Critics of the Ajivika vision of strict determinism focused first on its ethical implications. By grounding everything in niyati, or fate, the system was seen as dissolving moral responsibility: if every action is fixed in advance, praise and blame lose their force, and the very distinction between good and evil becomes fragile. Rival traditions argued that such a stance undermines the rationale for ethical conduct, social accountability, and spiritual discipline, since no deliberate effort can genuinely alter one’s course. The fear was that this could foster moral passivity, encouraging a sense that striving for virtue or avoiding harmful behavior is ultimately pointless. From this perspective, the doctrine was often portrayed as spiritually demotivating, offering little reason for self-correction, compassion, or sustained practice.

A second line of criticism addressed the tension between Ajivika determinism and the broader Indian emphasis on karma. Buddhist, Jain, and many Hindu thinkers regarded intentional action as central to moral causation, linking deeds with their fruits across lifetimes. Against this background, the Ajivika rejection or radical reconfiguration of karma appeared to render the moral universe arbitrary, no longer structured by the law of cause and effect in the ethical sense. Opponents claimed that this not only conflicted with their doctrinal commitments, but also with the lived sense that actions bear consequences that are not merely fated in a mechanical way. The Ajivika view was thus charged with failing to do justice to the experiential dimension of choice, remorse, resolve, and inner transformation.

Philosophers also raised logical and practical objections to such uncompromising fatalism. If all beliefs and actions are predetermined, then the Ajivika teaching itself becomes just one more fated opinion, with no special claim to truth or rational superiority. The very acts of reasoning, debating, and instructing followers seem to lose their purpose if persuasion cannot genuinely change anything. Furthermore, critics argued that this framework risks leading to a kind of existential and spiritual paralysis: if liberation, suffering, and every stage of the path are already fixed, the motivation for personal effort or ascetic discipline becomes hard to justify. In this way, Ajivika thought was often portrayed by its opponents as both philosophically self-undermining and practically inhospitable to meaningful spiritual development.