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Jainism As Metaphilosophy
Jainism as metaphilosophy suggests that the philosopher, rather than taking positions as they are given, i.e. without any reflection, should scrutinise them carefully. Acceptance of the truth or validity of any system should be done only after a careful consideration of the claims made on their behalf. This is particularly necessary since the claims made by the various schools of thought are found to have the effect of contesting the positions taken by the others. The claims are made with a view to asserting that they (each one of the rival schools) have nothing but the whole truth in their possession and, as such, the 'others' are totally wrong.
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A careful reflection about the philosophic scene portrayed above would make clear at least one thing. Even a cursory survey of the various claims and counter-claims would indicate that the subject-matter they are all analysing is complex. The implicit suggestion here is that if Reality were a simple entity, understanding it would not have posed any problem and consequently there would have been no disputes in regard to describing its nature. Hence it would follow that the various theories proposed are nothing but divergent attempts at unravelling the (complex) nature of Reality.
However it should be noted that the Jaina philosophers do not argue for the complexity of Reality only on the ground that there are different approaches to Reality and correspondingly different descriptions of it. Since the implicit Jaina criticism of rival schools of thought is found in the theory that Reality is complex, this idea itself will have to be dwelt at some length before proceeding further.
प्रार
Anekantavada as indicating the complex nature of Reality
Though the Jaina view of the complex nature of Reality has been indicated in another context in this study, the idea of complexity has not been explicated in our earlier reference. In this section we shall attempt this task to get at the Jaina contention that if Reality is complex, simple, categorical statements proposed by schools of philosophy are all to be 'critically viewed.
The idea of complexity of Reality is discernible first in the Jaina acceptance of many Reals, even though they may be classified under the one or the other of the two categories, viz. the conscious Real (jiva) and the non-conscious Real (ajiva). This distinction is a fundamental one, argues a scholar and he elaborately and forcefully holds that once the
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