THE FORERUNNER OF ALL THINGS: Buddhaghosa On Mind, Intention, And Agency - Couverture souple

HEIM, Maria

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0199331049 ISBN 13 : 9780199331048

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention and agency were interpreted in all genres of early Theravada thought. It offers a philosophical exploration of intention and motivation as they are investigated in Buddhist moral psychology. At stake is how we understand karma, the nature of moral experience, and the possibilities for freedom.

In contrast to many studies that assimilate Buddhist moral thinking to Western theories of ethics, the book attends to distinctively Buddhist ways of systematizing and theorizing their own categories. Arguing that meaning is a product of the explanatory systems used to explore it, the book pays particular attention to genre and to the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa's guidance on how to read Buddhist texts. The book treats all branches of the Pali canon (the Tipitaka, that is, the Suttas, the Abhidhamma, and the Vinaya), as well as narrative sources (the Dhammapada and the Jataka commentaries). In this sense it offers a comprehensive treatment of intention in the canonical Theravada sources. But the book goes further than this by focusing explicitly on the body of commentarial thought represented by Buddhaghosa. His work is at the center of the book's investigations, both insofar as he offers interpretative strategies for reading canonical texts, but also as he advances particular understandings of agency and moral psychology. The book offers the first book-length study devoted to Buddhaghosa's thought on ethics

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Maria Heim is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at Amherst College. Her work focuses on moral psychology, emotions, and agency in South Asian intellectual history.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0199331049
• ISBN 13: 9780199331048
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 272
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie