Jaina Philosophy of Non Absolutism

SR No.: 001213
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Satkari Mookerjee, S N Dasgupta
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 314
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, B000, & B025
File Size: 18 MB

Page 159

The Dialectic of Sevenfold Predicat ion
137
It follows then that the negative proposition is as much true as the affirmative one. It has been contended by others that being or existence constitutes the nature of a real and non-being only relates to another real. The import of the predicate in the proposition 'The jar exists' is that existence is a part and parcel of the reality of the jar, The jar does not exist is really an apparent proposition, having only a formal similarity with the affirmative proposition. The predicate ‘non-existence does not in reality belong to the iar as a jar, but to what is not ja The Jaina is also agreed that the negation of the attribute has reference to something else. The jar really exists as jar and not as pen. So negation of existence can have reference to the pen and other things which are not jar. If the non-existence of pen were an attribute of the jar, the colour, shape and other characteristics of the pen should also be the attributes of the jar. But this is absurd. The Jaina, however, does not think that the two cases are similar or that the contention is tenable. The colour, shape and other qualities of the pen are the exclusive properties of the pen and so cannot be predicated of any thing else. But non-existence-as-pen is an attribute of the jar. The jar has a self-existence and a self-identity which is inseparable from its non-existence-as-pen. As has been said above, existence has no objective status apart from the concrete real, and since one real is distinguished from another real, the existence of or
ipso facto distinguished from that of others. That one existence · is distinct from another existence means that the two are not
identical, that is to say, each has an identity of its own, which can be understood fully in reference to another existence. To know is to distinguish. A thing can be known fully as it is in itself only when it is known to be what it is not. It is really difficult to determine the status of the element of negation in the knowledge of a real - whether it is antecedent or consequent to the knowledge of the positive aspect. But the question of precedence is not material. It is undeniable that conception of a real is a complex of a positive and a negative aspect. The Jaina does not seem to be wrong when he insists that the determinate
1. The Jaina does not distinguish between being and existence, which are always concrete.