Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 77

60 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
merely subjective ? It would appear to be objective in the same sense and on the same grounds as the togetherness or bare distinction of positives admitted by the realist. Realism objectifies the subjective because it is known and is not simply transcendental. The question may be asked, is the distinction of subject and object, of knowing and the known, both taken to be facts-enjoyed' and 'contemplated respectively, to use Professor Alexander's phrase--a fact of the former or of the latter category, subjective or objective ? Now just as knowing is known, the · absolute difference of the two forms of knowing-enjoying and contemplating-is also known ; and if the unity of the knowing act be taken to correspond to objective togetherness, this absolute difference must also be taken to have its objective counterpart. Togetherness or bare distinction is the form of objectivity in general. The counterpart then of the difference of 'subjective' knowing or enjoying' from objective knowing or 'contemplating would be distinction from objectivity i.e. from distinction. Thus both distinction and distinction from distinction
taken by the realist as objective. These two however are not ordinarily distinguished : both are called by the same nametogetherness.
If however as shown these two forms of togetherness are fundamentally different, what is their further relation ? Now distinction from distinction has sometimes been taken as a determinate relation, as identity or some unique relation. like characterising' or adjectivity, which also for our present purpose we may call a peculiar form of identity. The problem is accordingly about the relation of identity and distinction in the objective. We may consider two forms of identity as presented by the Hegelian and the Nyāya systems respectively. The Nyāya is avowedly a realistic system and the Hegelian theory may also in some sense be taken to be realistic. Realism proper, as we conceive it, has no place for the relation of identity in the objective except in a factitious sense, although it should—what it ordinarily does not-admit distinction from distinction as a specific category. The above two theories however admit both identity and distinction though they do not stress them in the same way. The Hegelian subordinates distinction to identity while the Nyāya assigns priority to distinction. The Jaina theory admits identity only in the sense of indeterminate nondistinction, and it takes the two relations to be coordinate without subordinating any one to the other.