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Date: September 2 2023
# The Worldly Relevance of ‘Anekantavada’ and Jain Ethics for the Study of Contemporary Ethics
##### Dr. Mathieu E. Courville
###### Ottawa, ON Canada
> Abstract:
> After briefly reviewing some of the existing literature on the Jain doctrine of ‘anekantavada’ (i.e., of manifold aspects or non-absolutism), a doctrine possibly as central to Jain ethics as are its doctrines of ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence) and ‘aparigraha’ (non-grasping), I will begin examining three works deserving examination in the light of this crucial Jain doctrine. The three works in question here are the following: Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars ([1977] 2015), Mark Juergensmeyer’s Ganghi’s Way ([1984] 2005), and Jonathan Wolff’s Ethics and Public Policy ([2011] 2020). Despite the chronology of their publication, I will examine Walzer’s work and Wolff’s work first and Juergensmeyer’s last since I will argue that Walzer’s work as well as Wolff’s are weakened because they ignore the Jain doctrine of ‘anekantavada,’ whereas since this Jain doctrine implicitly informed much of Gandhi’s life and work, it implicitly informs much of Juergensmeyer’s, and because of this, his work is stronger in not ignoring this doctrine. Waltzer’s book, as well as Wolff’s, are both implicitly absolutist and are about the applications of their implicitly absolutist positions. The criticism of these positions, especially when levelled from an explicitly non-absolutist position, is itself an application of non-absolutism. In a world which often appears to be on a high-speed train bound for World War III, the relevance of these areas of research cannot be emphasized enough.
Seeing the world through Jain lenses is far from always rosy. Humans, due to their great propensity to be egotistically acquisitive, if not to say, plainly evil, all too often choose violent means in the hope of securing their desired ends. The recent failed coup d’états in the United States of America (now known as Jan 6) and in Brazil (08 Jan 2023), the assassinations of elected leaders in Haiti (namely, of president Jovenel Moïse on 07 July 2021) and in Japan (former prime minister Shinzo Abe on 08 July 2022), this most recent Russian military offensive in Ukraine (24 February 2022), the execution of political dissidents in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, etc., not to mention the recent military takeovers in Niger and Gabon (30 Aug 2023), one of at least a half-dozen in Africa alone in recent days, are just a few well-known contemporary examples of this. Only ignorance would lead one to conclude that because of these deplorable situations, Jain Dharma ought to be relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history and that only the stark realism of realpolitik ought to be taken seriously. Au contraire, these deplorable events ought to lead the wise to conclude that the study of, and the proper application of, Jain Dharma, remains what is still most sorely lacking.
If one focuses on the centrality of ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence) within Jain Dharma, it is almost impossible not to be both angry and depressed about these events (mentioned above) as well as with similar events. However, if one’s focus shifts to ‘anekantavada’ (non-absolutism), one may begin to perceive that the dominant discourses through which these events are represented and understood, are not the only truthful accounts of these events. This is possibly what is most revolutionary about non-absolutism, namely that it challenges even our most cherished beliefs and even our confidence in our ability to perceive and describe reality accurately and thoroughly. It is this edgy dimension of non-absolutism that is startling, if not to say, destabilizing. In so far as it ‘makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar,’ one may begin to perceive whole disciplines, such as Social and Cultural Anthropology as well as Comparative History of Religions (Religionswissenschaft), to take but two examples, as applications of anekantavada. Translation, both literally and figuratively, viewed through this angle, is an application of this also, a meeting of horizons, and in this, an instantiation of selflessness, a transcendence of self, an application of the true belief that there is indeed an ego beyond the ego, our shared reality not beginning or ending in a totally vacuous solipsism. This is a view, one of many, of anekantavada, Islam’s ‘Ijaz’ doctrine notwithstanding. Another angle to adopt in imagining what applied anekantavada is in practice is to both contemplate and study the Parliament of World Religions, first held, and described in these terms, in Chicago in 1893, at a world fair held in the city this same year. A century later, a second Parliament was held. It has been held cyclically since, even virtually during the worldwide Covid pandemic. These parliaments, or summits, are examples of the interfaith ecumenical dialogue movement more generally and are also instantiations of applied anekantavada.
