This article provides a philosophical overview of some of the central Buddhist positions and argument regarding animal welfare. It introduces the Buddha's teaching of ahiṃsā or non-violence and rationally reconstructs five arguments from the context of early Indian Buddhism that aim to justify its extension to animals. These arguments appeal to the capacity and desire not to suffer, the virtue of compassion, as well as Buddhist views on the nature of self, karma, and reincarnation. This article also considers how versions (...) of these arguments have been applied to address a practical issue in Buddhist ethics; whether Buddhists should be vegetarian. (shrink)

Challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants.

What is the rational response when confronted with a set of propositions each of which we have some reason to accept, and yet which taken together form an inconsistent class? This was, in a nutshell, the problem addressed by the Jaina logicians of classical India, and the solution they gave is, I think, of great interest, both for what it tells us about the relationship between rationality and consistency, and for what we can learn about the logical basis of philosophical (...) pluralism. The Jainas claim that we can continue to reason in spite of the presence of inconsistencies, and indeed construct a many-valued logical system tailored to the purpose. My aim in this paper is to offer a new interpretation of that system and to try to draw out some of its philosophical implications. (shrink)

Jon Haidt, a leading figure in contemporary moral psychology, advocates a participation-centric view of religion, according to which participation in religious communal activity is significantly more important than belief in explaining religious behaviour and commitment. He describes the participation-centric view as ‘Straight out of Durkheim’. I argue that this is a misreading of Durkheim, who held that religious behaviour and commitment are the joint products of belief and participation, with neither belief nor participation being considered more important than the other. (...) I further argue that recent evidence from the cognitive science of religion provides support for Durkheim’s balanced account of religion and counts strongly against Haidt’s participation-centric view of religion. I suggest that Haidt’s adherence to the participation-centric view of religion is better explained by his desire to accept an account of religion that is consistent with his social intuitionist moral psychology than by his desire to accept an account of religion that accords with available scientific evidence about religion. (shrink)

One theme that unites many, if not all, pragmatists is the theme of community, whether in the form of communal matters of truth production and verification in shared experience or in the search for the ideal sociopolitical public. Thus Richard Bernstein closes his study of community, a concern “so fundamental in the pragmatic tradition,” by connecting it to the communicative interests of all the pragmatist thinkers he examines: “Fallibility, openness, criticism, mutual respect, and recognition are essential dimensions of their understanding (...) of communities” (1998, 154). Bernstein reminds us that individuality and community are inseparably linked: individuals are the “matter” that gives existence to a community .. (shrink)

Divali, Hindistan’da ve diasporada büyük coşkuyla kutlanılan bir bayramdır. Hinduların yanı sıra, Hindistan'daki Caynist, Sih, Budist, Hıristiyan ve Müslümanlar tarafından bu bayrama önem verilmiş ve her bir dini grup kendi anlayışları ve gelenekleri doğrultusunda benzer veya farklı mitolojik anlatılar ortaya koymuşlardır. Caynistler Mahavira'nın aydınlanması, Sihler Guru Hargobind'in esaretten kurtulması ve Amritsar'a dönmesi, Newar Budistleri ise Kral Aşoka'nın Budizm'i kabul etmesini Divali ile ilişkilendirmişlerdir. Hintli Müslümanlar Divali’yi daha çok kültürel bağlamda değerlendirirken, Hintli Hıristiyanların bir kısmı ise Kutsal Kitaptaki ışık ve karanlık (...) tasvirleriyle Divali arasında analoji kurmuşlardır. Bu çalışmada, öncelikle Hindular nezdinde Divali’nin kökenine ilişkin farklı anlatılar ortaya konulmuş, sonrasında beş günlük kutlama şekilleri ve bunun topluma yansıması ayrıntılı olarak betimlenmiştir. Divali’nin farklı dini gruplar nezdindeki anlam ve önemi karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alınmıştır. Hindistan dışındaki Divali kutlamalarının Hint kökenli kişilere sağlamış olduğu kazanımlar ve gelecekte karşılaşılması muhtemel durumlarla; COVID-19 salgın sürecinde Divali kutlamalarının nasıl gerçekleşmiş olduğuna dair bilgiler güncel veriler ışığında ele alınmıştır. (shrink)

Jain ādhyātmik (spiritual, mystical) poets from the 17th to 19th centuries (e.g., Banārasīdās, Ānandghan, Cidānanda) elaborated a category of ineffability to discuss the pure experience of the soul or self (ātma-anubhava). These early-modern Jain poets mobilized a very specific understanding of the ineffable, one that resists language and logocentrism as sources of delusion and conflict. The focus on the ineffable in this poetry is always attended by a set of terms that qualify the ādhyātmik view. These are a privileging of (...) the neutral (samatā), experience (anubhava), and on the other hand, a demotion of opinion, partisanship, doctrinarism, and bigotry (matawālā, mata-arthi, mata-jaṅgī). This paper will show that a shared constellation of terms, intertextuality, and a rejection of partisanship and logocentrism bound a group of Jain poets from the 17th to 19th centuries to a particular endorsement and understanding of ineffability; one which was authorized and emboldened by an engagement with Jain philosophical plurality and non-absolutism. The poetry exhibits a frequent co-occurrence of ādhyātmik anubhava with the Jain the epistemological system known as saptabhaṅgī (Jain seven-valued predications), of which avaktavya (sometimes translated as ineffable or non-assertable) is a prominent aspect. The association philosophically grounds ādhyātmik positions and reinforces their assertion that some aspects of reality, namely ātma-anubhava, are ineffable and beyond the realm of phenomenal predication. (shrink)

I have devoted a separate study to the question of how far the account in the Alexander Romance of Alexander's meeting with the Naked Philosophers, later known as Brahmans, rests on genuine information about India. My conclusion was that the author of the Romance knew the Alexander historians but did not add any genuine knowledge; and that he incorporated a separate text of Cynic origin, the series of ten questions and answers.

