Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

Page 82

Space
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theory of Berkeley, what remains is that our idea of Space has for its background the objective existence of a real Space, outside and independent of us. Thus the doctrine of the subjectivity of Space inevitably leads one to Newton's theory about the reality of absolute Space.
KANTIAN THEORY OF SPACE, AS AN INTUITION OF OUR MIND TRENDELENBURG'S VIEW. THE VIEW OF THE MATHEMATICIANS
But the theory of the subjectivity of Space has received its strongest support from the philosophy of Kant. According to him, Space is no real substance but is only the subjective condition of sensibility. In having a sensation, he says, we must locate it in Space. Secondly, although we can hink of all things in space to be non-existent, we can not think of Space itself as non-existence; it is an a priori necessity. Thirdly, we do not arrive at a general idea of Space from an observation of a number of individual spaces, but the intuition of Space is already in our mind and the particular individual spaces are found to be contained in it. The possibility of the science of Geometry which has spatial determinations for its subject matter, without any reference to experiential observation or experiments and the certainty of its theories, shows that Space is exclusively an intuition of mind and nothing more. In criticism of the Kantian theory that Space is purely a subjective element supplied by our mind, it is pointed out that our experience is one total whole, in which it is not possible to separate the subjective from the objective element, in the manner Kant does. It may also be urged-as has been done by Trendelenburg--that the arguments of Kant in support of his theory of the subjectivity of space, do not bar out the possibility that Space may be both, i.e. it may be a subjective intuition and at the same time, an objective Real as well. Then again, the empiricist psychologists reject the Kantian contention that our experience does not give us the idea of Space. They, on the contrary, urge that our idea of Space is no a priori intuition but is really evolved in us by observation and outside experience. Lastly, with respect