Despite the efforts to propagate Jain Dharma over the past 25 centuries, planet earth remains a far too violent, brutal, and dark place, still too much like a cave or a dungeon. On August 6th and August 9th, 2023, Japan commemorated the 78th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Many cities were decimated during World War II (WWII). In a German context, one may think of Dreden as a similar example. In a Nippon-centric perspective, again, it is vital to remember that the firebombing of Tokyo, 6 months earlier, that is, before the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is still considered by many historians to have been even more destructive than the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is held to have been far more horrible than that of Dresden or Tokyo because of the type of weapon used to destroy these cities. Japan is the only nation, thus far, to have been the victim of the use of nuclear weapons against its civilian population by foreign armed forces. For this reason, therefore, Japan has become, and continues to be, the most vocal nation in its desire and demand to see nuclear weapons banned worldwide. Annie Jacobsen’s book Area 51 describes, in agonising detail, just how destructive the development and ongoing testing of these insanely powerful weapons is, from an environmental stand-point, as well as from other stand-points that will not limit themselves to environmentalism only.
A recent book by Zen Priest, Norman Fischer, The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path (2019), begins with an anecdote about an incident that is believed to have taken place during WWII. I will also begin this essay on one of Jain Dharma’s core insights, here simply described using the apparently straightforward term anekantavada (the doctrine of manifold aspects or non-absolutism), with another anecdote from WWII. For the sake of future reference, I will call this anecdote ‘the Strange Case of my Dutch travel companion.’ I include it here as an excellent, if ironic, example of anekantavada. Professor K. C. Sogani, one of my esteemed mentors during both my stays in India, in both 2007 and 2009, inspired this reflection on ahimsa and anekantavada in tandem, as well as embracing both the parallel realities of both the renunciates and the householders in tandem. ‘The Strange Case of my Dutch travel companion’ also concerns someone I met in person, someone I travelled with and even briefly lived with, although nearly three decades ago already. At the time, I was in my early 20s. In the fall of 1996, my mate and I left the Ottawa valley, in the province of Ontario, in Canada, bound initially for Buffalo, NY, in the USA. At the American border, our American border guard asked us what our business was in the USA. We answered as truthfully as possible: we were bound for the Mexican border and beyond. Our guard was obviously distraught with our response to his question. He said: ‘so you do not really have any business in the USA? You are going straight through?’ We answered in the affirmative but he was reassured when we informed him that we were travelling from NY state to the state of Pennsylvania in order to rendezvous with an American friend who was expecting us. He issued us both six month ‘transit’ visas and welcomed us to enter. We travelled, as planned, to Pennsylvania, and from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. I had documents issued by a United Nations’ (UN) agency mandated with the promotion and protection of First Nation rights and culture. These documents enabled me to be admitted to the vault at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, in order to see, first hand, the priceless collection of Puebla pottery it preserves. From New Mexico, we travelled to Texas. In El Paso, TX, we were granted visas from the Mexican government to enter Mexico, again, with the intention of reaching the southern border with Guatemala. Just beyond the city limits of Juarez, two tall, blond, handsome young men, boarded our bus. My mate and I befriended the two young men, both hailing from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and together, we travelled to Mexico City. The four of us intended to stay in the same Quaker-run hostel in the revolutionary quarter of the country’s capital, Mexico City. This world-famous hostel, however, had no vacancies when we arrived and so we took a room together, in the nearest hotel, and roomed together for over a week while we explored this massive metropolis together. Given this essay’s context, it deserves mentioning here, that these Dutch friends guided us to the most famous vegetarian restaurant in Mexico City. We would return, again and again, before leaving the city. It also deserves mentioning that we would learn that the ‘local’ Jina (or Jinas) are variously known as KuKulKhan, Quetzalcoalt, or Veracocha, etc., the so-called ‘feather-serpent.’
