S.K.Belvalkar
R.D.Ranade
“Materialism” metaphysically
denotes that system of thought which refuses to recognize, as the source of the
created manifold, a First Cause other and higher than the mere working out of
the forces and tendencies inherent in the non-sentient matter qua matter, unsupervised by any nonmaterial
power or principle like the Atman or the Deity. And as a consequence it
recognizes for the human being no ethical goal higher than a life of pleasure
or happiness to the end of his period. Materialism is accordingly a tendency of
thinking which can appear almost at any stage of social or religiophilosophical
evolution; and as we saw (See: Chapter Third: Transition from the Brahmana to the Upanishad Period), even the
Rigveda is not without it. But from a
mere tendency it can develop into a regular system of thought, as it apparently
seems to have done towards the end of the Upanishadic period. As forerunners of
it we already meet in the earlier Upanishads those Elemental Cosmologies with
Water or Ether as the First Principle, from which, the texts* tell us, all the
creation was produced; and that this First Principle might not be a sort of an
eternal self-subsistent entity, it was actually conceived of as the Asat or non-existing. Chhandogya vi. 2.
1 mentions (and controverts) a definite set of thinkers who made the world
evolve from Non-existence; while at the other end of the process we have, in
texts like Chha. viii. 11-12 and Brihad. ii. 4.12, the negativistic
conclusions about everything knowable and namable being reduced to
non-existence, from the clutches of which Yajnavalkya is almost frantically
endeavouring to exclude the “Atman” in those darkly enigmatic stanzas with
which he drops the curtain down upon the great "symposium" at the
court of Janaka in the third Chapter of the Brihadaranyaka., - stanzas which
distinctly foreshadow the "Ajati-vada"
or the acosmic absolutism of Gaudapada. - For an Upanishadic expression of
"Materialism" on the ethical side we have to turn to Chha. viii. 8.
4, where a powerful body of Epicurean non-believers is introduced under the opprobrious
nickname of the "Asuras."
The Upanishads of course were not by themselves expected to go out of their way
and detail the tenets of these "Materialistic" systems, which later
claimed as their founder no less a name than that of Brihaspati, the Teacher of
the Gods.* But the animus which the Bhagavad-Gita
shows towards them in Chapter xvi of the poem, as also the several
"heretic" doctrines strongly tinged with "Atheism" and
"Materialism" that came to be preached in the pre-Buddhistic period,
may be safely taken as evidence for the existence, outside the
"orthodox" circle of Upanishadic speculation, of a definite school of
philosophy for the apostles of which the Maitrayani Up. uses such select
epithets as "unheavenly," "robbers," and the like. It is
also worth noting here that certain tendencies of Upanishadic speculation such
as (1) the denial of Atman's liability and power of doing or suffering
anything ( p. 399), and (2) insistence upon the inexorable character of the Law
of Karman as revealed by Yajnavalkya to Artabhaga (Brihad. iii. 13, and
elsewhere ) - which are both jointly capable of a one-sided development towards
passive fatalism - as also (3) belief in the impermanence and mutability of
things of which Brihadratha in Maitra. i. 3-4 gives perhaps, if not the earliest,
at any rate the most pathetic, expression on the Brahmanic side, together with
(4) the doctrine of the unknowability of the Real in which Upanishadic
philosophy in its most transcendent flights culminated, may have conceivably
accentuated the move towards philosophical Materialism and Agnosticism, of
which the next age is to afford us such a bewildering array of illustrations.
Courtesy:
S.K.Belvalkar &
R.D.Ranade, 1927, History of Indian
Philosophy: The Creative Period (Chapter Ninth: An Evaluation of Upanishadic Philosophy, Section: 30: The Inchoate Philosophical Systems (1)
Materialism)
About the authors:
Shripad Krishna Belvalkar (1880-1967) was born at Kolhapur , Maharashtra and was educated at Bombay and Harvard universities. He was Honorary Secretary of All India Oriental Conference in1926-27. He was elected as Honorary Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society, London in 1947. He was co-founder and Honorary Secretary of Bhardarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune in 1915-18 and 1927-33. His publications include: Systems of Sanskrit Grammar (1915), Rama’s Later Hisotry (1925), Dandin’s Kavyadarsa (1924), and Bhagavadgita (1941)
Ramachandra Dattatraya Ranade (1886-1957) was born at Jamkhandi in Karnataka. He was Emiritus Professor of Philosophy and Vice-Chancellor, Allahabad University Maharashtra (1930), Philosophical Essays (1956), and Shri Bhagavat Gita (1958)
2 comments:
Materialism doesn't imply hedonism, though, any more than theism implies moderation. Indeed, one might suggest that ethics arises from facing conditions as they demonstrably are -- the approach of the materialist. Theism, by leaning away from evidence, leans away from reason. And what defensible ethical system can arise from a lapse of reason?
Well written.
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