Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism

Author(s): S C Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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24 :: Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism
reality, position is equally important in its constitution. Andrew Seth says: "The position which Hegel makes his fulcrum is contrary or real opposition; the second is not simply the negation of the first, but both are real determinations of things."1
Something in the thesis itself is responsible for the production of the antithesis. Hegelian negation thus will mean the potentiality behind an actuality, and the situation is saved from self-contradiction by accepting one element as potential and the other as actual. Actuality and potentiality both belong to the same real; and the latter opposes the former. Similarly the Jaina makes his conception of negation non-absolute by introducing the necessity of a proper context for its predication. For him position and negation are mutually concomitant but with a limitation imposed by the introduction of reference systems. From the analytical view-point dynamism must be applied to every element that may be called an attribute. So the Hegelian negation must be admitted in case of every existential category in the constitution of reality; and no such element can be held to be self-contradictory or as contradicted by any other category belonging to the same real, F.S.C. Northrop justly contends: “It is the character of any positive form or quality, which we immediately sense, that it is logically related to its opposite. It is because the immediately sensed qualities of positive forms are not bare data but are logically connected to their opposites by the relation of opposition, that in sensing the windowpane to be cold we are also able to assert that it is not hot. To be sure in another experience we may sense the hot directly as positive form, but in this case we are then able to assert that the object is not cold. The Jaina is of opinion that every attribute in its momentary states evinces symptoms of position and negation both, position and negation both are incumbent upon the momentary mode of an attribute. Because positivity
1. Andrew Seth: Hegelianism and Personality, p. 97 2. F.S.C. Northrop: The Meeting of East and West, p. 269