Comparative Study Of Jaina Theories Of Reality And Knowledge

SR No.: 022768
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Y J Padmarajaiah
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal
Publication Year: 1963
Total Pages: 446
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 35 MB

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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
There are, indeed, vital differences between the Jaina and the Kantian metaphysics, e. g., the latter's transcendentalism with its concomitant notion of the thing-in-itself (Dingan-sich), the treatment of space and time as the forms of sensibility, the phenomenality of the world, and several other doctrines with which the Jaina does not concur'. However, Kant's insistence on the need of the co-existence of permanence and change in the realm of the experienced world marks a significant confirmation of the cardinal Jaina doctrine of identity-in-difference with a Western system which is considered to be the watershed of modern Western metaphysics.
Having observed how the three great thinkers, Whitehead, Kumārila and Kant, agree with Jainism on the truth of the fundamental Jaina axiom of the co-existence of permanence and change, or identity-in-difference, a further critical analysis of the essential implications of Umāsvāti's sūtra, viz., utpädavyayadhrauvyayuktam sat, may now be attempted.
The strength of the proof that identity and difference
which has meaning with regard to changes, i, e., succession proper, has no meaning at all." KTKP, p. 272.
Caird and others also make frequent references to this "two-fold aspect" of reality so that "all existence is summed up in permanent substances and their states". CPKE Vol. I, p. 488. See also, pp. 490 ff., SCKCE, pp. 152-153 and Critic of Pure Reason, p. 151, ff., Francis Raywood, pub. by William Pickering, 1948, London. To the Jaina the thing-in-itself is inacceptable since he maintains the knowability of all reality. Nor does he consider space and time to be forms of sensibility since the two are intrinsically real and form a necessary part of the physical universe. As a realist he also repudiates the phenomenality of the world and considers it to be unreservedly real.