Jain's Ethical Principles And Code Of Conduct

Chapter I: Introduction

Moral judgments are made on a daily basis irrespective of whether or not a sense of morality exists, which may or may not be acceptable or ethical. However, what drives one to make such a moral judgments? Scholars are of the view that cultural values, education, intuition, tradition, and religious laws influence moral judgment in rather different ways.

Jean Piaget, along with other developmental psychologists, underrated the effect of religion on an individual’s moral development. It was viewed that moral development emerges from the action of people during the adolescent period by constructing and reconstructing their knowledge of the world as a result of their interactions with the environment and society. There

The Jaina ethical principles and philosophical foundations evolved during the Vedic period and it has been giving stimulus to Jain’s moral development, view of the world, ecology, and all spheres of their lives. Their ethical principles are strongly related to the way of liberation, where the ultimate goal is not salvation given by a divine god, but liberation, or “moksha,” achieved by one’s own individual efforts or moral excellence with their religious teachings as the basis and practices.

1) An attempt was made to determine how ethical principles related to the way of liberation consolidate the individual’s ethical capacity. The research substantiates correlation between Jaina ethical principles and Jain’s moral development using the moral developmental indices such as Personal interest score, Maintain norms score, Postconventional score (P score), and N2 score.

2) To substantiate the fact that Jaina code of conducts influence moral development a comparative study of ethical quotients of people of different faiths was done using a standard moral

The principle hypotheses are:

1) The Jaina way of life that emphasizes moral excellence through practicing the code of conducts laid by Mahavira in daily life facilitates a Jain’s moral development.

2) Those who identify as devoted Jains who pursue the Jaina ethical tradition with the sole objective of obtaining liberation through moral excellence will display different levels of moral development to those who identify as other religious groups. For Jains, the way of liberation is one’s moral achievement by practicing Jaina ethical principles. It depends on one’s ethical endeavor no other agents as divine god or goddesses are necessary for liberation. Christians and Hindus who believe the divine entities have belief that outside divine agent enable them to reach salvation. This understanding of the view of divinity and the way of salvation makes people to have different attitude of ethics and people may have different levels of moral