Central Philosophy of Jainism Anekanta Vada

Author(s): Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nagin J Shah, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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The Central Philosophy of Jainism
being itself a synthetic development, historically presupposes the existence of many rival and well-developed philosophical schools. In fact, the Jaina philosophy unfolded itself in the context of many severe and serious controversies among such schools as the Samkhya, Bauddha, Nyāya, Mimāmsă and Vedānta. Panditas Sukhlalji Sanghavi and Bechardasji Doshi, two erudite (modern) scholars of Jainism, have described the situation as follows:
... when (the) Samskrta language found a place in Jaina literature and when along with the language the logical method as well as the philosophical discussion was ushered into Jaina literature, the discussion of this doctrine (anekanta-väda) gathered strength and bulk, the details were then multiplied and rival currents of thoughts, arguments and proofs also found a place, consistent with their original nature in the discussion of this doctrine. 1
The principle of anekānta can be briefly described as the acceptance of the manifoldness of reality. Jaina philosophers claim that no philosophic or metaphysical proposition can be true if it is simply asserted without any condition or limitation. If a proposition is asserted as "x is f" then it becomes ekānta one-sided.' This means that the proposition ascribes unconditionally a predicate-property to the subject and thereby excludes other rival possibilities (contradictory predicates ). For Jainism such an unconditional assertion violates the principle of anekānta. As far as the Jainas are concerned, if a metaphysical proposition violates this principle, it is to be regarded as false.
When a proposition is unconditionally asserted, it becomes falsifiable. An unconditionally asserted metaphysical proposition, such as “x is f” ascribes the property “f-ness" to the subject. And it can be falsified when its contradictory “x is not f” is shown to be true. Thus, a metaphysical thesis of a particular school is usually rejected by a rival school which puts forward a (directly or indirectly) contradictory thesis. Jainism says that the lesson to be drawn from such age-old philosophic disputes is the following: Each school asserts its thesis and claims it to be the absolute truth, and thus it does not really wish to understand the point that is being made by the opposite side. The rival schools, by their arguments and counter arguments, only encourage dogmatism and intoleration in philosophy. This, according to the Jainas, is the evil of ekānta 'one-sided' philosophies. But the philosophic propositions of rival schools could be integrated together under the Anekānta system. In other words, these rival propositions can be said to capture the truth when and only when they are asserted with proper