Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya ( Bengali : দেবীপ্রসাদ চট্টোপাধ্যায় , Debīprasād Caṭṭopādhyāẏ ; born November 19, 1918 in Kolkata ; † May 8, 1993 ibid) was a Bengali Marxist philosopher from India . He made significant contributions in the study of materialism in classical Indian philosophy . His most outstanding work was the compilation and explanation of the traditional philosophy of Lokayata , which he freed from the falsifications of their opponents. He is also assigned the research on scientific methods in ancient India, especially that of the doctors Charaka and Sushruta .

Life

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya was born in Calcutta in 1918 into a Brahmin family. His father was a strictly religious Hindu and a supporter of the Indian freedom movement. It was probably his influence that sparked two great passions in Debiprased: Indian philosophy and politics. He quickly took radical directions in both fields and developed a lifelong commitment to Marxism and communist movements. At a very early point in his life, Chattopadhyaya immersed himself in the left nationalist movement by joining the Progressive Writers' Movement, founded in 1936.

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya received his academic training in philosophy in Calcutta under distinguished philosophers such as S. Radhakrishnan and Surendranath Dasgupta . After completing his bachelor's (1939) and master's (1942) at the University of Calcutta , he carried out research under Professor Dasgupta. He taught philosophy in Calcutta for two decades. He was then appointed as visiting professor at the universities of Andhra Pradesh , Calcutta and Poona . He stayed with the activities of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPHR) and the National Institute of Science , Technology and Development Studies, NISTADS) of the Indian CSIR capacities. He was married to Alka Chattopadhyaya, a renowned Tibetologist.

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya's work on materialism and scientific method led to his active collaboration with the international community of philosophers, historians and Indologists . He worked with some of the greatest Western scholars of the 20th century, such as Joseph Needham , George Derwent Thomson , Bongard Levin and Walter Ruben . He was also a member of the German and Soviet Academy of Sciences .

As mentioned above, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya was active in the communist movement of India from his youth. Despite his lifelong membership in the Communist Party of India , which he joined in 1944, he influenced all Marxist currents in India both inside and outside the communist movement. His ongoing professional writings made regular contributions on ideological and philosophical topics in like-minded magazines. He died in Calcutta on May 8, 1993.

Major works

Lokayata (1959)

Throughout his philosophical and historical writings, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya aimed to reconstruct the scientific ideas and materialism in ancient India and to trace their origins. The German indologist Walter Ruben called him in his comments on his work Lokayata a “way of thinking reformer” (orig. Eng. Wikipedia: “thought reformer”) who is “aware of his great responsibility towards people who are in a phase the struggle for national awakening and the worldwide struggle for progress, humanism and peace against imperialism and materialism. He wrote his book A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism against the old-fashioned view that India is a land of dreamers and mystics ”.

This study challenged the general view that the only intention of Indian philosophy was the concept of Brahman . From the scattered references in ancient philosophical literature, which utterly rejected materialistic schools, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya reconstructed the philosophy of Lokayata , which consistently denied the existence of Brahman and regards pratyaksa (perception) as the only possibility of knowledge. He destroyed the so-called "Interpretation of Synthesis", which sought to bring together the diverse philosophical traditions of India to form a ladder to the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta .

As a Marxist, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya used the method of historical materialism to examine "the highest material basis of primeval deha-vada and the primordial rituals that go with it" and how "these could be linked to the process of securing the most basic means of existence." He also followed "the course of development that this ancient prognosis may have undergone".

Indian Philosophy (1964)

It was perhaps the first introductory book that looked at Indian philosophy in an interdisciplinary manner, based on anthropological, economic and philosophical studies. It traces the philosophical development in India from the Vedic period to late Buddhism. In this introductory study, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya targets another important myth that overshadowed the study of Indian philosophy - that of the presumed predominance of shastrartha, or literal interpretation. He sees the development of Indian philosophy as the consequence of real conflicts of ideas - "Incompatibility established the driving force behind the development of Indian philosophy".

In his review of the book, Dale Riepe says that Chattopadhyaya "combines Hume's analytical acumen with Lenin's impatient realism."

Indian atheism (1969)

This is another provocative criticism of the claims of Indian philosophy and religion. The book brings out a coherent historical account of atheism in India. According to Chattopadhyaya, “an unbiased examination of the Veda reveals the complete absence of religious consciousness, and the Rgveda is full of relics from the time of this mindset. Even polytheism is misapplied in this early phase of Vedic thought ”.

What is life and what is death in Indian philosophy (1976)

In the preface, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya says that his intention in this book is to present "an analysis of our philosophical traditions from the standpoint of our present philosophical requirements". "These requirements are secularism, rationalism and scientific orientation". Once again he finds the philosophical development - debates and disputes - in ancient India embedded in the class struggles of the time. He deals with the materialistic basis of Vedic rituals, in which he sees similarities with the magical belief of the Yajnas in the control of natural forces. He shows how these rituals, which evolved from primitive scientific endeavors, were transformed into superstition and monopoly in the hands of oppressors with the advent of class division. The book also tries to show that and how Indian philosophy was not an exception to the conflicts between idealism and materialism which are generally evident in the philosophical traditions of other regions. It also considers the role of legislators such as Manu in establishing the supremacy of idealistic traditions and how, as a result of censorship, anti-idealists such as Varahamihira and Brahmagupta worked their philosophies in characteristic fabulous language, developing their own methods of camouflaging their ideas (see Aesop ).

