Anekāntavāda

Anekāntavāda, “the doctrine of non-one-sidedness”, is the Jain teaching that reality is complex and has many aspects, so that any statement about it is true only from a particular standpoint. A thing is permanent in its substance and changing in its modes; it exists as itself and does not exist as something else. To hold one aspect as the whole truth is to fall into a one-sided view.

The Jain philosophers developed two tools from this teaching. The doctrine of standpoints (nayavāda) classifies the partial perspectives from which a thing can be described. The doctrine of “maybe” (syādvāda) qualifies every assertion with “in some respect”, and sets out seven possible forms of predication, combining “is”, “is not” and “is inexpressible”.

The teaching is often illustrated with the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which appears in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu sources: each touches one part and describes the whole wrongly. Only the omniscient knower sees all aspects at once. Modern writers have read anekāntavāda as a philosophy of intellectual humility and tolerance, an extension of non-harming into thought; Jain philosophers also used it to argue against their rivals’ one-sided views.