Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 162

Anekāntavāda, Nayavāda and Syadvāda 145
reality grudgingly yield themselves. This is provided for by nayavāda and syâdvāda respectively.
If by lack of proper synthesis' syādvādin does not instal an absolute at the centre as well as on the periphery of his philosophy and logic syadvāda pleads guilty to the charge and will be satisfied to remain an unrepentent sinner. The threat of its modes not hanging together does not baffle him since he is not unwilling to retain to some extent distinctiveness 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. Syüdvāda 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 syāavāda, 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” 199. 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 200
It is not possible to see how syādvāda could be called sceptical or
stic 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 modal truths, all the seven truths together giving us a full range of the complex truth concerning a particular problem of a fact in reality. Each truth is as it were a single note in the full scale of seven notes which are severally distinctive, in respect of place and function, and, in their totality, interdependent and exhaustive. The aim of syādvāda being to achieve such a comprehensive synthesis which includes the specific cognitive manifestations it is not correct
199. 0.E.D. under scepticism". 200. Ibid. under ''sceptic".