Jain Journal 1990 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 31

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JAIN JOURNAL
not purely a product of subjectivism, but have an objective status. Regarding the potency of relations it is said, “Relation, whether internal or external, is integral to the terms and is the result of an internal change in the nature of terms." By this we must mean that there is no absolutism of relationism ; non-relationism finds an equally significant place in the structure of reality. "If there is absolute relationism, both the terms in the relation stand unproved. If there is absolute non-relationism, a real loses its universality and particularity."4 Such is the view of Samantabhadra. It is this relational-cum-non-relational nature of reality on which stands the theory of causation. So causation is not destructive to the independent identity of the entities that come into relation of causation. Hence a valid form of determinism must imply the independence of the determinatum and its dependence on the causal factors. “The effect is a modification of the cause and thus is not absolutely different or identical with the cause. Qua substance the two are the same, qua qualities and modes they are numerically different."5 This conception of causation is anekāntika in spirit and well maintains the truth of the two implicates of the theory of causation.
According to indeterminism what we think determination of one event by another is nothing more than a parallelism. The events run parallel to each other and there is nothing like a causal efficacy for mutual determination in them, their coincidence being a chance happening. But a sober thinker must hesitate from holding the supremacy of chance in the world. The universe shows so perfect a design that an inclination to hold it a divine creation is felt by some. The universe is subject to some laws, it is a cosmos not a chaos. Even in the realm of morality indeterminism does not seem to be all valid. The actions which are subject to moral judgment originate from conscious beings. For this reason such actions are psychological, and there are psychologists who think that all psychological phenomena are determined. Thus morality is thought to require free actions while psychology is considered to provide actions. Where to seek for the free actions ?
If the entities in the world have nothing in themselves except the determined elements, they become non-entities and there is nothing in them to be determined. Following a similar chain of reasoning in case of all other entities they are found to be contentless. Thus determiniatum with
* S. Mookerjee, Jaina Philosophy of Non-absolutism, p. 208. * Samantabhadra, Apta-mimansa, verse 73. • S. Mookerjee, Jaina Philosophy of Non-absolutism, p. 213.
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