the munificence of Being. Thereby one gains a better sense of what can be known of the infinite richness of Being, which yet ever remains to be explored more fully by the human mind and manifested creatively in the life of persons and peoples.

This work of Vensus George on the paths of Shankara and Heidegger toward authentic human destiny marks an important milestone on our pilgrimage toward the eternal in time.

George F. McLean