The Materialism of the Samkhya Philosophy

V. Brodov

The founder of the Samkhya1 philosophical system and the author of the Samkhya-sutra was, as is generally believed, Kapila (c. 6th-5th centuries B. C.). The Samkhya-sutra was lost, so that we have to use later sources - Isvarakrishna Samkhya Karika (3rd-4th centuries C. E.), Vacaspati Misra's Samkhya Tattva Kaumudi (9th century), and others.

Kapila's primary principle is that the world is material. Matter (prakrti) is the basis of every­thing that is, it is omnipresent, eternal, and one. The motion of prakrti is just as eternal as prakrti itself. Primordially, prakrti has no outside cause, for matter (prakrti) has neither beginning nor end. Kapila wrote that the world was not created, and therefore there was no creator; the world itself was the cause of the world; the world developed gradually.

Kapila recognised the objective nature of the cause-and-effect links in nature, self-development of nature from the lower forms to the higher. The first sloka of the Samkhya-Karika says that there is continuity in the development of the world from the lower to the higher... Nothing can arise out of something that does not exist... There is a close tie between cause and effect. If that were not so, everywhere at any moment anything at all could arise. Each cause conditions a specific effect, and there can be no cause without an effect. The effect is always inseparable from the cause. Therefore any existence is conditioned.

Kapila used the materialist doctrine of the cause-and-effect links to substantiate his atheism and to criticise the religion of Brahmanism. He wrote that, if the first cause is God (Brahma) and the world is the effect, there is a discrepancy between cause and effect. There can be, however, no discrepancy between cause and effect. The cause of this world is matter (prakrti). The universe is the result of modifications of matter.

As we see, Kapila uses the category of causality from the very start in the exposition of his philosophical views. That is not accidental. The point is that the positions of Samkhya on causality were the decisive premise which deter­mined its philosophical orientation. In criticising Machism, Lenin pointed out: "The question of causality is particularly important in determining the philosophical line of any of the recent 'isms' ".2 As we see it, this idea of Lenin's is entirely valid, methodologically, relative to some of the oldest "isms".

According to the Samkhya doctrine, everything (any phenomenon) has its material cause. All relations between cause and effect are conceived in the sense that the latter is always present in the former.3 The following are the Samkhya arguments in favour of this.

There are two kinds of causes, material (in which the effect is latent) and efficient or pro­ductive (which helps the effect to manifest itself). If we accept, however, that the material cause does not contain the effect, the concept of "productive cause" loses its meaning, for it has no object of action.

Assuming that an effect arises out of a cause in which it is not contained is tantamount to asserting that existence arises out of nonexistence, or some­thing emerges out of nothing.

An effect must be of the same nature as the cause; they have the same basis. A cloth may only be made out of yarn (not out of milk); curds may be made out of milk (rather than out of yarn), etc.

The theory that the effect exists before it manifests itself is called Satkarya- vada.4

Thus Samkhya asserts that there are no effects without causes. Everything in nature has a cause of its own, including body and soul, sensations and intellect, which are "limited and dependent ob­jects".

Only "the cause of all causes and effects", that is, prakrti (matter), has no cause. " ... The products are caused, while prakrti is uncaused; the products are dependent, while prakrti is independent; the products are many in number, limited in space and time, while prakrti is one, all-pervading and eternal."5

According to the Samkhya doctrine, prakrti consists of three forces or gunas - sativa, rajas, and tamas. Sativa is regarded as something light and illuminating; rajas, motivating and mobile; tamas, heavy and restraining. Analysis of the Samkhya Karika shows that in effect sativa IS potential consciousness; rajas, the source of motion, action, and development; tamas is that which re­strains action and slows down development. These three gunas, constituting the basis of any object or phenomenon, are inseparably connected and mutually condition one another. They are connected as closely as flame, oil, and lamp wick.

The gunas are a kind of primary principles - ­mass (tamas), energy (rajas), and. the conscious principle (sativa).6 Everything in nature is charged, as it were, with these three principles. The interaction between them consists in that energy cannot exist without mass, while conscious phenomena do not exist without energy. How does an object or phenomenon emerge or is shaped, then? The process begins with individual particles of the three forces, indifferently scattered through primary matter, being gathered together into who~es under the impact of natural affinity; this results in non-uniform pressure in various parts of matter, so that bodies distinct from one another are gradually formed instead of uniform indifferent matter.

