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The Dialectic of Sevenfold Predication
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from their respective loci. The insertion of the qualifying phrase syāt,' which emphasises the relative truth of the predication, is dictated by a twofold necessity of, firstly, furnishing a necessary proviso and, secondly, a corrective against the absolutist ways of thought and evaluation of reality.
In the evaluation of the necessity and justice to the assertions in the chain of sevenfold predication, which the Jaina thinks to be the universally valid form, whatever be the predicates, we shall have to take into consideration two facts, one logical and another ontological. The logical criterion is satisfied by considering whether the assertion is in response to a genuine desire for knowledge of a fact and the ontological criterion is the consideration whether the assertion is true of the fact. The word fact is to be understood in the present context as standing for anything possessed of a characteristic. In the first proposition 'the pen exists,' existence is predicated of the pen. The existence is a determinate characteristic having reference to a definite context. But is there any necessity for this assertion ? Does not the factuality of the pen carry the assurance of existence by itself The answer is simple. The proposition in question may be viewed as analytical and synthetical according to our intellectual equipment and psychological interest. If perfect knowledge were possible, the assertion would be redundant for such a person, as nothing is unknown to such an omniscient person; but philosophical enquiry is instituted only for the benefit of persons who are aspirant for perfect knowledge, but have not reached the level. A perfect man, who knows all things and each thing as possessed of characteristics which follow from the very nature of each, will regard all assertions as analytical. But the consummation is not the possession of imperfect human beings like us, for whom the growth of knowledge is a slow process proceeding by stages, and for such each stage is a discovery attained after a laborious investigation of the nature of reality. It is not necessarily true that existence is understood only as a part of the connotation of the subject, since there has been a class of thinkers who call in question the reality of all things in an unrestricted reference. Again, 'existence' by itself is not capable of being understood in a uniform sense. Existence may be absolute or relative and, as such, there is room for misconception.
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