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22 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
Each of these dualties can be used as the predicates of the seven propositions. Three propositions constituted by these duals are given below by way of illustration. It should be noted here that the Jaina philosopher's conception of universal is quite different from that of the Nyāya-Vaiseșika school. The Jainas substitute similarity for universal1. The pot certainly is similar in some respect.
The pot certainly is different in some respect. The pot certainly is indescribable in some respect. The pot certainly is permament in some respect. The pot certainly is impermanent in some respect. The pot certainly is indescribable in some respect. The pot certainly is speakable in some respect. The pot certainly is unspeakable in some respect. The pot certainly is indescribable in some respect.
Each attribute of an object can give rise to a system of sevenfold predication( saptabhangi). Permanence and impermanence being mutually contradictory attributes, how could they qualify the same pot. It is on the basis of relativism that a synthesis is established between these mutually opposed attributes.
The Greek poet-philosopher Heraclitus of the 6th-5th century B.C believed in the doctrine of the co-existence of contraries. His relativism is the spur which pricks the side of a sluggish conservatism in all departments of life-taste and morals, politics and societyand it is the absence of relativism that, according to Heraclitus, is responsible for absolutisms and stagnation in philosophical thinking. Heraclitus announced for the first time in Greek thought the principle of relativity of qualities which he pushed forthwith to its extreme consequences in the words 'good and bad are the same', 'we are and we are not'. The movement of life, according to him, is like the back-returning of the bow, to which he compares it, 32 an energy of traction and tension restraining an energy of release, every force of action compensated by a corresponding force of reaction. By the resistance of one to the other all the harmonies of existence are created.*
Heraclitus was a fluxist and, therefore, a relativist. In point of fact his doctrine of flux and his doctrine of relativity lead to the same result; the successive states of an object as well as its simultaneous qualities
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32. Pascātya Darsana, pp. 5. 6. * Sri Aurobindo, Birth Centenary Library, Vol. XVI, page 3521.
| SR No. | 002012 |
| Book Title | Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture |
| 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 |