ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 03

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 247

SCHOOL
TIONAL
OF
वाध्याय परम
16
AN STUDIES
SELF STUDY IS THE
SUPREME AUSTERITY,
C. Western Realism
The Realism, which believes in one material reality, is called monistic Realism. If it takes the existent to be two, it would fall in the category of Dualistic Realism. If it admits reality to be more than two, it would be called Pluralistic Realism. Similarly, some other types of Realism would be dealt with according to their specific characteristics.
(a) Monistic Realism
The primitive Greek philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes and Heraclitus, in so far as they each thought one or other of water, air or fire to be the one indivisible stuff of reality, were Monistic Realists. To them all things as the physical objects, the mind, the life and the rest were the products of any one of these stuffs. Thus, consciousness was considered to be merely a product of matter.
(b) Dualistic Realism
Plato and Aristotle may be said to have indulged in Dualism in spite of their insistence on the reality of the world of Ideas or Forms. Aristotle was, perhaps, more pronounced in his Dualism than Plato. In modern philosophy, it was Descartes who gave a distinct turn to Realism. To him matter and mind are independent existences each having a characteristic diametrically opposed to the characteristic of the other. Although Kant was an Idealist in his noumenal outlook, still he become guilty of a Double Dualism-Epistemological Dualism between sense and understanding and ontological Dualism between mind and noumenal world of things-in-themselves.
(c) Pluralistic Realism
Greek thinkers thought that the visible objects of the universe are many and independent of one another, and each such object can be divided further and further till we come to a point beyond which our division cannot go. Such units of material objects, which they call "atoms" must be the ultimate physical principles of the universe. From these "atoms" all else (including minds) have been derived. They are the only reals, self sufficient, self-existent and indivisible, and independent of the minds, which originate from them. This type of Realism can be called Pluralistic Material Realism or "Atomic Realism".
Principles of Philosophy, p. 91
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