Carvaka (Lokayata)

The claim

Perception is the only reliable source of knowledge. Inference cannot be justified without assuming what it sets out to prove, and testimony is only as good as the perception behind it.

What it held

Carvaka is the position every other Indian school defines itself against, and almost nothing of it survives in its own voice. What we have is quotation by opponents, which means the position may well be sharper than the caricature.

The epistemology is the interesting part. Accepting inference requires accepting pervasion — that wherever there is smoke there is fire — and establishing pervasion requires either perceiving every case, which is impossible, or inferring it, which is circular. This is Hume's problem of induction, stated in India, and no school found an answer that satisfied everyone.

From that follows the metaphysics. Consciousness arises from the four elements combined, as intoxicating power arises from fermented ingredients none of which is intoxicating. When the body disperses, so does the person. The soul, the afterlife and karma are all inferences and therefore unsupported.

The ethics attributed to it — eat, drink, borrow if you must — comes from hostile summaries and may be unfair. Jayarashi's surviving book is not hedonism but a systematic scepticism about all knowledge claims, including materialist ones.

How it argued

Attack on the justification of inference, and demand that any claimed entity be shown to perception.

What it was arguing against

Every other school, and specifically the Vedic authority Mimamsa defended and the karmic mechanism common to almost everyone else.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether Carvaka rejected inference entirely or only inference to unperceivable things — the latter is more defensible and some sources suggest it. Whether Jayarashi is a Carvaka or a sceptic about Carvaka too.

Common misconceptions

That it is simple hedonism. The one primary text we have is a work of technical epistemology. The hedonist caricature comes from opponents' summaries, which had every reason to make it look shallow.

How it began

Older than any surviving text — the Upanishads already know the position, and the Buddha's contemporaries included teachers holding it.

What became of it

Extinguished, its texts lost. No Carvaka work survives except Jayarashi's, which was rediscovered in a single manuscript in 1926.

Lasting influence

Substantial and negative: every school had to refute it, and did so at length, which is how we know it existed at all. Modern Indian secular thought has claimed it as an ancestor.

Why it still matters

Its argument against induction is Hume's, made much earlier, and it is the standing counterexample to the claim that Indian philosophy is uniformly spiritual.

Put another way

Intoxicating power arising from ingredients that are not themselves intoxicating.

Where to start

The chapter in Madhava, with the warning that it is written by an opponent, then Jayarashi for the real thing.

The surprising bit

The only surviving Carvaka book was found in 1926 in a single damaged manuscript, and it turns out to argue that no philosophical position can be established — including materialism.

In their own words

Connections

Opposed by

Purva Mimamsa, Nyaya, Advaita Vedanta

The verdict

The position everyone refuted and nobody preserved.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy