Jaina Mysticism and Other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 73

are ethically blind. In fact, our feelings and knowledge are so interwoven that we have never a state of mind in which both are not present in some degree. So the claims of cognitivists and noncognitivists are one sided and antagonistic to the verdict of experience. Blanshard33 rightly remarks, "Nature may spread before us the richest possible banquet of good things, but if we can look at them only with the eye of reason, we shall care for none of these things; they will be alike insipid. There would be no knowledge of good and evil in a world of mere knowers, for where there is no feeling, good and evil would be unrecognisable". Again a life that directs itself by feeling even of the most exalted kind will be like a ship without a rudder. Thus the nature of ethical judgement according to the Jaina ethics is cognitive-affective. “The achievement of good is a joint product of our power to know and our power to feel”34.
The third question in meta-ethics is to ask how our ethical judgements can be justified. That the ethical judgements are objectively true need not imply that their justification can be sought in the same manner as the justification of factual judgements of ordinary and scientific nature. The reason for this is that value can not be derived from fact, ought from is. In factual judgements our expressions are value-neutral, but in ethical judgements we can not be indifferent to their being sought by ourselves or by others. That is why derivation of ought from is, value from fact is unjustifiable. The value judgements, according to Jaina ethics, are self-evident and can only be experienced directly. Thus they are self-justifying. The conviction of the Jaina ethics is that no argument can prove that 'Hirsā is bad' and *Ahiṁsā is good'. What is intrinsically good or bad can be experienced directly or immediately. The justification of right can be sought from the fact of its producing what is intrinsically good, i.e. from the fact of its producing experience in tune with Ahimsā.
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Jaina Mysticism and other essays