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significance of outward behaviour. In consequence, both the internal and external aspects should occupy their due places. Ewing rightly observes that "they (good motives) lead us into evil courses on occasion if there is not at the back of our minds a moral consciousness which prevents this, so the strictly moral motive should always in a sense be present potentially."9
Let us now try to find out the answer of the Jaina to certain meta-ethical questions. The fundamental questions to be taken into account are: (1) What is the nature of ethical judgements (obligatory and value) according to the Jaina? 'and (2) What is their justification? These two are the main questions of ethics in our times. Contemporary moral philosophy has concerned itself with this almost excluding Normative ethics; it is not interested so much in practical guidance even of a very general kind as in theoretical understanding and conceptual clarification of ethical judgements.
Let me now state the first question more clearly. There have been recognised three kinds of knowledge (1) knowledge of fact, as, this flower is yellow; (2) knowledge of necessity, as 7 + 5 =12, and (3) knowledge of value, as A was good man or murder is wrong. The question under discussion reduces itself to this: Are ethical judgements expressive of any cognitive content in the sense that they may be asserted as true or false, or do they simply express emotions, feelings etc. The upholders of the former view are known as cognitivists, while those holding the latter view are known as non-cognitivists (emotivists). When we say that Hiṁsā is wrong, are we making a true or false assertion or are we experiencing simply a feeling? Or are we doing both? According to the congnitivists, the ethical judgement, Himsā is wrong, is capable of being objectively true and thus moral knowledge is objective, whereas the non-cognitivists deny both the objectivity of assertion and knowledge, in as much as according to them, ethical judgements are identified with feelings, emotions etc. Here, the position taken by the Jaina seems to me to be that though the statement, 'Hiṁsā is wrong' is objectively true, yet it can not be divested of the feeling-element involved
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Jaina Mysticism and other essays
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