The emergence or formation of some object or phenomenon does not signify creation of matter, In the same way as the disappearance of an individual object or phenomenon does not mean destruction of matter. In the process of evolution, nature does not increase or diminish quantitatively. Matter cannot be either created or destroyed. The sum total of all matter - of all its actual or potential states - always remains constant. The elements of matter are in eternal motion which cannot stop for a second even; any material process, any growth or withering away is nothing but redistribution of matter, its transition from the past into the present and from the present into the future, or from potentiality to actuality. Redistribu­tion of mass and energy engenders the entire diversity of the material world, the world of plants and animals.

The idea that matter (mass and energy) does not grow or diminish quantitatively but is merely redistributed in the process of emergence and destruction of individual objects and phenomena of nature, can be regarded as one of the strokes of genius of ancient Indian thinkers who anticipated later discoveries. In a most general form, this can be viewed as a distinct expression of the idea of the Law of conservation of the mass of substance as it is known to modern natural science. It should be stressed at the same time that anticipation as one of the forms of perception of scientific truth was characteristic of many outstand­ing thinkers of antiquity. As Engels put it, thinkers of the past brilliantly anticipated countless numbers of truths whose correctness is now proved scientifically.

Matter and the laws of its evolutionary de­velopment are knowable. The ways or channels through which man receives knowledge of the objects and phenomena surrounding him are the five sense organs.

The entire infinite variety of matter is classified into five basic forms or essences: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Samkhya regards the process of world manifestation as ordered development of matter from the finer forms to the most dense ones which are referred to as "material elements" (mahabhuta). These "essences" are similar to the Greek "elements", with the exception that what in Graeco-Roman philosophy is referred to as the "fifth essence" (quintessentia) is called the first essence, or spatiality (akaca) in Samkhya.

We do not set ourselves the task of considering the interconnections and mutual relations between the gunas and essences, although this question is of great interest both on the epistemological and ontological plane. But we should dwell, however briefly, on the relationship between the gunas and prakrti. The point is that Samkhya is the first and probably the only philosophical school in India to make a serious attempt to formulate the philosophical concept of matter.

We know that there were materialists in Europe (such as Ludwig Feuerbach, for instance, who rejected the abstract speculations of Hegel) who negated the existence of matter as the being of "the general", calling it "an empty abstraction", and recognised matter only as the being of individual things. From this viewpoint, only in­dividual things are genuinely material, like this house, this tree, these leaves, etc. That which is given in direct sense perception, that is, the individual sensual objects, is indeed material.7 This view, however, was deficient in divorcing the singular from the general, violating as it did their dialectic unity.

Philosophers of the Samkhya school were also guilty of divorcing the singular from the general, but it is very important to point out that they recognised the reality of both. In their view, matter (prakrti) exists in two independent forms, one general and one singular, and that was where the metaphysical gap lay.

Matter of the first form ("the general") is substance, the first cause of the world of objects; in it, the gunas are in a state of equilibrium, and it is therefore without qualities, which prevents man from perceiving it through the senses. It is there­fore incognisable, but the incognisability results from its fineness rather than from nonexistence.

Matter of the second form ("the singular") is an infinite number of moving objects, phenomena, and events developing in space and time. The singular is accessible to the sense organs, it is knowable.8

The stumbling block for the Samkhya authors was the question of the origin of consciousness. Ram Mohan Roy believes that purusa was created by Kapila as an explanation for the origin of consciousness.

According to Kapila, purusa is the omniscient and extremely fine element which, as distinct from prakrti, possesses consciousness. Prakrti is the object or matter; purusa is the subject or conscious­ness. There are grounds to believe that Kapila was fearful lest this proposition of his should be given an idealistic interpretation. As distinct from atman, said Kapila, purusa does not create anything, it is passive; it is merely a passive witness; only prakrti is active, and so on. Prakrti is the subject of action; in the process of spontaneous de­velopment it comes in contact with purusa and ultimately cognises itself; purusa is devoid of the ability for self-cognition.

The inconsistencies and errors of the Samkhya School relative to the origin and essence of con­sciousness were readily exploited already in antiquity by representatives of religious orthodoxy.

In the Middle Ages, Gaudapada, Vacaspati Misra and other commentators (or followers) of Kapila's doctrine made further concessions to idealism, recognising the existence of souls independent of matter.

