Source Book in Jaina Philosophy

Author(s): Devendramuni
Publisher: Tarak Guru Jain Granthalay

Page 13

PREFACE
Philosophy is the 'Divine Eye' of man. What man cannot see by his physical eyes, can see by the eye of philosophy. So, the philosophy is the vision of insight. In other words, philosophy is the medium to get into the inner core of reality.
The aim of philosophy is to discuss the nature of life and world. It also reconciles the problems, like-.what are living and non-living realities, the elements constituting the world and how many are they, what are the effects of living and non-living substances on the different activities of the universe.
As these and such other questions are eternal and had disturbed the human brain since his invent, and the human mind remain always active to solve these problems, so it would be apt to say that the current of philosophy is as old as man itself or prehistoric.
When we come to historic period, we find that the systematic knowledge of philosophy came into existence. The first such country is India and the second is Greece. All the Eastern philosophies are effected by Indian philosophy and the Western by Greek philosophy.
All the Indian philosophies aim at the quest of soul and its nature. Indian philosophers are found crazy to know the nature of soul and God, in detail. Such tendency we do not find in Greek philosophers. Though they also have tried to know about the soul but could not go so deep as Indian philosophers. Though their style is charming, yet the outlook was mainly material. And because the European and American, i. e., all the Western philosophers are influenced by Greek philosophy so the western philosophy became material in outlook. But the trend of Indian thinkers always remained towards the soul, so Indian philosophy became spiritualistic by nature. Though Indian thinkers also discussed the pature and material reality, but to the extent it was pertaining to