India · c. 6th–5th c. BCE – today
Jain philosophy
Countless eternal souls are bound by karmic matter and can free themselves through non-violence, restraint and right knowledge; and reality is many-sided (anekāntavāda).
How can a soul free itself from karma without harming any life?
Mahāvīra, a contemporary of the Buddha, belonged to the śramaṇa movement of renouncers who left household life and Vedic ritual behind to seek liberation through austerity. Jains regard him as the last of twenty-four ‘ford-makers’ (tīrthaṅkaras), renewing an older teaching linked with Pārśva.
Karma is a subtle matter that sticks to the soul whenever we act with passion, above all when we harm; so freedom means stopping new karma from flowing in and burning off the old through restraint. Because any limited viewpoint grasps only some aspects of a complex reality, claims should be qualified as true ‘from some standpoint’ (syāt)—a kind of non-violence in thought.
- Every living thing, down to plants and tiny beings, has a soul.
- Non-violence (ahiṃsā) is the highest duty.
- Every statement is true only from some standpoint.
Jain ahiṃsā shaped Indian ethics and, through Gandhi’s Gujarati milieu, modern non-violent politics; its doctrine of standpoints is a distinctive contribution to the logic of perspective.
Thinkers
traditionally 599–527 BCE (many scholars: c. 499–425 BCE)MahāvīraTwenty-fourth Jain tīrthaṅkara, a contemporary of the Buddhac. 2nd–5th c. CE (dates uncertain)UmāsvātiAuthor of the Jain text accepted by both main sectsKey texts
Where it came from
Reacted againstVedic & Upanishadic thoughtJains shared the new ideas of karma and liberation but rejected Vedic authority and any single world-soul, positing countless individual souls instead.