The Jain Doctrine of nayavada: A Perspectivalist Reading

Often rendered in English as the doctrine of standpoints, the term nayavāda denotes a doctrine that forms part of the much-debated Jain triad of relativity [anekāntavāda, nayavāda, and syādvāda]. In this talk, I develop a perspectivalist interpretation of nayavāda. On this reading, nayavāda functions as an epistemological corollary of anekāntavāda—the doctrine of non-one-sidedness—and motivates a construal of syādvāda as a doctrine of conditional assertibility.
The specific reading I propose belongs to a somewhat familiar genus but, I argue, has several advantages over alternatives. Most importantly, given some further assumptions, it provides an attractive way to think about epistemic progress—one that addresses more than the familiar image often evoked in expositions of nayavāda, namely that of an elephant examined by blind people. In closing, I comment on what this reading implies regarding how the pursuit of epistemic progress should be situated within the broader soteriological context of Jain Dharma.