One night, over drinks with an American friend we had befriended while having breakfast at the Quaker-run hostel, one of our Dutch travel companions and I began discussing nuclear weapons. He said to me in a rather dead-pan manner that ‘I owe my existence to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’ I was beyond merely intrigued by this statement and begged him to explain. He explained to me that his grandfather, also a Dutchman, was taken prisoner during WWII and became a prisoner of war (POW) in a Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia and that due to these bombings, Japan quickly capitulated and released POWs such as his grandfather. His grandfather believed that had Japan not been thusly bombarded, he would have perished in the death camp where he had been held captive. I was, to say the least, taken aback by my new friend’s narrative. I had been taught to believe that these bombings were a form of technological overkill, not only aimed at breaking the Japanese, but also aimed at warning Russia that America had already developed functional nuclear weapons. I was also taught to believe that this use of nuclear weapons was disproportionately severe, and in this sense, morally (and quite possibly legally) unjustifiable. Now, however, I was literally faced with a being whom I cherished, whose existence was a positive result of these very same tragic events. At the time, and still today, I am unsure of how to reconcile this reality with what I had been led to believe before I was made privy to this account. For these reasons, I want to suggest that this narrative may lead one to begin contemplating the ahimsa doctrine of Jain Dharma, in tandem with its doctrine of anekantavada. With only ahimsa in mind, one cannot justify destroying cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially in the manner that they were destroyed, in this case, by making use of such insanely powerful weapons as nuclear weapons. However, when one not only contemplates the great many victims of these attacks, but rather or also, those saved because of the effects of these attacks, one realizes that more than one position exists with respect to these tragic events. I would suggest that this, in essence, is a form of anekantavada.
In what follows, I would like to begin examining three contemporary texts that I have selected. When I first began describing the contours of this essay to my senior Jain Studies mentors, I encountered some resistance. Some of my esteemed senior mentors could not yet see how what I intended to examine would constitute an example of applied anekantavada. The essay I initially described, and the essay my esteemed readers will discover in the balance of what follows, examines three recent texts, and evaluates these in terms of the presence or absence of the philosophy of anekantavada, in its guiding principles and in its actual product, i.e., the proverbial world and the proverbial text we are left with. Such a reading strategy is an instantiation of applied philosophy, in this case, an application of the core Jain philosophy of non-absolutism. The three texts I will examine in what follows are: (i) Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars; (ii) Jonathan Wolff’s Ethics and Public Policy; and (iii) Mark Juergensmeyer’s Gandhi’s Way. I make no claim here to furnishing a systematic and exhaustive analysis and critique of these three works, even though these works deserve such a thorough response. My aim in this essay is far simpler and straightforward, namely, to begin arguing that both Walzer’s and Wolff’s works are absolutist in rather obvious and yet key ways, whereas Juergensmeyer’s work is far more openly and explicitly non-absolutist, and this for reasons that are rather worldly and easy to grasp.
Michael Walzer was born in New York City the same year Edward W. Said was born in Jerusalem: 1935. Walzer, of Jewish provenance, completed his undergraduate studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and would go on to study at the University of Cambridge, in the UK, and later completed his PhD at Harvard University. He later would hold the position, where he remains, of Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton University, in New Jersey, USA. His work, Just and Unjust Wars, first published in 1977 and edited and reissued some five times to date, is explicitly about trying to rationally justify war. A work that has been reedited and reissued is a work that has, at least on the surface of things, been well received, if not enjoying the wide readership one would imagine accompanies such attention, the work enjoyed pride of place in the bookstore because of its performance at the cash-register. From the standpoint of Jain Dharma, however, violence and war are what can never be rationally justified. I do not believe this is an overstatement, even with the concessions made for householders in mind. I have only begun my reading, analysis, and critique of Walzer’s oeuvre, this work on just war theory included. It may deserve mentioning here that I first became aware of Walzer’s oeuvre while studying the oeuvre of my own chosen ‘maître-à-penser,’ Edward W. Said, since Said repeatedly and vehemently critiques Walzer’s work. Said was born the very same year as Walzer, although in Jerusalem, to Palestinian and Lebanese Christian Arab parents. His father was already an American citizen. Said completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton and, like Walzer, his PhD at Harvard. In 2003, when he passed, like one of his mentors, Frantz Fanon, of Leukemia, after a long jihad against the disease, he held a Full Professorship in English and Comparative Literature at Colombia University, in NYC. Nevertheless, I do not wish to overstate the depth of my reading of Walzer’s oeuvre. This said, in his work on just war theory, he meanders, like an errant knight, quixotically, through as much of human history as possible, vainly searching for some way of justifying war as a reasonable, and at times, as a necessary and acceptable form of human behaviour. Walzer could have hastened his efforts simply by contemplating the basic Jain principle that violence (and therefore war) is always somehow off the mark, and in this, is what the Abrahamic faiths identify as an evil, possibly a lesser evil than that of the evil prompting the response, but an acknowledged evil it nonetheless remains. In never considering that violence and war may never be rationally justifiable, Walzer is in this sense absolutist. That ahimsa is better than violence and war, is in this sense, the truth he wishes to deny, at least implicitly, despite what he states are his true intentions. That war is always somehow fundamentally unjust and the best one can hope for concerning war (to paraphrase K. C. Spganiji) is a minimally unjust war is likely the soundest conclusion.
