Jaina Mysticism and Other Essays

SR No.: 006933
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 166
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

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in experiencing the truth of the statement. In moral life, knowledge and feeling cannot be separated. The Tattvārthasūtra pronounces that the path of goodness can be traversed only by right knowledge (Darśana and Jñāna) and feeling and activity (Cāritra). Amrtacandra says that first of all knowledge of right, wrong and good is to be acquired, afterwards moral life is to be practised. Thus, the conviction of the Jaina is that the experience of value and obligation is bound up with our feelings and that in their absence, we are ethically blind. In fact, knowledge and feelings are so interwoven into a complex harmony that we have never a state of mind in which both are not present to some degree. So, the claims of cognitivists and non-cognitivists are onesided and are very much antagonistic to the verdict of experience. Blanshard 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." And a life that directs itself by feeling even of the most exalted kind will be a ship without a rudder. Thus the nature of ethical judgement according 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 obligations) can be justified. That ethical judgements 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, facts can not be derived from values, is from ought. In factual judgements our expressions are value-neutral, 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, fact from value is unjustifiable. The value judgements according to the Jaina are self-evident and can only be known by intuition; thus they are self-justifying. The conviction of the Jaina is that no argument can prove 'Hiṁsā is eyil' and 'Ahiṁsā Jaina Mysticism and other essays
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