________________
The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
If our experience is not to be denounced as a false traitor, there is no reason why external reality should be condemned to the status of a mystery. If it is to be condemned, there are again no a priori grounds for believing inner experience and thought to be valid, since they are as inuch concerned with reality as external experience is. The denial of validity of all thought and experience involves self-contradiction, inasmuch as the denial would at any rate claim validity for itself. If the experience of outer reality cannot carry a guarantee of its truth, there is no reason for preference of internal experience also. The truth of the doubt as a fact, albeit mental, is also to be equally called in question. But this means the impossibility of all predication - be it affirmation or negation as the case may be.
There is another point on which the Jaina again would emphatically differ from the rationalists. Both Kant and the Buddhist philosophers hold that sense-experience can give insight into particulars and the universal forms are contributed by thought or the mind. The Jaina does not see any reason why things should be particulars alone. Things are, according to the Jaina, both universals and particulars together -- rather they are concrete universals, if we may be permitted to use this respectable term with due apology to Hegelians. Reflective thought certainly enables us to analyse the two aspects in a concrete real, but that does not argue the inability of experience to take stock of reality in its universal character. A real is a particular which possesses a generic attribute. There is no reason why experience should fail to take cognisance of the generic aspect, though it is present in it. This is also the position of the Naiyāyikas and the Mimamsists who agree with the Jaina in their conception of the nature of reality. The Jaina does not find any difficulty in accounting for the emergence of concepts. It is reflection, no doubt, which is necessary for the evolution of conceptual thought, but reflection is grounded in experience, which, in its turn, directly derives from reality. Experience furnishes unanalysed data with the universal and the particular rolled into one. Reflection only distinguishes the two elements and this has been misconstrued to be the original contribution of thought. But thought does not impose the universal. It only discovers its existence in the real. If the universals were subjective creations, our experience would have
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
