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

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STUDIES IN JAINISM
and wrong, good and evil is to be acquired afterwards, while moral life is to be practised. Thus the conviction of the Jaina is that the knowledge of value and obligations is tied up with our feelings and that in their absence we are ethically blind. In fact, our feelings and knowledge are so interwoven into a complex harmony that we have never a state of mind in which both are not present in some degree. So the claims of cognitivists and noncognitivists are onesided and are very antagonistic to the verdict of experience. Blanshardó rightly remarks Nature may spread before us the richest possible banquet of good things, but if we can look at them only with the eye of reason, we shall care for none of these things; they will be alike insipid. There would be no knowledge of good and evil in a world of mere knowers, for where there is no feeling, good and evil would be unrecognisable. Again ‘a life that directs itself by feeling even of the most exalted kind will be like a ship without a rudder'. Thus the nature of ethical judgement acording to the Jaina is cognitive-affective. "The achievement of good is a joint product of our power to know and our power to feel”.?
The next question in meta-ethics is to ask how our ethical judgements (value and obligation) can be justified. That the ethical judements are objectively true need not imply that their justification can be sought in the same manner as the justification of factual judgements of ordinary and scientific nature. The reason for this is that value cannot be derived from fact, ought from is. In factual judgements our expressions are value but in ethical judgements we cannot be indifferent to their being sought by ourselves or by others. That is why derivation of ought from is, value from fact is unjustifiable. The value judgements, according to Jaina, are self-evident and can only be experienced directly. Thus they are self-justifying. The conviction of the Jaina is that no argument can prove that «Himsā is evil' and 'Ahimsā is good'. What is intrinsically good or bad can be experienced directly or immediately. The justification of right can be sought from the fact of its producing what is intrinsically good, i. e. from the fact of its producing experience in tune with Ahimsa.