Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

SR No.: 002012
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 1996
Total Pages: 400
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Religion, & Nyay
File Size: 23 MB

Page 255

238 Anekāntavāda and Syädvāda
logical indefinability is according to him the proof of the unreality of things. We have found that things are not absolutely inexpressible and how the advocacy of inexpressibility, as the sole and whole character of reality, leads to self-contradiction. Inexpressibility is a real characteristic which is not susceptible of being dismissed as a false appearance, since it is not sublated by a subsequent corrective experience like an error of perception. Nor does the cognition of inexpressibility involve a logical error, as we have shown.
The Vedāntist rightly shows that inexpressibility is invariably associated with the being of a real, but he is convicted of extremism by the jaina for asserting the element of being as the sole and exclusive character of reality and for construing the element of inexpressibility as proof of the unreality of empirical facts following the lead of the Sünyavādin. Jain logic does not endorse this interpretation, since it finds no contradiction in the coincidence of being and non-being. The coincidence of being and non-being in a real is certainly not capable of being grasped by a single concept or a linguistic symbol; but that is not proof of its unreality, but of the limitation of human language and conceptual thought. The Jaina accepts each one of the conclusions of these philosophers, as representative of a different aspect of reality. He does not repudiate their findings as false, but he insists that the fallacy of these philosophical positions lies in their exclusiveness and extremism. These philosophers taught true doctrines, but they erred by insisting on their discoveries being the exclusive nature of reality. The Jaina profits by their speculations and in his comprehensive philosophy finds room for them all. Each taken by itself is a true evaluation, but inadequate. He charges the philosophers with inadequacy and extremistic outlook, which, he thinks, is due to their preoccupation with their findings and impatience to look at the other side of the shield. The Jaina makes the extremes meet in his system of thought and calls his own philosophy by the name of non-extremism and non-absolutism (anekāntavāda). The non-absolutism of the Jaina is not the result of negation of absolutes and extremes, but of comprehension of them in a system. The empirical reality of the Vedāntist called vyāvahărikasattā is the absolute truth of the Jaina, and the latter refuses to accompany the Vedāntist in his philosophical excursion into the transcendental plane, which the Jaina thinks to be an ainy abstraction hypostatized, as it lacks the sanction of experience, which is the only proof of existence.