Abstract

The history of the Jaina philosophical discourse on the soul is yet to be written. It will inevitably focus on the ways in which the relationship between soul and body is conceived, and what practical implications the various stances carry. For Jaina metaphysics, the existence of the individual soul is an ontological fact. For the history of philosophy, the soul or self is a theory, a concept, 'synthesized from knowledge about the self’ through processes of self-definition. The article explores the history and sociology of the Jaina conception of the soul and the practical implications of variants of two basic stances taken by different Jaina thinkers and traditions along the spectrum between early, classical, and spiritualistic variants of Jaina philosophy.