In India, as elsewhere, anti-idealists and materialists adopted practical experience as the main measure of truth. Nyaya - Vaisheshikas have been most pronounced in this regard - “after a knowledge is confirmed in practice, there is no doubt of the evidence; therefore the problem of proving does not arise ”. On the other hand, the idealists believed in the complete separation of theory and practice. They stuck, in the words of Kumarila Bhatta , to the principle of bahyartha-sunyatva (the unreality of the objects of knowledge) which, according to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, was "the true fulcrum of idealism in his Indian career".

Science and Society in Ancient India (1977)

This book is about scientific methods in ancient India and how the social division of that time shaped the development of science. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya chooses the field of medicine for this task, because, according to him, it is "the only discipline that promises complete secularity and has clear potential for the modern understanding of the natural sciences".

The main aim of the book is to present an analysis of the Caraka Samhita, the definitive collection of sources in Indian medicine. “Without paying attention to the orientation of the scriptures, they [the Indian physicists],” according to Chattopadhyaya, “insist on the utmost importance of the direct observation of natural phenomena and the techniques of rational processing of empirical data. They even demand that the truth of every conclusion must ultimately be tested against the criteria of practice. "For them," everything in nature happens according to unchangeable laws, the main component of what is commonly called svabhava in Indian thought "and" From the medical point of view there can be nothing that does not consist of matter. ”They even say that“ a substance is in the possession of a consciousness if it is endowed with sense organs ”. Furthermore, Chattopadhyaya shows:

"If we can see anywhere in Indian thought the anticipation of the view that knowledge is power - which, further elaborated, assumes that freedom is the recognition of necessity - then with the practicing doctors."

In the book, Chattopadhyaya also tries to show how social division, especially in the caste system, which was enforced by the legislators and their justifying ideologies, creates obstacles in the development of science in India.

Lenin the Philosopher (1979)

This book was written in the context of the riots in the 1970s. At that time there was massive confrontation between the authoritarian one-person regime of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi , which culminated in the declaration of a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, on the one hand, and social revolutionary movements ("Bihar movement" under Jayaprakash Narayan ) and a growing conservative one Opposition on the other hand. Chattopadhyaya said "that in these gloomy and scary days India is going through today, what holds hope for our future, our people's growing awareness of socialism, is the only way out." And "a necessary prerequisite for moving towards socialism is the consolidation of socialist consciousness in its true meaning among today's Indians", for which "it is necessary to understand and adopt Lenin's philosophical viewpoint".

This book is intended as a “guide or introduction” to Lenin's philosophical writings. It aims to "guide readers to the current studies of Lenin, which have been provided with some explanations, comments and summaries so that they are only useful for a limited and preliminary knowledge of Lenin's philosophical ideas".

However, in his largely appreciative review of the book Chattopadhyaya, communist leader EMS criticized Namboodiripad for not being able to "explain sufficiently convincingly why Lenin found it necessary in his later years to go in Hegel's direction," as it did is evident in his Philosophical Notebook of 1914.

Fonts

Books

• Lokayata: A Study in Classical Indian Materialism. People's Publishing House, New Delhi 1959.
• Indian Philosophy - A Generally Understandable Introduction. People's Publishing House, New Delhi 1964.
• Indian Atheism - A Marxist Analysis. Manisha, Calcutta 1969.
• What is life and what is death in Indian philosophy. People's Publishing House, New Delhi 1976.
• Science and Society in Ancient India. Research India Publications, Calcutta 1977.
• Lenin the philosopher. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi 1979.
• History of science and technology in ancient India. Mukhopadhyaya, Calcutta 1986.
• In defense of materialism in ancient India. People's Publishing House, New Delhi 1989.

Editing

• Studies on the History of Science in India. 2 issues. Editorial Enterprises, New Delhi 1982.
• Carvaka, Lokayata: A Collection of Source Material and Some Recent Studies. Indian Panel on Philosophical Research, New Delhi 1994.

literature

• G. Ramakrishna, Sanjay K. Biswas: Reveries in Ideology - A Collection of Analytical Essays by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. Navakarnataka Publications, Bengaluru 2002.

Web links

• Lokayata
• Science and Philosophy in Ancient India

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Most of his biographical material is from SK Biswas: Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya - The Modern Indian Sage. In: Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Science. Section A. Volume 8, pp. 889-891. ( online )
2. ^ Rajendra Prasad: Obituary - Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. In: Social Scientist. Issue 21, No. 5-6, May-June 1993, pp. 102-105.
3. ↑ Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya: Indian Philosophy. P. 27.
4. ^ Dale Riepe: Review of "Indian Philosophy - A Popular Introduction". In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Issue 26, No. 4, June 1966, pp. 611-612.
5. ^ Indian Atheism. P. 39.
6. ^ What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy. P. 359.
7. ^ What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy. P. 46.
8. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 3.
9. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 7.
10. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 64.
11. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 66.
12. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 72.
13. ^ Science and Society in Ancient India. P. 180.
14. ↑ Lenin, the philosopher. P. 1.
15. ↑ Lenin, the philosopher. P. 2.
16. ↑ EMS Namboodiripad: "Dialectical" Materialism and Dialectical "Materialism". In: Social Scientist. Issue 10, No. 4, April 1982, pp. 52-59.