Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 64

REALITY
51
Although Kant was an Idealist in his noumenal outlook, still, he became guilty of a Double Dualism - Epistemological Dualism between sense and understanding and Ontological Dualism between mind and noumenal world of things-inthemselves.' Pluralistic Realism :
The primitive Greek philosophers were satisfied with one indivisible matter as the basic principle of all that is in the universe. The later Greek thinkers like Democritus and others could not satisfy their impulse of curiosity in this fashion. They thought that the visible objects of the universe are many and independent of one another, and each such object can be divided further and further till we come to a point beyond which our division cannot go. Such units of material objects, which they call 'atoms', must be the ultimate physical principles of the universe. From these 'atoms' all else (including minds) have been derived. They are the only reals, self-sufficient, self-existent and indivisible, and independent of the minds which originate from them. This type of Realism can be called 'Pluralistic Material Realism' or 'Atomic Realism.' Pragmatic View of Realism :
Pragmatism means, in the broadest sense, the acceptance of the categories of life as fundamental. Perry remarks that it is the 'bio-centric' philosophy. The Pragmatist means by life, not the imaginary or ideal life of any hypothetical being, not the 'eternal' life or the 'absolute' life but the temporal, operative life of animals and men, the life of instinct and desire, of adaptation and environment, of civilization and progress. The whole 'experimentalist' tendency in English science and philosophy may be said to have anticipated the pragmatist theory that truth is achieved by the trying of hypotheses. This tendency of Pragmatic Realism is
1. Principles of Philosophy, p. 91.