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General Editorial
Philosophy is an enquiry into the nature of life and of existence; and this way of dealing with reality depends on the exercise of thought and reason. Since the dawn of human civilization, numerous thinkers, in different times and climes, have applied themselves to solving the riddle of the universe, to unravelling the mystery of existence and to explaining what life really is. Consequently, we have quite a good number of schools of philosophical thought, often contradictory or widely divergent, such as Nihilism, Materialism, Spiritualism, Idealism, Realism. Neutralism, Sensationalism, Associationism, Structurism, Monism, Dualism, Pluralism, Absolutism, Nonabsolutism, and so on.
In the midst of this conglomeration of philosophies, stands out the Jaina system which starts with the scientific postulate ex nihilo nihil fit, and is thus grounded in reality. It may look strange, that although it is a very ancient Indian system, it is highly and peculiarly consistent with modern realism and modern science. Since it establishes the existence of soul and matter as the two separate, distinct, independent and immutable entities, it is often described as a dualism or dualist realism. Again, since each of the two categories comprises infinite individual entities, the system may also be called a realistic pluralism. The fact that every real is dynamic owing to the copresence in it of change and permanence, gives it the character of a realistic dynamism. Moreover, since an absolute unqualified affirmation of existence is not in conformity with the nature of reality, the Jaina philosophy affirms the possibility of diverse attributes in a unitary entity, which fact characterises the system as a non-absolutist one. Position and negation are obtained simultaneously in a real, wherefore unqualified existence or non-existence is meaningless, unless qualified by proper context, not only for the sake of predication but also for
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