Anekantajay patakakhyam Prakaranam Part 2

Author(s): Haribhadrasuri, Munichandrasuri
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 121

CXVIII
INTRODUCTION
. . "We quito agree with the view that Syadvāda or Saptabhanginaya may be a later development in Jainism but the dootrine of Anekāntavāda, the first and the most fundamental teaching of Mahāvira seems to have been at the root of Syādvāda".-P. 181
Anekāntavāda and pragmatism-A Pragmatic logician like Schiller (1759 A. D.-1805 A. D.) recognizes the fact that no judgment is true or false without particular reference to its context and purpose. Even a so-called self-evident judgment, like 'A square is not a circle" or "Two and Two are four', is true only in a specific sense. So says Schiller. A Jaina Tirthankara like Mahāvīra, says that every judgment that we pass in daily life about any object is true only in reference to the stand-point occupied and the aspect of the object considered. Thus this is a striking point of resemblance between pragmatism and anekāntavada. But it should not be forgotten that there is a great difference, too, between them. For the Jainas are realists whereas the pragmatists have a distinct idealistic bias. The Jainas hold that the different judgments about an object are not simply different subjective ideas of the object but they correspond to the different real aspects of the object. This is what is said in An Introduction to Indian Philosophy (p. 98). Further it adds:
"The Jaing would accept, therefore, the correspondence view of truth which is rejected by all thoroughgoing pragmatists. It is true that they admit like the praginatists that the truth of a judgment about reality may be ascertained by the barmony (samvåda) of the judgment with the
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1 "The doctrine of Anekäntavāda or many-sideness, taking a compre
hepsive view of all, shows that the different representations do not tell us what a thing is in itself but only what it is to us. In other words, according to this principle, the truth is relative
to our standpoints."-Ibid, p. 179 2 Cf. a circle is a straight line, in case its radius is infinite. 3 This may be variously interpreted from the stand-point of vector
analysis. As another example take any number. Its value depende upon the radix. Thus 12 = 1xr+2, 4 having any value greater than 2; so
12 stands for 5, 6, 7 eto. (12 inoluded). 5 Cf. "Every judgment, as a piece of concrete thinking, is informed,
conditioned, and to some extent constituted by the appercipient character of the mind...,"-The Nature of Truth (Ch. III, p. 93)