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37763/1, 6429-HT 2010
It is so difficult to say objectively anything fundamental about today's civilizaiton or modern man because "all of us are caught in the same prejudices". Only a man who is "wholly of the present" can say something important about the present-day world, and only he who has the "most intensive consciousness" of himself and his situation can hope to be such a man. What is required is "essential thinking (Heidegger) of "total seeing" (J. Krishnamurti) by competent persons for apprehending the problems and predicaments of conterporary civilization and for granting an inkling of their possible solutions, Karl Jaspers, also talks of "luminous encopassive thinking", through which contemporary political consciousness must be transformed and a new kind of politics adequate to the threat of atomic doom should be created. Dr. S. Radhkrishnan while speaking on the future of civilization (Kalki, the Future of Civilization, 1929 (first publised) held that to avert periodic crises of civilization, what is required is religious idealism and "cooperation and not identificaitona, accomodation to fellowmen and not imitation of them, and toleration and not absolutism". Thus if we want to save our civillization from atomic annihilation, we have to encourage Anekant culture. However, Anekant philosophy of life should not be confused with contratictionism, indeterminism, scepticism or solipsism. When we look to the particular merits of each side, there is no contradiction. Application of existence and non-existence to the same thing is contradicion but when existence and non-existence are asserted from different standpoints, it is not contradicion. Even in the Upanishads, we have the glimpses of how the reality reveals itself in different ways at different stages of knowledge. Hence Anekant attitude should not be equated with subjective relativism of the Sophists. It is "objective relativism" or "relative absolutism" like Whitehead, Bodin etc. However, there is no similarity with Einstein's theory of relativity. To some extent, we may find its parallel in old Pyrrohoneanism in the West. But while, Pyrrohoneanism relapases into agnosticism or scepticis, there is no room for scepticism whatsoever in Jaina theory of Syadvada or Anekantvada, Scepticism, means in the minimum, abscence of assertion, where as Syadvadins always assert, though what they assert are alternatives. Disjunctive judgement is still judgement. Easch disjunction is alternatively valid. Either there is no self-complete Reality or any such reality is wholly infinite, a mere demand that refuses to be actualised. The only scepticism is that there in concerning the so-called self-complete reality. So where as a sceptic is sceptical about any character of reality, Syadvad is quite
