Carvaka or Lokayata

Another pre-Buddhistic system of philosophy, the Carvaka, or the Lokayata, is one of the earliest materialistic schools of philosophy. The name Carvaka is traced back to one Carvaka, supposed to have been one of the great teachers of the school. The other name, Lokayata, means "the view held by the common people," "the system which has its base in the common, profane world," "the art of sophistry," and also "the philosophy that denies that there is any world other than this one." Brhaspati probably was the founder of this school. Much knowledge of the Carvakas, however, is derived from the expositions of the later Hindu writings, particularly from Madhava's Sarva-darshana-samgraha ("Compendium of All Philosophies," 14th century). Haribhadra in his Saddarshanasamuccaya ("Compendium of the Six Philosophies," 5th century AD) attributes to the Carvakas the view that this world extends only to the limits of possible sense experience.

The Carvakas apparently sought to establish their materialism on an epistemological basis. In their epistemology, they viewed sense perception alone as a means of valid knowledge. The validity of inferential knowledge was challenged on the ground that all inference requires a universal major premise ("All that possesses smoke possesses fire") whereas there is no means of arriving at a certainty about such a proposition. No amount of finite observations could possibly yield the required universal premise. The supposed "invariable connection" may be vitiated by some unknown "condition," and there is no means of knowing that such a vitiating factor does not exist. Since inference is not a means of valid knowledge, all such supersensible objects as "afterlife," "destiny," or "soul" do not exist. To say that such entities exist though there is no means of knowing them is regarded as absurd, for no unverifiable assertion of existence is meaningful.

The authority of the scriptures also is denied. First, knowledge based on verbal testimony is inferential and therefore vitiated by all the defects of inference. The Carvakas regard the scriptures as characterized by the three faults: falsity, self-contradiction, and tautology. On the basis of such a theory of knowledge, the Carvakas defended a complete reductive materialism according to which the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air are the only original components of being and all other forms are products of their composition. Consciousness thus is viewed as a product of the material structure of the body and characterizes the body itself--rather than a soul--and perishes with the body. In their ethics, the Carvakas upheld a hedonistic theory according to which enjoyment of the maximum amount of sensual pleasure here in this life and avoidance of pain that is likely to accompany such enjoyment are the only two goals that men ought to pursue.

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