The Four Aims of Life (Purusharthas)
Dharma, artha, kama and moksha: the four legitimate goals of human life in Hinduism, and how they are meant to be balanced.
Hinduism teaches that a full human life has four legitimate aims, called the purusharthas, “goals of a person”. They are dharma (righteousness), artha (prosperity), kama (pleasure and love) and moksha (liberation). Rather than rejecting the world, this scheme affirms that wealth and enjoyment are good, provided they are pursued rightly, while pointing to spiritual freedom as the highest goal.
The four aims
| Aim | Meaning | Classic text |
|---|---|---|
| Dharma | Righteousness, duty, ethics and religious obligation. | The Dharmashastras, such as the Laws of Manu |
| Artha | Wealth, security, career, political power and material well-being. | The Arthashastra of Kautilya |
| Kama | Pleasure, desire, love, beauty and the enjoyment of the senses and the arts. | The Kamasutra of Vatsyayana |
| Moksha | Liberation from the cycle of rebirth. | The Upanishads and philosophical works |
Dharma: the foundation
Dharma comes first because it governs the others. Wealth must be earned honestly and pleasure enjoyed within the bounds of morality. A person who pursues artha or kama against dharma harms others and creates bad karma. See Dharma.
Artha: prosperity
Artha covers everything needed to live well and support others: earning a living, running a household, building a business and, for rulers, governing a state. Hindu tradition treats prosperity as a genuine good. A householder needs wealth to support family, guests, the poor and religious institutions. The Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft and economics traditionally attributed to Kautilya (also known as Chanakya), adviser to the emperor Chandragupta Maurya, is the best-known text on artha.
Kama: pleasure and love
Kama includes not only sexual love but all aesthetic and emotional enjoyment: music, poetry, food, friendship and beauty. The Kamasutra, composed by Vatsyayana around the third century CE, is famous in the West for its chapters on sex, but most of it concerns courtship, marriage, household life and the cultivated lifestyle of a refined citizen. Kama, too, is considered a legitimate goal when balanced with dharma.
Moksha: the highest goal
Moksha, liberation from samsara, stands apart from the other three. Dharma, artha and kama belong to life in the world, whereas moksha transcends it. Early texts speak of the first three as the trivarga, “group of three”; moksha was added as a fourth, higher aim as ideas of liberation became central.
Balancing the aims
The purusharthas are closely linked with the four stages of life. A student focuses on learning dharma; a householder pursues dharma, artha and kama together; and in later life a person gradually turns towards moksha. The ideal is not to suppress desire entirely, but to fulfil it in the right way and at the right time, so that life becomes a preparation for spiritual freedom.
The Mahabharata discusses the relationship between the aims at length, and different characters argue for the priority of each, showing that balancing them was a real and debated question.
Sources and further reading
- Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), chapter 3.
- Patrick Olivelle (trans.), King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kautilya's Arthasastra (Oxford University Press, 2013).
- Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar (trans.), Kamasutra (Oxford World's Classics, 2002).