Concept
Charvaka
Overview
Charvaka (Sanskrit: चार्वाक; IAST: Cārvāka), also known as Lokāyata, is an ancient Indian school of materialism. It is an example of the atheistic schools (specifically naturalistic and antisupernaturalistic) in the Ancient Indian philosophies. Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism, and rejects ritualism. In other words, the Charvaka epistemology states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional.
It was a well-attested belief system in ancient India. Brihaspati, a philosopher, is traditionally referred to as the founder of Charvaka or Lokāyata philosophy, although some scholars dispute this. Charvaka developed during the Hindu reformation period in the first millennium BCE and is considered a philosophical predecessor to subsequent or contemporaneous heterodox philosophies such as Ajñāna, Ājīvika, Jainism, and Buddhism. Its teachings have been compiled from historic secondary literature such as those found in the shastras, sutras, and Indian epic poetry.
Charvaka is categorized as one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
These few were the Evil Ones and they were conquered. Then great fires raged over the land. And in these fires the Evil Ones and all the things made by the Evil Ones were burned. And the fire which is called the Dawn of the Great Rebirth, was the Script Fire where all the scripts of the Evil Ones were burned, and with them all the words of the Evil Ones. Great mountains of flame stood in the squares of the Cities…
Ayn Rand, Anthem
States what Charvaka is; the author is tied to Charvaka in the knowledge graph.
Because both are so nearly related, it is an old tradition in the history of Philosophy to deduce Philosophy from Persian, Indian, or similar philosophy, a custom which is still partly retained in all histories of Philosophy. For this reason, too, it is a legend universally believed, that Pythagoras, for instance, received his Philosophy from India and Egypt; the fame of the wisdom of these people, which wisdom is…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Charvaka is.
But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Charvaka is.
Philosophers who discussed Charvaka
- Madhvacharya
- Udayana
- Adi Shankara
- Dharmakirti
- Śāntarakṣita
- The Buddha
- Vāchaspati Misra
- Prabhākara
- Ajita Kesakambali
- Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa
- Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya
Related ideas
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Empiricism
- Ritual
- Hemachandra
- Afterlife
- Outline of ancient India
- Ājīvika
- Hedonism
- History of India
- Pyrrho
- Jain philosophy
- Vedas
- Jainism
- Karma
- Saṃsāra
- Moksha
- Adi Shankara
- Dharmakirti
- Akbar
- Vishnu
- Materialism
- Rama
- Mahabharata
- Henry Thomas Colebrooke
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
Narrower topics:
- Adi Shankara
- Akbar
- Arthashastra
- Chanakya
- Darshan (Indian religions)
- Hemachandra
- Henry Thomas Colebrooke
- History of India
- Indian epic poetry
- International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
- Mahabhashya
- Merit (Buddhism)
- Rama
- Sarva-Darsana-Sangraha
- Shanti Parva
- Shastra
- Shiva
- Thomas William Rhys Davids
- Vidyaranya
- Yajna
- Ajita Kesakambali
- Rāja yoga
- Abul Fazl
- Ain-i-Akbari