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CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF ANEKANTAVĀDA
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negative in some sense is comprehensible at all. According to them such a reality though factual is incomprehensible. But Jainas answer it in affirmative. When Jainas assert that a thing is and is not "it is not an indefinite judgement or disjunction but is a stark reality. When we say that a line is and also is not short or long, it is short in relation to a long line and is not short in relation to a shorter line".10 Critics have not grasped the essence of 'is' and 'is not' and pronounce it as dubitable and agnostic. 'When applied to real thinking this principle is as true as two plus two is equal to four","1
In this connection we may agree with H. Bhattacharya when he maintains that "the logical principle of consistency stands in the way of understanding a thing when it is at once existent and non-existent. Kant, in his 'Critique of pure Reason' confined himself within the limits of logical categories and was led to conclude that "things in themselves" were unknowable. In reply, it must be admitted that the principle of normal logic precludes the possibility of understanding an object when it puts on contradictory aspects at one and the same time. But it may be pointed out that reality is not limited within the bounds of logical categories. It transcends the schemata of the formal logic. Admittedly a thing has more than one aspect and admittedly we have the experience of the reality as it is. Notwithstanding the protest of the formal logic, we have, as a matter of fact the cognition of an object with all its varied features compresent in it". 12 Thus, agnostic contention about the impossibility of valid knowledge of external reality is refuted on the basis of verdict of experiences.
4. The charge of eclecticism is also raised against Jaina theory
