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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism The Jaina supplements, it by the second proposition, and the remaining modes, being consequential, would ipso facto be true. The Buddhist fluxist concentrates his attention on the aspect of change and declares it alone to be the character of reality. The second proposition would represent his position. This is corrected by the introduction of the first. The Sānkhya represents one extreme by upholding the unitive character of substance, whereas the Buddhist advocates the other extreme by asserting the plurality constituted by the changing modes to be the sole reality and dismissing the unitive substance behind them. The Jaina asserts the reality of both in one, as each is attested in uncontradicted experience. The Sünyavādin finds it impossible to reconcile the unchanging substance with its changing modes and lie thinks being and non-being to be mutually contradictory. But he does not fail to recognize the factuality of both, though he characterizes it as inexpressible, and inexpressibility or logical indefinability is according to him the proof of the unreality of things. We have found that things are not absolutely inexpressible and how the advocacy of inexpressibility, as the sole and whole character of reality, leads to self-contradiction. Inexpressibility is a real characteristic which is not susceptible of being dismissed as a false appearance, since it is not sublated by a subsequent corrective experience like an error of perception. Nor does the cognition of inexpressibility involve a logical error, as we have shown.
The Vedāntist rightly shows that inexpressibility is invariably associated with the being of a real, but he is convicted of extremism by the Jaina for asserting the element of being as the sole and exclusive character of reality and for construing the element of inexpressibility as proof of the unreality of empirical facts following the lead of the Sūnjuvādin. Jaina logic does not endorse this interpreation, since it finds no contradiction in the coincidence of being and non-being. The coincidence of being and non-being in a real is certainly not capable of being graspe by a single concept or a linguistic symbol; but that is not proof of its unreality, but of the limitation of human language and conceptual thought. The Jaina accepts each one of the conclusions of these philosophers, as representative of a different aspect of reality. He does not repudiate their findings as false, but he
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