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Relevance of Anekānta in Modern Times
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thinking' ( Heidegger ) or 'total seeing' (J. Krşpamūrti ) by competent persons for apprehending the problems and predicaments of contemporary civilization and for granting an inkling of their possible solutions. Karl Jaspers also talks of “luminous encompassive thinking', through which contemporary political consciousness must be transformed and a new kind of politics adequate to the threat of atomic doom should be created. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan while speaking on the future of civilization ( Kalki, The Future of Civilization, first published, 1929 ) held that to avert periodic crisis of civilization, what is required is religious idealism and “cooperation and not identification, accommodation to fellowmen and not imitation of them and toleration and not absolutism.” Thus if we want to save our civilization from atomic annihilation, we have to encourage Anekānta culture. However, Anekānta philosophy of life should not be confused with contradictionism, indeterminism, scepticism or solipsism. When we look to the particular merits of each side, there is no contradiction. Application of existence and non-existence to the same thing is contradiction but when existence and non-existence are asserted from different standpoints, it is not contradiction. Even the Upanişads, we have the glimpses of how the reality reveals itself in different ways at different stages of knowledge. Hence Anekānta attitude should not be equated with subjective relativism of the Sophists. It is 'objective relativism' or 'relative absolutism' like Whitehead, Bodin etc. However, there is no similarity with Einstein's theory of relativity. To some extent, we may find its parallel in old Pyrrohoneanism in the West. But while Pyrrohoneanism relapses into agnosticism or scepticism, there is no room for scepticism whatsoever in Jaina theory of Syadváda or Anekāntavāda. Scepticism, means in the minimum, abscence of assertion, where as Syadvadins always assert, though what they assert are alternatives. Disjunctive judgement is stiil judgement. Each disjunction is alternatively valid. Either there is no selfcomplete Reality or any such reality is wholly infinite, a mere
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