17 Facts About Charvaka

Charvaka, known as Lokayata, is an ancient school of Indian materialism.

Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects ritualism and supernaturalism.

One of the widely studied principles of Charvaka philosophy was its rejection of inference as a means to establish valid, universal knowledge, and metaphysical truths.

Charvaka is categorized as one of the nastika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy.

Substantial discussions about the Charvaka doctrines are found in texts during the 6th century BCE because of the emergence of competing philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism.

Related searches

Charvaka was a living philosophy up to the 12th century in India's historical timeline, after which this system seems to have disappeared without leaving any trace.

Charvaka epistemology holds perception as the primary and proper source of knowledge, while inference is held as prone to being either right or wrong and therefore conditional or invalid.

In Charvaka epistemology, as long as the relation between two phenomena, or observation and truth, has not been proven as unconditional, it is an uncertain truth.

Truth then, state Charvaka, is not an unfailing character of inference, truth is merely an accident of inference, and one that is separable.

Charvaka epistemology represents minimalist pramanas in Hindu philosophy.

Charvaka believed that there was nothing wrong with sensual pleasure.

Since it is impossible to have pleasure without pain, Charvaka thought that wisdom lay in enjoying pleasure and avoiding pain as far as possible.

Unlike many of the Indian philosophies of the time, Charvaka did not believe in austerities or rejecting pleasure out of fear of pain and held such reasoning to be foolish.

Charvaka criticizes Yudhishthira for killing his kinsmen, superiors, and teacher, and claims that all the Brahmins are uttering maledictions to him.

One of the widely studied references to the Charvaka philosophy is the Sarva-darsana-sangraha, a famous work of 14th century Advaita Vedanta philosopher Madhava Vidyaranya from South India, which starts with a chapter on the Charvaka system.

Chatterjee and Datta explain that our understanding of Charvaka philosophy is fragmentary, based largely on criticism of its ideas by other schools, and that it is not a living tradition:.

However, the representation of the Charvaka thought in these works is not always firmly grounded in first-hand knowledge of Charvaka texts and should be viewed critically.