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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
is no logical redundancy and this is the logical warrant for their separate assertion.
But this defence of the fourth proposition on grounds of formal logic has not commended itself to all. The difference must be ontological and objective, otherwise the sevenfold predication would be only a matter of subjective necessity, which should not have validity apart from its foundation in objective truth. Moreover, this formal defence would not preclude the admission of two other propositions in addition to the seven. The order of predication may be reversed in the third and seventh propositions, and this should occasion two other propositions, the predicates having different formal import. Thus instead of asserting existence and non-existence in the order noted above, one may assert non-existence first and existence next, e.g. proposition may be stated as “The pen does not exist and exists.' Here the element of non-existence is given the formal status of an adjective to 'existence', and, so, its logical import is different from that of the third. In the seventh proposition the same reversal of the order of the two elements, existence and non-existence, would yield a different formal import. If formal logic were the determinant of the sevenfold predication, the introduction of the two additional propositions resulting from the admitted formal difference of import cannot be debarred by any logic. The difference of the predicates in the third and fourth propositions must be shown to be based upon a material difference, or either of them has to be expunged. Later exponents of the sevenfold dialectic are emphatically of the opinion that the difference is material and objective and not formal or subjective. The third predicate asserts the co-equal primacy of the two predicates taken together and the fourth predicate stands for a new attribute different from both. Let us examine the import of the predicates of the seven propositions seriatim, and the material difference of the attributes will become apparent.
The first predicate 'existence' is true, as the reality of the subject in its own context cannot be denied. The pen is really existent in so far as it is its own self. But this does not give us full insight into the nature of the pen. The pen is pen only because it is not not-pen. It can have a determinate existence only by virtue of its non-existence as anything else than pen. This
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