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Philosophy As Criticism - 1
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Obviously therefore the Jaina philosophers were critical of the attitude of acquescing in what is given in sense-perception, in stubbornly refusing to concede that perception cannot be the only source of reliable knowledge regarding Reality. Though the reliability of sense-experience is not totally rejected, the outright rejection of the possibility of going beyond the given is unacceptable to it. Among the Indian schools of philosophy, the Carvāka materialist philosophers are criticised by the Jaina philosophers as being totally committed to the empirical standpoint. This is responsible for their commiting the fallacy of vyavahāranayābhāsa." Relying exclusively on empirical experience is considered fallacious since it shuts out totally the metaphysical Class point of view.
With the consideration of the above naya we have dealt with all the nayas collectively known as dravyanayas or the viewpoints which are concerned with the enduring aspect of Substance or Reality. The remaining four, the paryāyanayas, are concerned with the changing aspects of Reality. The first one of them alone needs to be considered here since it is more directly concerned with the metaphysical problem of change. This is Ķjusūtranaya, the viewpoint of momentariness.
The need to concede the significance of the moment can hardly be denied. And the Jaina philosophers do not commit the mistake. They are rather wary of those like the Buddhists who extol the significance of the moment and have built a whole philosophy of momentariness (kşanikavāda) around it.
That the idea of change is as undeniable as the idea of persistence, has been a cardinal principle in Jaina metaphysics as we have been pointing out in some other contexts in this study. Doing metaphysics then cannot afford to shut out either of the aspects. While dwelling on the aspect of change may be an antedote to denying change altogether and focusing on the persistence aspect of Reality may be deemed as counterbalancing the tendency to affirm the significance of change as an exclusive characteristic of Reality, relying on one of them and totally excluding the other is critically viewed by the Jaina philosophers.
Ķjusūtranaya is intended to acknowledge the value of the standpoint of momentariness as one of the viewpoints which might help us understand Reality. This idea of change is not explicable unless the moments that constitute it are accepted as real. But this is to argue that the various
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