This guest lecture will be streamed online. For online participation please use the link: 

https://moodle.univie.ac.at/mod/bigbluebuttonbn/guestlink.php?gid=atvq4eTu3WHR

The basic thesis of the Śvetāmbara Haribhadrasūri’s Anekāntajayapatākā (Victory Flag of Non-One-Sidedness, c. 8th century C.E.) is that any real object (vastu) possesses contrary properties: existence and non-existence, permanence and impermanence, universality and particularity, and so on. It is unsurprising, then, that both classical detractors and well-wishing modern proponents of the Jain philosophy of non-one-sidedness have often considered this philosophical position to flirt with (or forthrightly embrace) paradox and contradiction (virodha).

However, as it will be shown in this talk, Haribhadra’s articulation of non-one-sidedness insists not only on non-contradiction but furthermore common sense (prasiddhatva) as regulative of philosophical justification. Employing a canonical hermeneutical method of analytical standpoints (nikṣepavāda), Haribhadra posits a theory of the compossibility of contraries with which he thinks almost anyone should be able to agree. 

Anil Mundra is Alka Siddhartha Dalal Postdoctoral Fellow in the study of Jainism. After having received his PhD from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 2022, he now teaches at the Department of Religion at Rutgers.