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JAINA ONTOLOGY
the Buddhist would maintain that an effect thus understood is absolutely different from its cause. The position opposed to it will be that an effect thus understood is absolutely identical with its cause but such a position will be logically committed to repudiate the reality of temporal succession itself. Now Advaita Vedanta will answer this description all right and so the controversy in question viewed in this light will reduce itself to that waged around the question of change and permanence. Be that as it may, the Jaina discussion on these so many questions has to be studied on the one hand in the light of logical possibilities open in each case and on the other hand in the light of the historical realities evolved in each case.
The situation which thus prevailed in the Jaina camp in the age of Logic bears, in certain important respects, a striking resemblance to the Hegelian phenomenon of European philosophy. Hegel made familiar the idea that in ways numerous things of the world harbour within their bosom elements that are mutually contradictory. This is the root thesis of the celebrated Hegelian dialectics. In his Logic Hegel sought to demonstrate how all the basic categories of human thought involve a synthesis of mutually contradictory aspects. In this connection his procedure was to “deduce" a higher category from the lower ones and thus to show that the former united within its content mutually contradictory aspects derived from the latter. The validity of the details of Hegel's performance is open to grave doubt but in any case he has been able to say a good number of illuminating things about some of the most important categories of human thought. The student of Jainism should find particularly interesting Hegel's treatment of the following categories :
1 Being (which comprises being', 'not-bing' and becoming) 2 Determinate Being 3 Being-for-self 4 Identity and Difference (which includes "likeness and unlikeness') 5 Existence 6 Thing (which includes the thing and its properties') 7 Relation (which includes the whole and the parts') 8 Substance and Accidents 9 Cause and Effect 10 Reciprocity
Here the categories 1-3 belong to the sub-section Quality' of the section “Being'; similarly the categories 4-6 belong to the sub-section Essence as the Ground of Existence', 7 to the sub-section Appearance' and 8-10 to the sub-section Actuality of the section 'Essence'. Also interesting is Hegel's
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