On the whole, an inconsistent position on this score gave rise to reproaches on the part of idealists for concessions to materialism as well as on the part of materialistically-minded Indian philosophers, Thus S. Radhakrishnan criticises Kapila for deviation from idealism: "If we admit the Samkhya view of prakrti and its complete independence of purusa, then it will be impossible to account for the evolution of prakrti. We do not know how latent potentialities become fruitful without any consciousness to direct them.,,9

Ram Mohan Roy holds an opposite view of the Samkhya philosophy, indicating that its weakness lies in negating the historicity of de­velopment. Had the Samkhya philosophy asserted that at a definite stage in the development of the world, consciousness (chaitanya) arises out of things, while quantitative changes, reaching a certain phase of development, become qualitative changes producing new qualities, then the whole inconsistency (asangati) would have disappeared. Correctly criticising the anti-historical (metaphy­sical) quality of the Samkhya philosophy, Roy regrettably commits an error himself, comparing Kapila's materialism to that of the French phi­losophers of the 18th century. The point is that the French materialism of the 18th century was a historical product of a qualitatively different epoch, and of a different class; it was different in its content.

Such is a brief characteristic of the materialism pf the Samkhya School. 

  

Notes:

  

1. Indologists differ as to the origin of the name of this philosophical system. The word samkhya has two principal meanings: (I) count or computation; (2) profound meditation, reasoning, counting the pros and cons, struggle both in the intellectual and physical senses. Taking into account the first meaning, Gough explains the name Samkhya from the fact that in this system the principles of the U panisads were listed. We believe that the scholars who reckon with the second meaning (like S. Radhakrishnan, Ram Mohan Roy, and others), have a better case. The meanings of the word Samkhya is close to Gr. philosophia, dialektike.
2. V. I. Lenin, "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", Col­lected Works, Vol. 14, p. 153.
3. Let us point out that Buddhists, Nyayiks and Vaisesikas adhere to another view of this question. They believe that the effect does not actually exist in the material cause. Their argument is that if the effect existed in the material cause, there would be no need for the efficient cause. (If, for instance, the pot actually exists in the clay, what is the potter for?). The theory (vada) that the effect does not exist in the material cause before it is produced is sometimes called Arambha-vada, that is, the theory of the origin of the new in the effect.
4. Advaita Vedantists also adhere to the Satkarya-vada, with that essential difference that the transition of the cause into the effect is declared to be merely an appearance or Illusion (vivarta). The following explanation is given here: If we saw a rope and took it for a snake, that does not mean that the rope had turned into a snake. Similarly, if Brahman created our universe that does not mean that it actually became the universe that it created. Brahman (in this instance, cause) remains identical to itself and immutable, while the universe (in this case, effect) is merely appearance or illusion
5. S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy., Vol. II, p. 260.
6. S. Dasgupta (see A History of Indian Philosophy,. Vol. I, Cambridge, 1922, pp. 244-245) interprets sativa as "intelligence-­stuff"; rajas, as "energy-stuff", and tamas, as "mass-stuff".
7. This view has its sources in the nominalist tradition. In the Middle Ages nominalism, according to Marx, was the first expression of materialism which struggled against medieval scholasticism. The progressive thinkers of the 17th century (in particular Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza in his theory of the individual things) also relied on nominalist principles in their fight against Aristotlean scholasticism. French materialists also turned to that tradition as an antidote to objective idealism.
8. Pradhana - prakrti in the state of equilibrium of the gunas - is just as unknowable as the Kantian thing-in-itself. Prakrti is knowable only in the state of non-equilibrium of the gunas, that is, what is knowable here is the dynamics of the gunas rather than pradhana; the transition from pure potentiality (avyaktam) to actuality (vyaktam) is cognised.
9. S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. II, p.326

(Source: Indian Philosophy in Modern Times - Part-1, Chapter 1; page 98-107)

Title: Indian Philosophy In Modern Times

Author: V Brodov

Translated from the Russian by: Sergei Syrovatkin

Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1984

Length: 366 pages

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The Materialism of the Charvakas Lokayatikas

 V Brodov

Brhaspati (c. 7th-6th century B. C.) is believed to be the founder of the Charvaka Lokayatika School and the author of its Sutras. The Charvakas Lokayatikas are materialist philosophers. It would be a rude error, however, to restrict the Brhaspati line to the materialism of the Charvakas Lokay­atikas. That would mean narrowing down the social basis of Indian materialism, belittling its significance, and distorting the actual history. The materialist tendency is actually inherent in nearly all the sys­tems or schools of Indian philosophy, including the objective-idealist system of the Vedanta of the new times, which is shown in the second half of the present work.

