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Jain Philosophers in the Debating Hall of Classical India

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Abstract

The practice of rational debate between philosophers from different traditions, especially between Hindu—Naiyāyika and Mīmāṃsaka—, Buddhist and Jain philosophers, is unique in classical India. Around the 7th c., a pan-Indian consensus was achieved on what counts as a satisfactory justification. The core of such discussions is an inferential reasoning whose structure is such that it ensures that its conclusions are recognised as knowledge statements, irrespective of the obedience of the interlocutor. In this line, stories of conversion following those philosophical debates are commonplace in the narratives of the different traditions and regularly involve the conversion of a royal patron. Beside the influence of argumentative practices on social and political changes, theories of argumentation have deeply influenced the whole edifice of philosophy in pre modern India, since no philosopher can claim a thesis without being committed to defend it in this highly regulated dialogical framework. Moreover, the characterisation, as well as the methods to test the validity of this justification, raised the question of the existence of shared principles and was a battlefield for the different traditions to establish their own conceptions on the constitution of the world and on our ability to know it. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the contribution of the minority tradition that is Jainism to the framework of philosophical disputation in India.

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Notes

  1. See Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.1.2, translated by Radhakrishnan in (Up.: 211–245). See also Black (2014: 67ff).

  2. Most of this corpus is written in Ardhamāgadhī. Since it is customary in scholarship to refer to the names of works and concepts in the franca lingua that is Sanskrit, I will in what follows give first the Ardhamāgadhī, then the Sanskrit, version of names.

  3. Esposito (2015: 79–94).

  4. Mahāvīra has received many names. In the canon, he is most generally referred to as Vaddhamāṇa (Skt: Vardhamāna), ‘the One who contributes to Growth’.

  5. This story is found in the canonical Āvassaya Sutta (Āvaśyaka Sūtra, Obligatory) in ĀS (2000: 136ff). For more on this, see Balcerowicz (2016a: 193ff) and Flügel (2012: 123ff).

  6. Examples are scarce and subjects to different interpretations, but the main consensus is that a bird (in Sanskrit ‘the one endowed with wings’) with cut wings would be such a quasi-living being. One could also think of the empirical self, which is a mix of self and of karmic matter. Besides, it should be noted that Vaiśeṣika philosophers do not hold such a tripartite theory of reality, but they are famous for their theory of categories, and this controversy mainly shows an example of categorial mistake along its undesired consequences.

  7. Solomon (1976: 10).

  8. Something similar happened with Buddhist councils.

  9. See Viy. 5.4.68 in (Viy.: 171).

  10. See, respectively, Solomon (1976: 11) and the verse 1.1.5 in NS (2009: 280).

  11. NSBh 11–12 in (Shah 1967: 30–32).

  12. SSā 49; trans. Chakravarti in (SSā: 237–238). Know that the Self (jīva) is […] not knowable by any inferential evidence and without a definite manifestation.

  13. PM 3.64; trans. Ghoshal in (PM: 127); see also NSBh 1.1.39; trans. Angot in (NS: 329–330).

  14. NA 5; trans. Balcerowicz in (NA: 38).

  15. NA 14–16 in (2001, 1: 59–60).

  16. NAv 5.2, trans. Balcerowicz in (NA: 39); see also PNT 3.12-13; trans. Bhattacharya in (PNT: 193–202).

  17. PKM 3.15.

  18. NA 22, trans. Balcerowicz in (NA: 66).

  19. See Bagchi (1953: 126) and Daye 1979.

  20. PM 59; trans. Ghosal in (PM: 122).

  21. See Clavel 2014; Gorisse 2015.

  22. PM 59; 71; 78; 86 in (PM: 122, 129, 131, 133).

  23. ĪSD. 32. 14–18: vivāda-adhyāsitaṃ buddhimadd-hetukam. kāryatvāt. yat kāryaṃ tad buddhimadd-hetukam. yathā ghaṭaḥ. kāryaṃ ca idam. tasmād buddhimad-hetukam iti, in (ĪSD: 32).

  24. PP 10.1, in (PP: 10).

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    Marie-Hélène Gorisse

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Gorisse, MH. Jain Philosophers in the Debating Hall of Classical India. Argumentation 35, 35–49 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-020-09532-0

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