Dr. Samani Shashi Pragya
Anekāntavād is the heart of Jain philosophy. Reality possesses infinite characters which cannot be perceived or known at once by an ordinary man. Different people think about different aspects of the same Reality and therefore their partial findings are contradictory to one another. Hence, they indulge in debates claiming that each of them was completely true. The Jain philosophers thought over this conflict and tried to reveal the whole truth by establishing the theory of non-absolutist standpoint (anekāntavāda) with its two wings, nayavāda and syādavāda.
Every single thing has innumerable characteristics. Every object possesses innumerable positive and negative characters. It is not possible to know all of them. One can know only some qualities of a substance. To know all the aspects of a given substance is to become omniscient. Human beings are by nature imperfect. They cannot comprehend an object in its totality as their view is limited.Human knowledge is necessarily relative so, at its best can have only partial knowledge and it is not free from error and illusion. To view a thing not only from a single point of view, but to examine it from all possible points of view is the real meaning of the doctrine of anekāntavāda. After the metaphysical analysis of the theory of anekānta, and anekānta in post-modern philosophy,the heart of the researchwork, its applied philosophy will be the focus point of this chapter. Now-a-days the applied ethics, applied bio-ethics, applied science, applied physics, applied psychology, applied medical ethics, applied professional-ethics, applied research-ethics, applied environmental-ethics, applied statistics, applied kinesiology, applied calculus, applied behavior analysis, applied nutritional studies,etc. topics are issues of special concern. in all the spheres of life.
The Co-existence, Relativity, Tolerance, Equanimity and Reconciliation are the outcomes of theory of aneknta. The above mentioned outcomes of anekānta would be dealt under this topic from the point of view of its applied philosophy of life.
