Satkāryavāda: A Causal Explanation of Change Within Eternal Being

Abstract

The notion that things, actions and events are selectively connected to each other by relations of cause and effect is a conception that classical Indian philosophers inherited from their Vedic predecessors. Almost everything in the universe, whether it belongs to the human, the natural or the divine sphere, was conceived as subject to relations of implications and correspondences. This conception was the basic understanding of reality that made karman or the performance of ritual actions possible and even necessary. By the time that Īśvarakṛṣṇa composed his treatise, the notion of karman had a much broader scope of application than exclusively to sacrifice, but the notion of activity as a hinge that linked the past, the present and the future with almost unavoidable connections was still present and its nature was a subject of polemics among the philosophical schools. Classical Indian philosophy contains, in fact, different and competing accounts of the workings of causality, and the doctrine advocated by the Sāṃkhya school is one among other theories.