Talk:Anekantavada

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Anekantavada is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 19, 2008.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 4, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
June 14, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed
August 4, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 22, 2008. The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the Anekāntavāda* philosophy of Jainism encourages its adherents to consider the beliefs of their rivals and opposing parties?*
Current status: Featured article

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	Philosophy of religion
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Section sizes

Section size for Anekantavada (29 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	2,699	2,699
Etymology	2,386	2,386
Philosophical overview	3,114	19,999
Syādvāda	6,539	6,539
Nayavāda	1,894	1,894
Jiva, the changing soul	5,157	5,157
Inclusivist or exclusivist	3,295	3,295
History and development	1,748	12,905
Origins	455	455
Early history	4,298	4,298
Parable of the blind men and an elephant	4,794	4,794
Medieval developments	1,610	1,610
Influence	1,222	9,903
Role in Jain history	1,835	1,835
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi	2,121	2,121
Against religious intolerance and contemporary terrorism	4,725	4,725
Comparison with non-Jain doctrines	2,855	2,855
Criticism	2,170	9,027
Hindu philosophies	25	4,480
Nyaya	1,223	1,223
Vaisheshika	616	616
Vedanta	2,616	2,616
Buddhist philosophy	1,428	1,428
Self-criticism in Jain scholarship	949	949
See also	531	531
References	15	11,618
Citations	34	34
Bibliography	11,569	11,569
External links	1,370	1,370
Total	73,293	73,293

Blind men / elephant in the Tattvārthaślokavārttika

I searched for a references to the parable in an edition of the Tattvārthaślokavārttika but could not find it. I very much doubt that it is there.

Ambiguity

As of December 3, 203, the first sentence of this otherwise-excellent article reads, "Anekantavada is the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India." What do those last five words modify? What, in other words, "emerged in ancient India"? It could be "the Jain doctrine," but it also could be the "metaphysical truths." A would-be editor has no way of knowing which.

By the bye, doesn't that same first sentence assume, in a way that is not consistent with Wikipedia's aspiration to objectivity, that those supposed "metaphysical truths" really are true? Shouldn't it speak, instead, of "metaphysical beliefs" or "alleged metaphysical truths"? 2603:6010:100:6E85:F5BE:80DD:5F4A:2B26 (talk) 16:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're not understanding what "metaphysical truths" actually means in this topic. Which is fine -- terms in philosophy are grotesquely overloaded. If you read the article a bit more then the first sentence of the lead is unambiguous and neutra; all the necessary information to convince you of that should ideally be in the lead itself, but this is a very broad subject that gets deep into facets of Vedic epistemology, so a thoroughly descriptive lead may not be manageable.

"Metaphysical truths" is not a value judgement here any more than it would be in describing Plato's Allegory of the Cave or Zhuangzi's White Horse dialogue. It's more like just saying this is a doctrine of epistemology without using the word "epistemology". SamuelRiv (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, your criticism is valid in that the lead is not adequately descriptive -- I have no idea what anekantavada is, even a little, after reading the lead -- but I'm not sure of a brief way to introduce some of the meat of it. So if you have any ideas you should by all means give it a try. SamuelRiv (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]