Anekāntavāda

Anekāntavāda (Sanskrit an-eka-anta, “not one-sided”, + vāda, “doctrine”) is the Jain doctrine of the many-sidedness of reality. It holds that every object has infinitely many aspects (dharmas), some of which appear contradictory — permanence and change, unity and multiplicity, existence and non-existence — and that no single statement or viewpoint can capture the whole truth about it. Ordinary people, and rival philosophies, err by one-sidedness (ekānta): grasping one aspect and denying the others. The wise hold the aspects together, each in its proper respect. With its two companion doctrines — nayavāda, the theory of standpoints, and syādvāda, the theory of conditional predication — anekāntavāda is the central contribution of Jainism to Indian philosophy.

The elephant

The doctrine is usually introduced by the parable of the blind men and the elephant. A king brings an elephant before a group of men born blind and asks them what it is like. One touches the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake.” Another, touching the leg, says, “It is like a pillar.” Another touches the ear: “It is like a fan.” Another the side: “It is like a wall.” Another the tail: “It is like a rope.” Another the tusk: “It is like a spear.” They quarrel, each certain he is right. Each is right about what he touched; each is wrong to think he knows the whole elephant. So are philosophers who each grasp one aspect of reality and deny the rest.

Permanence and change

The Jains applied the doctrine above all to the debate between the Buddhists, for whom everything is momentary, and the Vedāntins and others, for whom reality is permanent. Each, the Jains argued, is half right. A golden pot is melted and made into a crown: the pot is destroyed, the crown is created, the gold remains. A thing therefore has three aspects: origination, destruction and permanence (utpāda-vyaya-dhrauvya) — as the Tattvārtha Sūtra (5.29–30) defines existence. It is permanent in its substance (dravya) and changing in its modes (paryāya). The Buddhist sees only the modes; the Vedāntin only the substance.

Standpoints and the sevenfold predication

Nayavāda analyses the partial viewpoints (nayas) from which statements are made: for example, the standpoint of substance and the standpoint of modes; or the seven nayas of later Jain logic, from the common-sense “naigama” to the strictly verbal “evambhūta”. A statement is true from its standpoint, false if absolutised.

Syādvāda requires that every statement be qualified with syāt — “in some respect”, “from a certain standpoint” — and gives the famous sevenfold predication (saptabhaṅgī): in some respect a thing is; in some respect it is not; in some respect it is and is not; in some respect it is inexpressible; in some respect it is and is inexpressible; in some respect it is not and is inexpressible; in some respect it is, is not, and is inexpressible.

Criticism and defence

Opponents attacked the doctrine fiercely. Śaṅkara, commenting on the Brahma Sūtras (2.2.33), argued that contradictory properties cannot belong to one thing at one time; a doctrine that says “maybe” about everything is not knowledge but doubt, and leaves its holder unable to act. The Buddhist Dharmakīrti mocked: if everything is both itself and not itself, why does a man who wants yoghurt not eat a camel? Jain logicians replied that they never asserted contradictory properties in the same respect — only in different respects — and that syādvāda is not scepticism but precision: the claim that the world is complex, not that nothing can be known.

The obvious self-referential objection — is anekāntavāda itself only true “in some respect”? — the Jains accepted cheerfully: yes, anekāntavāda is itself many-sided; from the standpoint of the whole truth it is true, from a partial standpoint one may be one-sided.

Modern significance

Modern logicians — B. K. Matilal, Graham Priest, Jonardon Ganeri — have compared syādvāda to many-valued logic, to paraconsistent logic, which tolerates some contradictions, and to contextualist theories of truth. Others have seen in anekāntavāda an ethic of intellectual non-violence (ahiṃsā of thought): one should not do violence to the views of others by declaring them simply false. Gandhi made exactly this connection, and many have taken the doctrine as an Indian foundation for religious tolerance and pluralism.

In conversation

The elephant says it all: each blind man is right about his part, and wrong about the elephant.