Outlines of Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Jain Mission Society Bangalore

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OUTLINES OF JAINA PHILOSOPHY
According to this definition of idealism, the mind of man is taken to be the organ through which Reality expresses itself; and if it is certain that man alone has the capacity to interpret experience through intellectual ideals, then it follows that it is man alone that can be an organ to Reality. He possesses a unique position in the determination of the universe.
SOME MISCONCEPTIONS
Some laymen as well as philosophers define idealism as a doctrine which openly or secretly seeks to establish that the whole choir of heaven and earth is unreal. Now, the first thing which we should bear in mind is that idealism does not take away the reality of anything which is considered as real by commonsense or science. Far from subtracting anything which is considered as real by commonsense or science idealism adds to the reality of the things in so far as it alone makes it clear that things have still many other significant aspects of their life than those which are revealed to commonsense or to science. To put it in the words of Bosanquet: Certainly for myself, if an idealist were to tell me that a chair is really not what we commonly take it to be, but something altogether different, I should be tempted to reply in language below the dignity of controversy." In the same way, a philosophy must stand self-condemned if it thinks that the electronic constitution of matter or the inner structure of the material particles is a mere figment. The philosophers like Berkeley (who says that 'esse est percipi', i.e., to exist is to be perceived) etc. are not idealists in the strict sense of the term idealism. They may be given the name of subjective idealists who think that perception is the real cause of external objects. They reduce Existence or Reality to mere perception which position is absolutely wrong according to the real definition of idealism in which the mind only determines the objects and does not create them. Determination and creation are two different things. What needs emphasis at this place is that true idealism has never disputed the existence of the external world. Green remarks: The fact that there is a real external world of which through feeling we have a determinate experience and that in this experience all our knowledge of nature is implicit, is one which no philosophy disputes. What Mr. Spencer understands by idealism', is what a raw undergraduate understands
1 Contemporary Philosophy, p. 5