Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 235

218 Anekāntavāda and Syädvāda
occasion two other propositions, the predicates having different formal import. Thus instead of asserting existence and non-existence in the order noted above, one may assert non-existence first and existence next, e.g., the proposition may be stated as “The pen docs not exist and exists.' Here the element of non-existence is given the formal status of an adjective to 'existence', and, so, its logical import is different from that of the third. In the seventh proposition the same reversal of the order of the two elements, existence and non-existence, would yield a different formal import. If formal logic were the determinant of the sevenfold predication, the introduction of the two additional propositions resulting from the admitted formal difference of import cannot be debarred by any logic. The difference of the predicates in the third and fourth propositions must be shown to be based upon a material difference, or either of them has to be expunged. Later exponents of the sevenfold dialectic are emphatically of the opinion that the difference is material and objective and not formal or subjective. The third predicate asserts the co-equal primacy of the two predicates taken together and the fourth predicate stands for a new attribute different from both. Let us examine the import of the predicates of the seven propostions seriatim, and the material difference of the attributes will become apparent.
The first predicate 'existence' is true, as the reality of the subject in its own context cannot be denied. The pen is really existent in so far as it is its own self. But this does not give us full insight into the nature of the pen. The pen is pen only because it is not not-pen. It can have a determinate existence only by virtue of its non-existence as anything else than pen. This attribute is asserted in the second proposition. Thus each of the two attributes belongs to the pen. But each by itself does not lay bare the individuality, but the two together do. The compresence of the two, again, does not exhaust the nature of the pen. It is equally a felt fact that the compresence gives rise to a novel attribute, which derives from the two and at the same time is different from both of them. The attribute, engendered by ihe synthesis of the two attributes, is different inasinuch as it not only contains the two elements but transforms them. The synthesis of the opposite attributes, existence and non-existence, stated in the third proposition, is only a synthesis of togetherness. But the fourth predicate goes further than this togetherness, inasmuch as it asserts an attribute which not only is a compresence of the two, but a novel attribute in which the two attributes are dissolved into one. A concrete