Studies in Jainism

SR No.: 002008
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: M P Marathe, Meena A Kelkar, P P Gokhle
Publisher: Indian Philosophical Quarterly Publication Puna
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 284
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Religion
File Size: 16 MB

Page 132

THE JAINA CONCEPT OF LOGIC
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for assessing evidence and evaluating these beliefs as true and false consistent and inconsistent. Two, within one and the same tradition, the methods and criteria used for avoiding and resolving disagreements about religious and metaphysical matters, the knowledge of which is supposed or claimed to be delivered to us in the accepted Scriptures. Finally, three, the reasoning strategies adopted in dealing with the opponents and the critics of one's views, in thej aina tradition particularly, with the explicit aim of avoiding conflicts, violence, and strife, and if possible, to look at them as though the opponents' views could be mutually harmonized in the sense that they were different philosophical reactions to one and the same situation from different points of view.
(3) In the history of Indian philosophy, these three different jobs for which reasoning has been employed have not often been distinguished sharply. It is one the distinctive features of the Jaina logical enterprize that, in this tradition, there have been quite a few thinkers who differentiated reasoning used for one job from reasoning employed for the other job. Yasovijaya Gani at one place1 remarks that the saptabhaiigi is used in the case of the Agama or the Scriptures, and nowhere is the Jaina logician prepared to employ saptabharigi or even the nayavāda in relation to what is known by pratyaksa or anunāna.2 There is a jar here' is known by pratyaksa : it is a fact of observation, and for this reason the question of its prāmānya from the points of view of metaphysics is not relevant to its truth or falsity. Similarly, the Jainas used their naya vyavastha in order to account for the different metaphysical views of their opponents and critics by interpreting whatever the non-Jaina views there were, in terms of nayābhāsas.3 The Jaina theory of Naya, thus, is employed as an instrument of describing the non-Jaina views of reality. A naya is a relative description, it is a description of reality relative to a certain point of view. A nayabhāsa or the fallacy of naya is the fallacy of mistaking a relative for an absolute description; it is the mistake of identifying a description Di which is true for some values of x for a description Dj which is true for every value of x. The structure of the Jaina reasoning in such a case is as follows: A non-Jaina philosopher describes some one only facet of reality from a certain given point of view. But, reality is anaikāntikā, many-faceted; and for this reason, it is a mistake to regard a description of some