New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 80

72 New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
Why is it so, O Lord!?'
“The slumber is wholesome for those who are engaged in sinful activities, while for the virtuous awakening is commendable.'
The exclusive assertion of the wholesomeness of slumber or awakening would be an absolutistic answer which was not approved by Lord Mahāvira who explained all the questions by means of divisions of issues avoiding exclusiveness.
If the identity of the substance and the attributes is accepted, both will merge into each other, losing their duality, and as a consequence the proposition the attribute subsists in a substance' would be impossible.
If, again, the attribute were absolutely different from the substance, the proposition 'this attribute belongs to this substance' would be impossible, because in the absence of some sort of identity the proposition would be meaningless. According to the doctrine of alternatives (bhajanāvāda) the rule of exclusiveness of identity or difference cannot be acceptable. The doctrine of alternatives (bhajanāvāda) approves of both identity and difference. The adjective-substantive relationship between the substance and the attribute would be impossible if there were absolute identity between them. This difficulty is resolved by the relativistic viewpoint of the doctrine of alternatives. In the proposition 'a blue lotus', 'blue' is the adjective while 'lotus' is the substantive. The quality 'blue' is identical with the 'lotus', yet the substantive-adjective relationship substists between them. 'A man with a beard is coming', in this proposition the expression with a beard' is the adjective of the expression 'man' which is the substantive. The adjective must be in some respect different from the substantive, and this is why the substantive-adjective relationship does not offer any logical inconsistency of the relationship of identity-cum-difference is accepted between the substance and its attributes.
There is no contradiction between the positum and the negatum. This is the implication or pre-supposition of the doctrine of conditional dialectics (syādvada). The duality of apparently contrary attributes enjoys mutual concomitance. It is on this firiding that the doctrine of non-absolutism (anekāntavāda) as a synthesis of infinite number of such dualities is established. The conditional dialectic (svådväda) is, in essence, the system of propositions expressing such multiple character of the real. In these propositions affirmation, negation and such other alternatives