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Jaina Perspective in Philosophy and Religion
of summer. Similarly, life is not one straight road. There are two many complexities in it. It is not like a train which once started keeps running. The real is a variable constant. It is being and non-being, unity and plurality, the universal and the particular rolled into one thing is neither an absolute unity nor split into an irreconcilable plurality. It is both unity and plurality all the time. There is no opposition between unity of being and plurality of aspects. Similarly, things are neither exclusively particulars, nor are they exclusively universals, but they are a concrete realisation of both. The two elements can be distinguished by reflective thought, but cannot be rent asunder. A real is neither a particular nor universal in an exclusive manner, but a synthesis which is different from both severally and jointly though embracing them in its fold. A real is sui generis.
Although Syadvada-Anekantavāda is not a complete logic, it does involve a basic principle that seems to be essential to the kinds of philosophy needed to account for, and to deal with, the complexities of our emerging world civilization. The two-valued logic developed presupposes the principle of excluded middle as most basic - X is either A or non-A but not both ( because A and non- A are contradictious ). The dynamic, dialectical, organic unities inherent in the increasingly intricate interdependent organisations constituting our emergiog world require a more dynamic, dialectical organic logic than is presently available. Despite the fact that the two-valued logic has immense practical values when used judiciously, it is still not adequate to account for all of the vital developments in human society.
It is so difficult to say objectively anything fundamental about today's civilization or modern man because “all of us are caught in the same prejudices." Only a man who is 'wholly of the present can say something important about the present-day world, and only he who has the most intensive and cxtensive consciousness' of himself and his situation can hope to be such a man. What is required is essential
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