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Anekäntaväda And Conflict Resolution : (111)
In contrast, many modern authors like Kothari etc. and even Lenin have supported it on physical, statistical, intellectual grounds and many are now trying to support it on the basis of its applications in fields like social, political, economic and even in managerial science etc. That is why, it is said to be a vision or idea rather than a theory of ultimate truth.
Traditional Basic Postulates of Anekantavāda
1. Every knowable object or entity is endowed with more than one (up to infinite) attributes - quite a number of times, seeming to be contradictory. It is a conglomerate of attributes. The term 'aneka' is, thus, not negative but a positive quantity.
2. The seemingly contradictory attributes are nothing but complementary parts of the whole in the multi-aspectual approach.
3. The entity could not be described as a whole until it is integrally studied with respect to all its aspects. Thus, anekāntavāda is an integrated form of different partial truths about an entity. The relative partial truths are called standpoints or Nayas (see (2) below).
4. Our descriptions about entities do not reflect the ideal truth, but the truth with respect to some realistic aspectual prominence. Every description may represent a partial or relative truth.
5. Different observers under different conditions may have different truth about the same phenomena.
6. Our language is not capable of describing multi-aspectual truth. Our statements are, therefore, prefixed with the word 'Syat' (in some respect). The word 'may be' is not an accurate expression for 'Syat'.
7. The language of anekanta is the seven-fold predication (Saptabhangi) system with the word 'Syat' attached to each
statement.
The above postulates can be expressed in current relativistic and statistical language in the form of the following formulae:
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1. The holistic nature (character, T, truth) can be expressed by summation of all its attributed aspects with respect to all standpoints (S), or
TΣ Nayas or standpoint = ΣS
(2)
This indicates the relativity of our knowledge and limitation of the omniscient for communicating it through out language.
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