Jonathan Wolff, born in 1959, holds a Chair in Public Policy at the University of Oxford, UK. He is a British moral philosopher of Jewish Ukrainian provenance. His work, Ethics and Public Policy, however, is absolutist in that he completely ignores the ethics and laws of all the innumerable religions, these innumerable traditions being what the discipline of Comparative History of Religions aims to identify, taxonomy and understand. Wolff’s only consideration of religious ethics, despite its longstanding relevance throughout human history and in the present, is in discussing gambling, in only one chapter of twelve. He rightfully, but in far too cursory a manner, points out that both the Christian and Islamic religious traditions aim to recover and save the victims of victim creating systems such as gambling. These traditions would also wish to prevent such systems from existing in the present and future. However, throughout the balance of this otherwise probative work, he ignores the great wealth and complexity of the history of religious ethics. Where the Jain doctrine of ahimsa is possibly most lacking in Wolff’s work is in his chapter devoted to the ‘policy issues’ surrounding scientific experimentation on animals. His chapter devoted to poverty ignores Jain institutions such as dana and therefore, despite his efforts ‘to relate’ to the poor, he does not challenge the state-authorities’ customary practice of endlessly holding the poor accountable for their poverty, criminalizing its ‘customers,’ further undermining its ‘work force.’ In this sense, he refuses to imagine that the poor are the victims created by poverty-trap (or debt-trap) systems, be they that of various governments or that of other savagely capitalist corporate entities.
Mark Juergensmeyer, born in 1940, is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies at The University of California, at Santa Barbara. Having completed a PhD in Political Science at Berkeley in 1974, he became a student of many areas of research, and like René Girard, one of these is religious violence. His work, Ganghi’s Way, is thoroughly guided by the Jain ethico-religious principle of anekantavada, and in this, his work is an exemplification of this principle. Historians of religion do not ignore the reason for this. Mahatma Gandhi’s mother was a Jain. The basic principle at the heart of the Jain and the Gandhian approach to conflict resolution, and at the heart of Juergensmeyer’s book, is the deep understanding that there are always two sides to every coin, there are at least two sides to every story, and in this, despite what one may think and how humans behave, there are no one way streets. Juergensmeyer’s reading of Gandhi in this work emphasizes Gandhi qua applied conflict theorists, that is, conflict resolution practitioner in action. Juergensmeyer argues that the heart of Gandhi’s approach to conflict resolution is the knowledge of the existence of innumerable angles with which to approach any given reality, if not the multiple realities beyond any postulated reality. This basic belief, that reality is not easily containable, that coins will always have two sides, and that all absolutes can be negated, if only in thought, and in this, that all accounts of reality and its constituent elements can be subject to methodological doubt, analysis, and criticism, is part of what one begins to fathom in contemplating the truth of anekantavada.
Wolff’s work, as well as Walzer’s, would have been greatly improved had these authors considered work such as David Little’s oeuvre, since a significant part of it is devoted to the comparative history of religious ethics. Such work as this constitutes an ideal, if not to say sublime passage into Religious Studies proper, possibly best represented in the recent past, for example, by the magisterial works of the likes of Romanian Mircea Eliade, Canadian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, American Huston Smith, and Scotsman Ninian Smart, etc. In the foregoing essay, I have begun reflecting on the reality that, even events deemed truly horrible, may produce positive realities, despite remaining what they are. This is a species of anekantavada: the awareness that reality is infinitely complex and continuously escapes our best efforts at grasping it, intellectually or otherwise. In the foregoing, I have briefly examined three contemporary works and attempted to highlight that without the principle of anekantavada, it is too easy to exclude positions which may, and often do, deserve our attention and due consideration. Had Walzer openly examined and considered the Jain tradition, not to mention the history of religious ethics in far greater depth, his work would have been much improved and far more balanced. The same can be said of Wolff’s work. In closing, hopefully Juergensmeyer’s Jain inspired work will inspire this and future generations of conflict theorists and conflict resolution practitioners to embrace the proverbial bigger picture in all its complexity.