Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 169

152 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
Being, as personal, is the self-existence (that is, existence in respect of its own substance, space, time and mode) of a real and nonbeing is its non-existence in respect of an alien substance, space, time and mode) which includes the negation of the modes of infinite past (pradhvaṁsābhāva i.e., non-existence after destruction) and of infinite future (prāgabhāva i.e., pre-non-existence) as well as absolute negation (atyantābhāva e.g., non-existence of colour in air) and infinite numerical differences (anyonyābhāva i.e., mutual non-existence or non-existence of identity of things). The denial of this non-existence wculd make the distinction of one thing from another impossible, and thus robit of its individuality and determinate character. Non-being, therefore, is as much an element in the constitution of a real as being is. Universal being is uncharacterized indeterminate existence or pure affirmation which is the uniting bond of all determinate reals. Personal being is characterized and determinate existence, and is non-being in the sense of other than or distinct from universal being. This personal being is determinate self-existence of self-affirmation as distinct from, that is, as non-existence or negation of other determinates coordinate with it. Being and non-being, existence and non-existence, affirmation and negation, thus are the constituents of a real at every stage.
This analysis of a real is necessitated by an analysis of the nature of any ordinary experience. Our experience is at once positive and negative. A purely positive experience, being altogether incapable of defining its object, is either a case of confusion or an experience tantamount to ‘no experience'. The postulation of a purely negative experience also leads to a similar contradiction. Negation means exclusion of a determinate fact from other such facts. But no such
3. For details see JPN, pp. 31 seq. 4. Cf. "there is more, and not less, in the idea of an object conceived as 'not existing
than in the idea of this same object conceived as existing'; for the idea of the obejct *not existing' is necessarily the idea of the object 'existing' with, in addition, the representation of an exclusion of this object by the actual reality taken in block." Bergson: Creative Evolution (London, 1954), p. 302. Although the Jaina philosopher does not agree with Bergson in regarding negation as a pseudo-idea and a mere species of affirmation, he is in perfect agree: vent with him in regarding negation as an exclusion of the negatum by positive facts other than it (viz. negatum) and to that extent as sharing the nature of an affirmation. He also does not agree with Bergson in admitting affirmation as 'a complete act of the mind' and negation but the half of an intellectual act, or which the other half is understood, or rather put off to an indefinite future? (Ibid., p. 303). For him each is equally incomplete without the other