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 163

The Dialectic of Sevenfold Predication
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negative ideas. If they are thinkable, they exist as thought constructions, though not as objective facts. Viewed from this point of view their objective non-existence is found to be commensurate with conceptual existence. It is not maintained that the negative concomitant should have coordinate status — an objective non-existence having subjective existence as its implicate or vice versa will equally meet the requirements of the law. And if we look deeper, coordinate status of the positive and negative concomitants can also be discovered in these cases. These fictions are complex constructions of incongruous elements. Both square and circle, sky and flower, a barren woman and a son, are objectively existent facts. But their combination is only nonexistent. So the concomitance of existence and non-existence is found to hold good in these cases also.
The law of concomitance of opposites is only a deduction from the Jaina conception of determinateness of existence and as such holds good of all reals, irrespective of their rôle in logical thought. We have applied the law to predicates, but that is only by way of illustration. Predicate or subject, the law holds good of all facts. The conception of determinate existence is in direct opposition to the Vedāntist position of one universal existence which admits of no negation. It is again opposed to the Fluxist position that non-existence is only a fiction. A determinate existence is a complex of existence and non-existence, both being real elements of it. The first proposition is thus in need of being supplemented by the second -- each being an incomplete description taken by itself. Let us now elucidate the import of the propositions in the light of the results of our speculations. The jar exists' would thus be correctly interpreted as X (the jar) is the substratum of existence as determined by the nature of jar.' The existence predicated of the jar is thus determinate and we mean this when we further amplify the original proposition, *The jar exists,' by adding the restrictive clause ‘as jar' to it. The second proposition is “The jar does not exist which is further amplified as 'The jar does not exist as pen and so on.' The nonexistence of the jar is determined by the pen and the like which stand for the whole class of not-jar. The negative particle 'not' in connection with the verb means 'non-existence' and the latter is determined by the pen and the like. The non-existence