Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Authors of Dharmaśāstra-s (religious law-books of India) like Manu and Yājñavalkya lose no opportunities of condemning freethinkers. They are called dambhin, nāstika, pāsandin, haituka, etc.1 The word, haituka, is of particular interest. Literally it means ‘a reasoner’ (from hetu, ‘reason’). But Medhātithi (ninth century CE), a commentator on the Manusamhitā (Manusmrti) glosses…
August Thalheimer [This essay is Chapter 6 of August Thalheimer’s ‘Introduction to Dialectical Materialism -The Marxist World-View’] August Thalheimer The Greeks played the leading role in the foundation of science and philosophy, and in the detachment of these from religion, but they are not alone in having made this progress. It is no more than just…
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya 0. Many, if not most, people nowadays go straight to the internet rather than look up a book to know something about anything under the sun. There are hundreds, if not thousands of files on the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system of philosophy there. Regrettably, many of them, though well-intentioned, are ill-informed and highly misleading. I…