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Anekantavada
Jaina metaphysics, which ultimately rests on the concept of dravya (substance) and depends on a correspondence theory of truth, faces the problem of how to describe the various, theoretically infinite, changing qualities and modes of dravya in a definite, truth-functional way. The problem is how to describe consistently something that is permanent being and, at the same time, the nonbeing of change, the very negation of permanent being.
In avoiding the one-sided errors (ekanta) of identifying existence with either the permanence and sameness of being on the one hand or with the ever-changing processes of becoming on the other, )aina thinkers developed the metaphysical doctrine of anekantavada as a way of thinking about existence as simultaneously both being and becoming. Umasvati, for example, defines the existent as substance, that is, unchanging, but then declares that it also has the triple character of originating, decaying, and persisting as its various characteristics change.' But since becoming is the negation, the "is-not," of being, and since being is the negation, the "is-not," of becoming, )aina logic must find a middle way between the extremes of "is" and "is not" in order to make sense of predicating both the being and becoming of the same existent.
Although anekantavida attempts to account for things having these apparently exclusive characteristics of being and becoming by claiming that things are simultaneously of the nature of dravya, unchanging substance, and of dharmas, the continuously changing features of gunas and paryayas, it is recognized that a perspectival epistemology (nayavada), and a special logic of predication (syadvada), are required to make sense of predicating what appear to be contradictory features of a given thing.
Historically, it appears that Jainism developed its view of the "many-sidedness" (anekantavida) of existence in opposition to its opponents' mutually exclusive claims either that only the unchanging Brahman is ultimately and absolutely real (Advaitins) or else that only changing events are real (Buddhists). But this ontological middle way required an appropriate epistemology to guarantee the possibility of knowledge of this many-sided reality. In one epistemological move that recognized the rich and complex nature of reality and emphasized the limited nature of ordinary knowledge, jainas developed the theory that in ordinary cognition truth is relative to the perspective (naya) from which...