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of sense perception They did not deny the sense of order in things but denied that it had any necessary basis The denial of of any independent rational or spiritual knowledge reduced all morality to mere convenience and expediency, to the mere calculation of pleasure and pain Such an egoistic hedonism became the basis of a new political science in the development of which the materialists or 'secularists' (lokāyata) played an important part At this level the interests of the king tended to represent the public interest of the state in term of its security, prosperity and power Such public interest was called Ai tha and the strategy of attaining it was called the Science of Policies (Nitiśāstra or Dandantti) If sense experience is the sole source of knowledge and sensuous objects the sole reality, it would indeed be difficult to go beyond an ethics of policy seeking to maximize individual and public interest Epicurus and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke, Bentham and J S Mill are examples of such an attitude from the west
The Jainas rejected such an attitude because it ran counter to the facts of spiritual and moral experience Supra-sensuous knowledge and reality are as much a fact as sensuous knowledge and reality If action is observed as bodily behaviour at one level, it is directly intuited as will in self-consciousness That man is responsible for his actions and that moral justice is the ultimate ruling principle of life in a universe which is not hostile to such a principle, this is postulated by the Jainas along with all nonmaterialistic thinkers of ancient India Any theory which implied the evasion of moral responsibility—Kętapranāśa and Akstābhiyagama-was rejected by such thinkers as inadequate to the moral needs of man The only part of materialistic theory which found some support generally related to the concept of public policy and the interest of the state The Jaina views on this would be taken up later
The Doctrine of Karman
The general answer to the moral question accepted by all the non-materialistic schools was in terms of the law of Karman
