Jaina Theories of Reality and Knowledge

SR No.: 001608
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Y J Padmarajiah
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal
Publication Year: 1963
Total Pages: 444
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Epistemology, & Anekantvad
File Size: 23 MB

Page 178

CHAPTER V
W. Wundt, a great psychologist of the period prior to that of Einstein's theory of relativity, enunciates 'the law of relativity' which coincides, at any rate in one of the essential implications, with the Jaina conception of the manifold (anekanta) nature of conciseness (cf. ch. IX). His 'law', supported also by Thomas Hobbes and Alexander Bain, maintains "that every phase of experience is influenced by every other phase of experience of the moment, and also by the whole past history of consciousness" (see Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. II, ed. J. M. Baldwin, 1911, New York, p. 450; see also the editor's Handbook of Psychology, 2nd edn., London, 1890, pp. 58-63; James Ward's article on "Psychology" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1891, London, p. 558; H. Hoffding's Outlines of Psychology, E. T. by M. E. Lowndes, 1891, London; and Mill's op. cit., p. 6 and f. n. thereon). This 'law' has also been affiliated, by its authors, to the Berkeleyan and Humean tenet of the 'unknowableness' of the 'inmost' nature of reality. The implication of interrelatedness of each phase of experience to all phases of experience, according to this 'law' is therefore a superimposition upon the theory of 'unknowable' reality. The point of comparison between this 'law' and the Jaina conception of manifold reality does not, therefore, extend beyond the common point of interrelatedness between the two schools in question. Further, the 'law' is bound by two limitations with respect to the comparison: (1) that it is purely psychological and, on the side of Jainism, applies only to the sphere of consciousness and not to total reality of which consciousness is a part and (2) that it superadds to itself the philosophical theory of an 'unknowable' reality in sharp contrast to Jainism which subscribes to an attitude of direct access to, or cognition of, reality. A. N. Whitehead however, complements the truth of Wundt's psychological relativity, touching, by means of his principle of 'the signi ficance of events', the objective side of reality: "Returning to the significance of events", he observes in The Principle of Relativity (Cambridge, 1922, p. 26), "we see there is no such thing as an isolated event. Each event essentially signifies the whole structure. But, furthermore, there is no such thing as a bare event." (See also The Concept of Nature, Cambridge, 1920, p. 29, para 2, etc.) These two sides of the truth of relativity, viz., the subjective side as advanced by Wundt and the
159