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CHAPTER XI
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ness or even exclusiveness in the modal conclusions. He feels perhaps that the distinctions of the modal truths look to an absolutist eye grossly exaggerated. But they are bound together also by the unity of the dialectical principle under which the aspects of a factual situation are investigated and synthesised. Syādvāda may be an eclectic synthesis from the point of view of absolutism which demands a 'block' universe or a 'seamless coat' but is not unfaithful to the genius of its own philosophical position which demands a discriminative synthesis which it undoubtedly is. The next charge against syādvāda, viz., that it is "a variety of scepticism” or “agnosticism”, may now be examined. A sceptical or agnostic philosophy or method is based on "the opinion that real knowledge of any kind is unattainable”.' More particularly agnosticism is an attitude of "knownothingness”. Therefore a sceptic is defined as "One who, like Pyrrho and his followers in Greek antiquity, doubts the possibility of knowledge of any kind, who holds that there are no adequate grounds for certainty as to the truth of any proposition whatever”?
It is not possible to see how syādvāda could be called sceptical or agnostic while it firmly repudiates any such association and has its genesis, at least partially, in an attempt to fight, as will be presently shown, the agnosticism (ajñānavāda) of Sañjaya. According to syādvāda each modal truth is valid so far as it goes, and, instead of being annulled, it is supplemented and transfigured, by the other six
1. 2.
O. E. D. under "scepticism". Ibid. under "sceptic".
