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Theory of Anekāntavāda*
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K.C. BHATTACHARYA
The Jaina theory of anekāntavāda or the manifoldness of truth is a form of realism which not only asserts a plurality of determinate truths but also takes each truth to be an indetermination of alternative truths It is interesting as suggesting a criticism of present-day realism and indicating a direction in which its logic might be developed. It is proposed in the present paper to discuss the conception of a plurality of determinate truths to which ordinary realism appears to be committed and to show the necessity of an indeterministic extension such as is presented by the Jaina theory.
The truth that we actually know is a plurality of truths and philosophy rightly or wrongly, sets itself the problem of finding the one truth which either denies or in some sense compries the plurality. Whatever differences there have been as to the actual conception of the truth, the rejection of the faith that there is one truth has generally been taken to argue a scepticism about the many truths that we claim to know. Some times however an ultimate plurality of truths has itself been taken as the one truth and the apparent contradiction has been sought to he avoided hy taking it to mean only that there is one cognition of the plurality. Else-where the cognition of a fact is a further fact but here the addition of cognition as a fact to plurality as a fact yields us nothing but the plurality. The realistic or objectivistic equivalent of the unity of a cognitive act is the bare togetherness of the facts know; and the togetherness of cognition as a fact with the fact cognised is the exemplar of this relation.
The difficulty is about the objectivity of this bare togetherness.
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The Philosophical Quartely, 1/1, 1925.
