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STUDIES IN JAINISM
way Ahimsā can be understood gradually. The argument of understandability can not be adduced in the case of Subha without definition. For understanding śubha definition is a necessity, but the similar necessity does not exist for Ahimsā in view of the above mentioned facts.3
The above definition of good or Subha presented by the Jaina thinkers avoids the two extremes of naturalism and non-naturalism, subjectivism and objectivism which are the present-day meta-ethical trends. According to naturalism moral terms like 'good' or 'right' can be reduced to empirical terms of psychology, biology, sociology etc. For instance, good means actually desired by oneself' or by people generally, or what tends to further human survival or what makes for social stability. The defects of these definitions are: (a) they reduce ethics to a branch of natural science, thus robbing it of its autonomy; (b) they do not leave any place for 'ought' experience since they refer only to what is. Frankenat is right when he says 'when we are making merely factual assertions we are not thereby taking any pro or con attitude towards what we are talking about. But when we make an ethical or value judgement we are not neutral in this way: it would seem paradoxical if one were to say ‘X is good', 'Y is right, but he is absolutely indifferent to its being sought or done by himself or anyone else'. The merit of naturalism is that it regards value in the world as relative to consciousness.
According to non-naturalism, moral terms cannot be reduced to non-moral terms of science. No doubt 'good' or 'right' have objective properties for their being recognised as such, but they are indefinable in non-ethical terms. They are of a very dilfferent kind being non-natural or non-empirical and so to speak 'normative rather than factual'. For instance, if we say that 'koowledge is good', it means that it is good by virtue of the non-natural character of goodness in knowledge known to us directly and not by any empirical observations. The defect of non-naturalism is that it regards good as simple, unanalysable, and indefinable, but the merit of this position is that it regards goodness as objective and not merely subjective.
Now, when the Jaina says that 'Subha' is an experience in tunwith Ahimsā, he is accepting the merit of both naturalism and non
