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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
Causation is a species of relation and as such it participates in the essential characteristic of relation. Relation in the ultimate analysis is found to be a case of identity-cum-difference between the terms, and this holds of the cause and effect also. But though identity-cum-difference is the universal character of all relations the specific differences of relations are not obliterated and there is no incompatibility between the general and the specific character. If, however, we probe the problem more carefully and deeply, it will be found that causality is the ultimate source of all other relations. As we have observed before, a relation is integral to the terms and is ontologically nothing but the occurrence of a change in the terms, which are so related. It is the product of a process which takes place inside the terms. Thus relations as external independent facts are only falsely hypostatized concepts. Two important results come out of this enquiry into the nature of relations. Firstly, relations are all internal having no ontological status beyond the terms. Secondly, they are the products of a change which occurs in the terms. The second characteristic proves that causality is the ultimate foundation of other relations, since they are the products of change and change presupposes causality, which is again reducible to identity-in-difference; and the latter is the foundational nature of all reals and their relations. But what is the occasion of change ? Certainly something more is needed to occasion a change in a real. According to the Jaina change is integral to the real. The stimulus of change is seated in the nature of the real. As regards the particular direction and the shape of the activity it may be determined by an external fact. But an external act being related to the fact under consideration is not entirely external, as it becomes identical with it, though it preserves its individuality. Being and change are necessary concomitants of reality and one is as ultimate as the other. So the question 'why there should be change at all ? is unanswerable, being ultimate and simple.
We have now to dispose of the difficulty about the cognition of relation and particularly of the relation of cause and effect, which the Buddhist alleged to be unrealizable. The Jaina does not think the difficulty to be real. The Buddhist here is led away by a priori considerations in disregard of the evidence of
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