The encounter of Alexander the Great with the Indian Brahmans or Oxydorkai/Oxydracae forms an important episode of the Alexander Romance as well as featuring in all the extant Alexander historians. The purpose of this paper is to consider how far the various accounts reflect genuine knowledge of India in the sources in which they are based, and to what extent the episode in the Alexander Romance diverges or adds to them and to what purpose. A future paper will consider the (...) development of the episode in later works, Geneva Papyrus inv. 271 andPalladius De gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, as well as theCollatio Alexandri et Dindimi. (shrink)

Building on a model first proposed by Gary Johnson, it is hypothesized that religious institutions demanding celibacy and other forms of altruism from members take advantage of human predispositions to favor genetic relatives in order to maintain and reinforce these desired behaviors in non-kin settings. This is accomplished through the institutionalization of practices to manipulate cues through which such relatives are regularly identified. These cues are association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kin terms. In addition, the age of recruits (...) and their contact with actual kin are factors that relate to kinship recognition and that are similarly manipulated by institutions in order to reinforce altruistic behavior directed toward non-kin. Support for this set of predictions is presented from historical and ethnographic sources on monastic life in Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, as well as Islamic dervish groups, the Essenes, Shakers, and others. Potential implications of the model for understanding the development of religious institutions are preliminarily explored by reviewing Joachim Wach's model of religious developmental stages as well as some of the literature on the relationship between individualism and communalism in incipient religious organizations, in light of the kin-cue manipulation model. (shrink)

The paper analyses the beginnings of systematic ontology in Jainism, which appears to have began after first century CE, albeit certain ontology-relevant terminology in a nascent form was present earlier. A clear expression of systematic ontological reflection is the existence of models that organize ideas and categories in a more consistent conceptual scheme. Jainism follows similar developments that had earlier taken shape in in the early Buddhist Abhidharma, proto-Sāṁkhya-Yoga and proto-Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. In addition, the paper argues that the models, five in (...) total, can be used as a methodological tool to distinguish various historical layers in early Jaina writings. (shrink)

The lay follower Citta’s debate with Mahāvīra in the _Nigaṇṭha Sutta_ reflects not just simple polemic, but a fundamental epistemological division between Early Jains and Buddhists. A close reading of the _Ācārāṅga Sūtra_ shows that the Jains see the truth as a property of the self-knowing purified soul that knows all things. For the Buddhists, consciousness is conditioned and dependent. If truth is a property or relation of consciousness, then it too is conditioned and dependent. In order to maintain that (...) truth is the end of the Buddha’s path, Buddhists sever the connection between consciousness and truth by formulating a negative definition of truth. Truth is that which lacks a deceptive nature and accordingly, Nirvāṇa is the ultimate truth. The Buddha’s path culminates in the discovery of truth through the elimination of deception by the annihilation of consciousness, which the Jains hold is impossible because knowledge is essential to the soul. (shrink)

The first time Umāsvāti uses the word manas in his Tattvārtha-sūtra, the standard work for matters concerning Jaina philosophy, is when he lists the means of knowledge: mati, śruta, avadhi, manaḥ-paryāya and kevala. These are the pramāṇas. In TAS 1, 14 mati or sense perception is said to be caused by indriya and aninindriya; Pūjyapāda’s commentary says that anindriya, antaḥ-karaṇa and manas are synonyms. This obviously raises questions about the specific role and function of the manas/anindriya in mati, manaḥ-paryāya and (...) śruta, and how these retain their exclusivity without reducing the function of any of them to another means of cognition. In the Sāṅkhya system manas is seen as both an organ of cognition and an organ of action. It is interesting for a better understanding of the role of manas in Jaina thought to compare some aspects of it with the Sāṅkhya system. (shrink)

This special issue of Sophia, titled Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism, deals with the intricate issue of approaching atheism—methodologically as well as conceptually—from the perspective of cultural pluralism. What does ‘atheism’ mean in different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately to different religious discourses which conceptualize God/gods/Goddess/goddesses in hugely divergent ways? Or would that rather be a sort of hegemonic homogenization of all possible modalities of living without God, as Jessica Frazier argues? Is my ‘God’ (...) the same as yours? If not, then how can your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this issue of Sophia raises the question: Is it not high time that we proposed a comparative study of atheism alongside that of religions, rather than believing that atheism is centered in the ‘Western’ experience? Besides, how can we explore the modalities of atheist religiosity such as we find in Buddhism and Jainism and also, arguably, in certain forms of Hinduism, as far as the Indic traditions are concerned? How might these negotiations of atheism across the multicultural spectrum interrogate our tendency to place atheism within the context of the binary opposition of science and religion? Besides, there is a need to focus on the philosophical negotiations between atheism, theism and agnosticism and the discourses that emerge from such dialogues, including that of postsecularity. (shrink)