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

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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
contradiction as endorsed by formal pure logic; but it has been established that a priori conception of opposition is untenable. It should, we think, suffice to say that the criterion of opposition is absence of proof of the co-existence of the opposites. In other words, it is from experience and not from pure thought that we should derive our notion of opposition. We have shown how the denial of this fundamental truth has divided idealists and realists and driven them to hostile camps. The only consistent logical conclusion of the a priori concept of opposition is the philosophy of Vedānta as taught by Sankarācārya. Sankara succeeds in denying the plurality with their relations by the application of the Law of contradiction, based upon the difference and opposition of being and non-being, which he thinks to be absolute.
But if we can persuade ourselves that a priori reasoning independent of experience is incompetent to yield insight into the nature of reals and their relations, we cannot accept the findings of idealists. The Jaina is a realist and if Vedanta is the paragon of idealistic thought, as James has observed, Jaina philosophy is with equal propriety and truth entitled to be called the paragon of realism. If experience be the ultimate source of knowledge of reality and its behaviour, we cannot repudiate the plurality of things. The admission of plurality necessitates the recognition of the dual nature of reals as constituted of being and non-being as fundamental elements. One real will be distinguished from another real and this distinction, unless it is dismissed as error of judgment, presupposes that each possesses a different identity, in other words that being of one is not the being of the other. This truth is propounded by the Jaina in that things are real, so far as they have a self-identity of their own unshared by others (svarūpasattā), and they are unreal in respect of a different selt-identity (pararūpasattā). If being were the only character of reals to the exclusion of non-being, all reals would have the self-same being -- in other words, there would be only one real, which is the conclusion of Vedānta. If non-being were the only character of reals, they would not be real even in their own self-identity, as the presupposition of self-identity is being, which is denied in the proposition. This is exactly the conclusion of śünya vāda. Jaina thought steers clear of the Scylla of monism