Patanjali and Kant

This is a subtle and important comparison, and the passage you photographed is actually quite careful. Let me lay it out in three layers: (1) what Funes-Maderey is claiming, (2) where Patanjali and Kant genuinely converge, and (3) where the comparison decisively breaks down.

1. What Funes-Maderey is actually claiming

Funes-Maderey is not saying that Patanjali is a Kantian, nor that Yoga is transcendental idealism. The claim is narrower and more precise:

Both Patanjali and Kant defend the reality of an objective world, but they do so by treating time as dependent on cognition rather than mind-independent.

This is the key sentence you photographed:

“Although both philosophers strive to prove the reality of an objective world independent of the mind, they both achieve this by conceiving time in an anti-realist way, that is, not independent of our modes of cognizing it.”

So the analogy turns on time, not on consciousness as such.

2. How Patanjali’s “idealism” resembles Kant’s

A. Time is not fully mind-independent in either system

Kant

• Time is a pure form of intuition

• It is not a property of things-in-themselves

• Objects appear in time because of how the human mind structures experience

Patanjali (as read through Sāṃkhya-Yoga)

• Time (kāla) is bound up with manifestation

• Objects become manifest when consciousness (puruṣa) is proximate to prakṛti

• When consciousness is withdrawn, objects return to an unmanifest state

In both cases:

Temporal appearance is conditioned by cognition, not brute reality.

This is the narrow but real point of convergence.

B. Objectivity is preserved without naïve realism

Neither thinker says:

“The world is just a mental projection.”

Instead:

• Kant: objects are empirically real, transcendentally ideal

• Patanjali: objects are real transformations (pariṇāma) of prakṛti, but only manifest relative to consciousness

Thus both reject:

• naïve realism (“things are exactly as they appear”)

• pure subjective idealism (“things exist only in my mind”)

C. Micro-time and momentariness

Your passage highlights micro-time:

“This also explains how objects appear in consciousness in micro-time: in moments or instants.”

This is analogous to Kant’s insistence that:

• experience occurs through successive synthesis

• objects appear through temporal ordering imposed by cognition

So again, appearance-in-time is cognition-dependent in both.

3. Where the comparison breaks down (very important)

This is where people often overstate the similarity.

A. Kant denies access to noumena; Patanjali does not

Kant

• The thing-in-itself (noumenon) is unknowable in principle

• Liberation from appearances is impossible

Patanjali

• Liberation (kaivalya) is precisely freedom from appearances

• Puruṣa can stand completely apart from prakṛti

• Reality beyond appearance is directly knowable

So while Kant’s philosophy is epistemically modest, Patanjali’s is soteriological.

This is a decisive difference.

B. Consciousness plays radically different roles

Kant

• Consciousness structures experience

• But it does not ontologically generate the world

Patanjali

• Consciousness does not create prakṛti

• But manifestation itself depends on proximity to consciousness

So Patanjali is closer to ontological idealism about manifestation, whereas Kant is epistemological idealism only.

C. Time in Kant is universal; time in Patanjali is cyclical and cosmological

Kant:

• Time is a universal a priori form

• Same for all finite rational beings

Patanjali:

• Time is:

  
  

  • cyclic

  • layered (macrocosmic cycles and micro-instants)

  • tied to cosmic manifestation and dissolution

• 
  

This is why the passage notes:

“Patañjali’s view is more attuned to the Vedic notion of time cycles.”

That has no Kantian equivalent.

4. Why Funes-Maderey still calls Yoga “tinged with idealism”

The phrase is cautious on purpose:

“can never quite escape the tinge of idealism”

Because in Yoga:

• materiality exists for the sake of consciousness

• manifestation depends on illumination

• unmanifest reality is as real as manifest reality

This pushes Yoga beyond realism, but not into solipsism.

5. Bottom line comparison

Similarities

• Both reject naïve realism

• Both make time cognition-dependent

• Both preserve objectivity

• Both explain appearance through structured cognition

Differences

• Kant: epistemology without liberation

• Patanjali: metaphysics ordered toward liberation

• Kant: unknowable noumenon

• Patanjali: directly knowable puruṣa

• Kant: linear, universal time

• Patanjali: cyclical, cosmological time

In one sentence

Funes-Maderey’s comparison works only at the level of how time and appearance depend on cognition; it fails the moment we move to liberation, ontology, or metaphysical purpose, where Patanjali decisively exceeds Kant.

If you’d like, I can also:

• contrast this with Yogācāra Buddhism (where the difference is sharper)

• show how Vijñānavāda would not accept this Kantian parallel

• or map Patanjali against Husserl instead of Kant, which is often more illuminating