In this book the author considers data from both early and later schools of Buddhism in an attempt to provide an overall characterization of the structure of Buddhist ethics. The importance of ethics in the Buddha's teachings is widely acknowledged, but the pursuit of ethical ideals has up to now been widely held to be secondary to the attainment of knowledge. Drawing on the Aristotelian tradition of ethics the author argues against this intellectualization of Buddhism and in favour of a (...) new understanding of the tradition in terms of which ethics plays an absolutely central role. In the course of this reassessment many basic concepts such as karma, nirvana, and the Eightfold Path, are reviewed and presented in a fresh light. The book will be of interest to readers with a background in either Buddhist studies or comparative religious ethics. (shrink)

This book reformulates the sociological subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as well false consciousness, propaganda, science and art.

Social constructionism emerged in social psychology in the 1970s and 1980s, taking up many of the issues raised as part of the earlier “crisis” in social psychology and becoming a critical voice challenging the agenda of mainstream psychology. In particular, it challenged psychology’s individualistic, essentialist, and intrapsychic model of the person, replacing it with a radically social account of personhood in which language is key. Viewed through the constructionist lens, the person ceases to be a unified ensemble of stable psychological (...) structures and traits and becomes a fluid, fractured, and changeable assemblage, distributed across and produced through social interactions and relationships. Social constructionism’s critical focus has meant that its research agenda is also radically different from that of mainstream psychology and social psychology. Social constructionist research rejects the mainstream psychological experimental paradigm and turned attention to the constructive force of language and discourse, opening up new lines of research and developments in a number of methods referred to as discourse analysis. (shrink)

Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism Peter Harvey. The. SELFLESS. MIND. PERSQNALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND NIRVANA IN EARLY BUDDHISM. PETER. HARVEY. THE SELFLESS MIND THE SELFLESS ...

Buddhism enthusiasts that the tathAgatagarbha sources were themselves aware of the criticism that they simply taught an Atman in the same way that non- Buddhists did, and they rejected this accusation and defended themselves against the ...