To characterise the philosophical materialism of the Sutras period, it is important to single out the following general features:

• 
  
• recognition of the fact that the external world, of which man is part, exists objectively and is therefore not a product of his brain but exists independently of any consciousness;
• recognition of the fact that the external world manifests itself in a law-governed fashion, the laws being capable of change only through physical action rather than through ideas, magic, or prayer;
• negation of the existence of supernatural forces; the view that the world develops spontaneous­ly, without outside interference;
• recognition of man's perceptions of the objects or phenomena of the outside world (sense experien­ces) as the only source of knowledge;
• rejection of the view that knowledge is esote­ric, innate, or intuitive (mystical);
• recognition of the fact that the nature of man's life and activity is determined by the condi­tions of his life and not by a deity.

Some of these features are inherent, in some form and to a certain extent, in many systems of Indian philosophy of the medieval period and even of the modern times.

It was Brhaspati who gave ancient Indian mate­rialism its distinctive shape. Another outstanding representative of this school was Bhishan. One of the most ancient puranas, the Padma Purana, says that a certain man named Kanada discovered the great teaching called Vaisesika. Gotama compiled the Nyaya shastras, Kapila wrote the Samkya sha­tras, a certain Brahman named Jaimini expounded the greatest atheist teaching and a man named Bhishan, the despised Charvaka teaching, while Vishnu himself, to rout the demons, took the image of Buddha to preach the completely impious doctri­ne of Buddhism.

This passage from the Padma Purana is also quoted by Vijnana Bhiksu, a major representative of the Samkhya philosophy. Bhishan's name is mentioned in the Mahabharata (Santiparva and Salyaparva), in the writings of Manu, and so on. Expressing the hopes and moods of the poorest strata of Indian society, Bhishan was sharply crit­ical of Brahmanism, the Vedic religion, and the ideology of the priests. The compilers of the Vedas,

he said, were hypocrites and swindlers. Invoking the Vedas, the priests dupe the simple people with meaningless jumbles of words, living in luxury at the expense of the poor people bringing them of­ferings. Who the offerings for? Gods were non­existent and had never existed. Should there be of­ferings to the deceased relatives? But these became dust and needed no food. Just as a lamp that became extinguished would not be rekindled if oil was added to it, a dead man would not rise from the dead after a sacrificial ritual. Even if we assume that our dead relatives need food, why should we pass the food to the priests? Why should the priests eat the food if our dead ones are to be fed? That is about the same as feeding the people of one village while intending to feed those of another.

The Charvakas rejected the idea of the existence of God, recognising four material elements as the substance: earth, water, fire, and air. Combina­tions of these elements produce all objects and phenomena of nature, both material and spiritual. The soul is a body endowed with consciousness; the soul does not exist outside the body. Conscious­ness emerges from unconscious elements as their temporary combination in a specific form under definite conditions. In substantiating this proposition, Bhishan said that a man could not get drunk by eating some rice and a kind of molasses made of beetroot. A mixture of rice and molasses, however, is used to prepare wine on which man can get drunk. Consciousness is nothing but the result of a certain process of combining material elements. A man's death signifies simultaneous destruction of both consciousness and soul. A Charvaka named Ajita Kesakambalin (6th century B. C.) said that both a wise man and a fool die along with the body, both are dead, and have no existence after death.

The Charvakas decried religious superstition which kept the people ignorant and oppressed, and opposed their view of cognition as the result of sense perception to religious visions. This viewpoint of naive sensualism certainly had its weak points. While recognising sensations and perceptions to be the only source of knowledge, the Charvakas failed to realise the dialectical unity of the sensual and the rational elements in cognition. They viewed the results of man's cognitive activity in the form of abstract thinking as untrue or at any rate unrelia­ble, containing elements of subjective arbitrariness and errors. The mind (that is, abstract thinking), said the Charvakas, did not exist without sensa­tions and perceptions. Propositions and syllogisms were only possible on the basis of those data which were obtained through sensory channels. Moreover, abstract logical thinking (the mind) could not add anything to that which was given in sense percep­tions. In other words, they failed to see the dialectics of the transition from cognition of phenomena to cognition of the essence, having a very limited and narrow conception of human practice and its role in the process of cognition. For the Charvakas, prac­tice was the process itself of sense perception of the individual objects and phenomena of nature. The role of practice as the criterion of truth was reduced to the verifying activity of our sense organs.

