Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth

SR No.: 001746
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nagin J Shah
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 168
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Nyay
File Size: 12 MB

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Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth I cannot always fly in the air of possibilities, I must have moorings in some actuality. I must adopt one standpoint.
Jainism is against all kinds of imperialism in thought. For each community there is a special absolute. But the absolutes themselves are alternatives so far as they are probables. But this is only on thought level. But when I have chosen one it is more than possible, it is existence or actual. So there is wonderful reconciliation between conditionality and unconditionality. Every thing is conditional on thought level, but not on the level of existence. Thus there is no real contradiction.
To avoid the fallacy of infinite regress, the Jainas distinguish between valid non-absolutism (samyak anekānta) and invalid non-absolutisni (mithyā anekānta). Like an invalid absolute judgement, an invalid nonabsolute judgement, too, is invalid. To be valid, anekānta must not be absolute but relative.
If we consider the above points, we cannot say that the "theory of relativity cannot be logically sustained without the hypothesis of an absolute”. Thought is not mere distinction but also relation. Everything is possible only in relation to and as distinct from others. Under these circumstances, it is not illegitimate to hold that the hypothesis of an absolute cannot be sustained without the hypothesis of a relative. Absolute to be absolute presupposes a relative somewhere and in some forms, even the relative of its non-existence.
Jaina logic of anekānta is based not on abstract intellectualism but on experience and realism leading to a non-absolutistic attitude of mind. Multiplicity and unity, definability and non-definability etc. which apparently seem to be contradictory characteristics of reality are interpreted to co-exist in the same object from different points of view without any offence to logic. They seem to be contradictory of each other simply because one of them is mistaken to be the whole truth. In fact, integrity of truth consists in this very variety of its aspects, within the rational unity of an all-comprehensive and ramifying principle. The charge of contradiction against the co-presence of being and nonbeing in the real is a figment of a priori logic.