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Philosophy As Criticism-II
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Interested as we are in the Jaina approach which was greatly inflenced by Mahāvīra's using the vibhajya method to espouse the theory of non-Absolutism, it is worth noting that it essentially involved the position that if there are different doctrines, there must be reasons for their diverse perspectives. It is the duty of a thinker to find out the sources of these doctrines." The thinker should not be prejudiced by preconceptions but be always prepared to keep an open mind which would attempt to understand the reasons for the differences of opinion and conflicts of viewpoints. By adopting such a method, even doctrines which are generally considered to be totally opposed to one another and theories regarded as 'irreconcilable' and problems deemed irresoluble could be shown to be reconcilable, after all.
It would thus be seen that Mahāvīra was pleading for a radical change of attitude in regard to absolutistic notions on the count that our thoughts are relative and correspondingly too, our verbal expressions, - our articulations of thoughts in the form of propositions. This line of thinking was responsible for the view that Reality in its fullness cannot be grasped by relative thought and described completely by any proposition. The metho of doing philosophy can thus be seen here to be the concern of Mahāvīra. The expression “doing philosophy” is here to be uderstood"2 as indicating the way of approach to divergent theories proposed by different systems of philosophy.
It is indeed contextually significant lo digress a little to take account of what is happening in the philosophic scene even today, for that would help us understand the Jaina concept of philosophy as criticism better. Today one of the important things that a philosopher does is to review critically other theories prevalent or even those which were proposed in the past (either in the immediate past or even in the remote past); this is the well-acknowledged, popularly accepted, method of recording a philosopher's reactions to other theories. The reactions are by way of accepting them and finding in them support for one's own views, if the thinkers reviewed belonged to the "samc school" as the reviewer. The ‘reviews' might result in rejecting positions or finding flaws in the arguments if the philosophers under review13 belonged to a "different school" (quite often, to an 'opposed school of thought').
Indeed it is not an exaggeration to state that wherever philosophies
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