Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s16.2

v2.c24.s16.2

The strength, as well as the weakness of the Nyāya philosophy, is in its faith that the method of ordinary common sense and experience can be applied to the problems of religion and philosophy. A pluralistic universe based on the fundamental dualism between soul and matter is legitimate enough as a procedure and a method, but it cannot be transformed into a general philosophy. The average man has no hesitation in asserting the intrinsic reality of the outward visible world. He is also an animist, though his animism is more instinctive than reasoned, and so he admits the reality of his own and other spirits. He would not admit any degrees of reality, since such a conception would conflict with his rooted faith in dualistic realism; but in the interests of logic he is hospitable to the idea of planes of objective being beyond the reach of the senses. In theology he raises the question of the cause of the universe. How does the universe come into being? Such as it is now, he says, it has always been, since it began to be. Though, as a dualist, he fights shy of any transition between being and non-being, his empirical sense will not allow him to accept the static view of the universe. In this difficulty he turns to his own experience, where he finds that he makes several things, like tables and chairs, distinct from himself. As we are distinct from the things which we make, so is the divine spirit, the cause of all things distinct from his handiwork, the world. As we re-fashion existing material, so does God re-fashion the available elements of souls and atoms, which are co-eternal with him. Thus does the Nyāya attempt to do justice to the impressions of common sense and build a metaphysics of pluralistic realism.