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Jainism As Metaphilosophy
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due to the total destruction of the jñānāvarana-karma whereas the other four are due only to the destruction-cum-subsidence of the jñānāvaranakarma.22 Total destruction (of the obstructive factors) has the possibility of destruction-cum-subsidence.23
Such a concept of kevala-jñāna is understandable also from the Jaina view that the human soul has the potentiality to know all things in all their aspects, i.e. to know the whole of Reality. The Jaina philosophers have prescribed a course of ethical discipline for actualising the potentiality. For our present discussion, the details (of the ethical prescriptions) as such are not important.24
What is significant, however is the Jaina philosophers' pointing out that the human potential indicates that obstructions to knowledge are not complete. For, there would then be no distinction between the soul (jiva) and the non-soul (ajiva). This means further that the absence of total obstruction to knowledge significs that the limited capacity to know is seen in the sense-organs and the mind enabling us to get some knowledge of Reality; as such, the validity of knowledge so acquired cannot be disputed.
This has an important implication for arriving at the Jaina concept of philosophy and it may be briefly indicated here. The idea that the limited knowledge gained of Reality through empirical methods of knowing is valuable as far as it goes, is itself suggestive of the need for attaining a transcendental viewpoint (dravyārthikanaya in contradistinction to the empirical view point (paryāyārthikanaya). By proposing such a distinction between the two points of view, Jainism seems to indicate how various metaphysical systems (systems of philosophy) should be understood in relation to one another and how these should be accepted as valuable contributions to an understanding of Reality without, however tacitly acquiescing in their claims to absolute validity.
Thus it is that Jainism emerges as metaphilosophy; for here is a critical approach adopted to the very process of system-building. This idea of philosophy of philosophy arrived at through the critical method is explicated in two of the cclcbrated theories put forward by the Jaina philosophers, and to a consideration of them, we shall now turn.
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