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Chapter 2 The Doctrine of Syādvāda or The Jaina Dialectic
Introduction
• We have seen that the structure of reality consists of both unity and diversity at the same time. It can be further analysed into attributes, modes and traits. The relational nature of reality makes its structure all the more complicated. On the other hand human capacity for comprehension is so limited that it cannot know a thing in its totality. Thus the Anekānta theory of existence and the discursive nature of human thinking necessitate the formulation of the doctrine of Syādvāda or the Jaina dialectic, which is mainly concerned, as W.T. Stace thinks, with "the correct joining and disjoining of ideas”). It aims at finding a suitable explanation for the fragmentary advance of our thought and comprehension. It also aims at seeking the type of consistence which such an advance of knowledge will evince.
Main Spirit of the Jaina Dialectic
Another spirit which the doctrine of Syādvāda shows is that nothing can be affirmed of a real in an absolute way. Samantabhadra remarks that Syādvāda is a way of comprehension of an entity be renouncing the absolute views about it. Syādvāda emphasizes the fact that no predicate affirmed of a real is able to yield the whole truth
1. W.T. Stace: A Critical History of Greek Philosophy, p. 190.
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