Page Text
________________
meaning. Similarly a single culture has no meaning in the absence of the other. Jacque Derrida goes one step further. He says that a word includes its other within its meaning. It just depends upon the view that which one is in the focus and which one is in the margin. He refers to Plato's use of the word 'pharmacon'.' The word 'pharmacon' means medicine, elixir of life as well as poison. Thus the word contains opposites as its meaning. Likewise anekānta philosophy accepts the different levels of human perceptions and cultures and does not give privileged treatment to one particular thought. It pleads for different cultures as part and parcel of proper cultural department. Inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue rejects the two hermeneutics model, hermeneutics of total identity of modernity and of radical difference of post-modernity and pleads for third model of Analogous, Hermeneutics? i.e. the anekāntic way of interpretation, which collaborates different cultures keeping its identity in a single whole. In Jain canon Sūtrakrtānga, Mahāvīra says, "to praise ones belief and degrading the others faith leads a man of absolute perspective to unending problems and sorrow." So one cannot arrive at the truth, by disowning others truth, simply because they are other people's truth. In inter-cultural dialogue, with reference to anekānta, one tries to understand the other from their point of view. Truth cannot be unified. As Ricoeur rightly remarks that, ‘uniformization of truth is, no doubt, a dream of reason but it is at the same time an act of violence.' So under the umbrella of anekāntic, inter-cultural understanding, we accept the points of agreement and overlook points of disagreement which is
Jacques Derrida. Dissemination. Trans. With an Introduction and Additional
Notes by Barbara Johnson. London: Continuum, 2005, p. 103. 2 Emile Durkheim. “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life", quoted from
the book “The origin and Development of Religion", p. 59. 3 Sutrakstānga. op.cit., 2.50.
160
| SR No. | 006966 |
| Book Title | Applied Philosophy of Anekanta |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Shashiprajna Samni |
| Publisher | Jain Vishva Bharati Institute |
| Publication Year | 2012 |
| Total Pages | 220 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 18 MB |