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ETHICAL DOCTRINES IN JAINISM
Jainism would subscribe to the view of Socrates that right knowledge and true belief are essential to right action, but denies that they necessarily issue in goodness. The irrational parts of the soul, namely, passions, cannot be lost sight of and very often these passions prevent a man from doing that which contributes to the well-being of the soul. The Socratic axiom of knowledge as goodness can only be justified by one who has ascended the mystical heights, but we have little evidence to show that Socrates meant this. That the real good is the good of the human soul is in conformity with the Jaina view. The highest good is spiritual and wrong actions obstruct spiritual progress.
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOLS: The manysidedness of the Socratic ethics gave rise to diametrically opposed schools of ethical thought, namely, those of the Cynics and the Cyrenaics founded by Antisthenes, and Aristippus respectively. These two founders endeavoured in their own way to represent the chief constituents of a life of well-being. Both agreed regarding human well-being as the highest good, but they differed enormously in point of the content which the life of well-being must include. The ideal of life advocated by the Cynics consists in the eradication of all desires, in the freedom from all wants, and in being completely independent of all possessions. It enjoins absolute asceticism and rigorous self-mortification. In contrast to the above-mentioned negative content as constituting the inner core of the life of well-being, the Cyrenaics laid stress on the positive attainment of the greatest amount of pleasure. They no doubt extolled bodily pleasures, but they escaped sensuality and bestiality, inasmuch as the need of prudence in the pursuit of pleasures was emphasized and advocated. The prudent cultivates self-control, postpones a more urgent to a less urgent desire in order to get more pleasure and less pain. "The Cyrenaic and Cynic doctrines tend towards exclusive egoism, whether as a pursuit of self-dependence or of pleasurable feeling.". In the view of the Jaina, the Cynic ideal will remain unrealisable so long as the Atmanic steadfastness is not arrived at. Mere negation will lead us nowhere. The internal and the external Aparigraha is incapable of being practised without spiritual possession. The Cynic failed to reconcile individual goodness with the social one. In conformity with the views of the Jaina, the life of the householder and that of the Muni can properly attune the individual with social uplift
Short History of Ethics, p. 41.
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