Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 69

Why is Anekāntavāda Important?
JOHN M. KOLLER Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
As the events of September 11, 2001 so tragically attest, we live at a time in global history when violence threatens to destroy all life on our planet. If we are to prevent violence from destroying ourselves and our whole world, it is imperative that we seek nonviolent solutions to our problems. From a Jain perspective, the threat to life that we face arises from a faulty epistemology and metaphysics as much as from faulty ethics. The moral failure to respect the life of others, including life forms other than human, is rooted in dogmatic but mistaken knowledge claims that fail to recognize other legitimate perspectives. Such one-sided perspectives result in destructive actions and violent behaviors. Because existence itself is complex, subtle and many-sided, unless the knowledge on which our actions are based reflects this many-sidedness of reality it will produce actions that are destructive of existence. As Umāsvāti noted, "A person with a deluded world-view is like an insane person who follows arbitrary whims and cannot distinguish true from false.”l
The most important underlying philosophical question about preventing violence, according to Jainism is, how are we to avoid the destructive violence that results from courses of action based on one-sided ideological dogmatism? The ideological dogmatism underlying violence is grounded in knowledge claims that,
1 Umāsvāti, Tattvārtha Sūtra, 1.33. See Nathmal Tatia (ed. & trans.), That Which Is (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 23.
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