Vasiliĭ Vasilʹevich Brodov

It should be borne in mind, however, that the primary goal of the Charvakas was dealing a crush­ing blow to the ideology of Brahmanism. Jawa­harlal Nehru wrote on this account: "The materia­lists attacked authority and all vested interest in thought, religion and theology. They denounced the Vedas and priestcraft and traditional beliefs, and proclaimed that belief must be free and must not depend on pre-suppositions or merely on the authority of the past. They inveighed against all forms of magic and superstition. Their general spirit was comparable in many ways to the modern materialistic approach, it wanted to rid itself of the chains and burden of the past, of speculation about matters which could not be perceived, or worship of imaginary gods ... " 1

The opponents of materialism (mostly the priests, the Brahmans) did not only persecute the materi­alist philosophers themselves, they burned their works, so that materialist literature (the literature of the Charvakas Lokayatikas) was almost comple­tely wiped out. "Among the books that have been lost," Nehru points out, "is the entire literature on materialism which followed the period of the early Upanishads. The only references to this, now found, are in criticisms of it and in elaborate attempts to disprove the materialist theories.,,2

The Charvaka materialism is characterised by direct orientation against idealist and religious doct­rines, the desire to prove the untenability of ide­alism and to denounce the falsity and deception of religion and its preachers. Thus the Charvakas' main purpose was denouncing Brahmanist ideology rather than creating a consistent philosophical sys­tem.

The doctrine of the Charvakas Lokayatikas can be reduced to the following four propositions.

(1) Four material elements (mahabhuta) are the basis of all that is: fire, earth, water, and air.3 These elements are spontaneously active, with a force of their own (svabhava) inherent in them.

(2) Only "this world" (laka) exists; there is no hereafter or life after death;4 that is, after man's death, his life is neither continued "there" (that is, in the Brahman-Atman world) nor revived "here" (on this earth). The Charvakas said:

While life is yours, live joyously:

None can escape Death's searching eye;

When once this frame of ours they burn

How shall it e'er again return?5

The Charvakas criticised the religious idealist proposition that "consciousness is the property of the immortal soul", insisting that consciousness died with the death of man, while man himself disintegrat­ed into the four basic elements. "Man is composed of four elements," they wrote. "When man dies, the earthly element returns and relapses into the earth; the watery element returns into the water, the fiery element returns into the fire, the airy element returns into the air, the senses pass into space.'6

(3) There are no supernatural (divine) forces. God is an invention of the rich to dupe the poor. Charvakas taught that the religion of Brahmanism, just as any other religion, was untenable and harm­ful, for it distracted the attention and strength of the poor towards worshipping imaginary gods, off­ering sacrifices to unknown forces, listening to abstract preaching, etc. Religious writings were based on the fantasies of a certain group of persons materially interested in all this.

(4) There is no soul - in the sense in which the ministers of religious cults and, in agreement with the latter, the philosophers used the term. It is matter that thinks, rather than the soul which is alleged to exist independently of matter.

(5) The law of karma (requital for both good and bad deeds) is an invention of the adherents of religion employed also by idealist philosophers. The source of evil on this earth should be looked for in the cruelty and injustice existing in society rather than in the properties of human nature and inevitable sufferings said to be predetermined from on high.

(6) The only source of the knowledge of nature is sense perception. Only direct perception (through the five senses) gives man genuine knowledge (pra­tyaksa). Only that exists which can be directly perceived. That which cannot be perceived does not exist; it does not exist precisely for the reason that it cannot be perceived. By "that which cannot be perceived" the Charvakas meant first and fore- most such religious "essences" as God, the soul, the heavenly

According to the Charvakas, sense perceptions can be of two kinds, external and internal. Internal perceptions emerge through the action of reason (manas). External perceptions are linked with the activity of the five sense organs.

Accordingly, knowledge itself is divided into two kinds or forms: the first kind is the result of contact between the sense organs and the objects of the external world; the second kind of knowledge arises through mental operations on the basis of sense data. 

Notes:

1. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1961, p.100
2. Ibid. The same idea is to be found in many other studies in the history of Indian philosophy. Debiprasad Chattopad­hyaya, a prominent Marxist scholar, writes: "Apart from the mere mention of such lost treatises, what we now concretely possess are a few stray references to the Lokayata - views, or to its followers called the Lokayatikas, as preserved in the writings of those who wanted only to ridicule and refute the Lokayata ... This philosophy had the misfortune of being known to us only through the writings of its opponents ..:' (D. Chat­topadhyaya, Lokayata. A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism, People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1959, p. 7) 
3. Hence one of the most probable versions of the origIn of the name "Charvaka"; char "four", vak "word", that is, "four words".  
4. Loka means "world", so that the ancient Indian materi­alists are sometimes called "Lokayatikas". Etymologically, the word taka means "that which is widespread among the people"; "that which is essentially secular". 
5.  S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1977,p. 281
6. Ibid, p. 273 

Title: Indian Philosophy In Modern Times

Author: V Brodov

Translated from the Russian by: Sergei Syrovatkin

Publisher: Progress Publishers, 1984

Length: 366 pages

Read More