Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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ence is infinite; what is not in it is nowhere. Existence means Absolute Truth. One cannot deny or disagree with it. One cannot even doubt it. Absolute Truth, according to Vedanta is infinite existence which is beyond mind, intelligence and speech. It cannot be conceptualized and therefore it is expressed in negation. It can be known which means it can be experienced and once one knows the Absolute Truth 'by knowing one he knows everything.'
The concept of truth as emerges from Vedas and Upanishads was refuted by Jainism and Buddhism. Even Sankhya School, though accepting the authority of Vedas, talk about Duality i.e. God and Nature (Purush and Prakriti) as Absolute. The Absolutism of Vedant though seemed Idealistic, highly philosophic and not convincing to Pragmatists, is in itself very sound logically.
Truth in Jainism: The concept of Truth in Jainism is its doctrine or philosophy of many fold aspects. Jainism is a realistic school of Indian Philosophy. It does not accept the authority of Vedas but is certainly not atheistic. The theory of knowledge in Jainism is known as Anekantvada. 'Anekantvada' consists of three terms: 'Anek', 'anta' and 'Vada'.The term 'Anek' means many, 'anta' means aspects or attributes and 'Vada' means ism or theory. In its simple sense, to Jainas, it is a theory of many fold aspects of Truth or reality. Prof.S.N.dasgupta expresses as 'Relative pluralism' against Extreme Absolutism' of Vedanta.Dr.Chandradhar Sharma translates it as 'Doctrine of manyness of reality'.Dr.Satkari Mookerjee expresses it as philosophy of 'doctrine of non- Absolutism.' It is associated with 'Syadvada' which means a theory of conditional prediction or theory of relativity of propositions.
The Jainism's approach to ultimate reality can be expressed in two words: Realistic and Relativistic. The universe has innumerable objects and each object has innumerable aspects of its own or infinite number of characteristic of its own. Thus according to Jainism a thing with infinite characters exists independently. The Jaina term for 'Existent' is 'Sat'; it recognizes the objectivity of the material universe. Reality according to Jainism is not merely multiple, but each real in its turn, is manifold or complete to its core.
According to Jainism we cannot and we do not know any object completely. Our knowledge of an object is always limited and so whenever we know an object or reality we know that partially. Partial knowledge means relative knowledge and relative knowledge will give relative Truth. Absolute Truth is possible only if we have Absolute knowledge. According to Jainism Absolute knowledge is possible by attaining right vision, right knowledge, and right character through penance and austerities. Again Relative knowledge is always conditional and Relative knowledge is expressed in Relative judgement. Thus according to Jainism Relative statements means condi
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