Prof. Muni Mahendra Kumar
Refuting Plato’s views, Bertrand Russell writes: “If appearance really appears, it is not nothing, and is therefore, part of reality; this is an argument of the correct Parmenidean sort. If appearance does not really appear, why trouble our heads about it? But perhaps someone will say: ‘Appearance does not really appear, but it appears to appear’. This will not help for we shall ask again: ‘Does it really appears to appear, or only apparently appears to appear’? Sooner or later, if appearance even appears to appear, we must reach something that really appears, and is, therefore, part of reality. Plato would not dream of denying that there appear to be many beds, although there is only one real bed, namely the one made by God. but he does not seem to have faced the implications of the fact that there are many appearances, and that this manyness is part of reality. Any attempt to divide the world into portions of which one is more real than the other, is doomed to failure.”[1] This refutation of Plato’s Theory of Idea made by Russell is, in fact, based on logic, and is consistent with the view of Jain philosophy
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