{"title":"Buddhist Moral Teachings is not Virtue Ethics: A Critical Response to Damien Keown’s View","authors":"Ali Sharaf","doi":"10.1007/s40961-024-00325-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-024-00325-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the Buddhist tradition, there is an expansive collection of texts that explore the topic of ethics, addressing moral questions concerning the right and wrong behaviors, virtues, vices, and so forth. However, when examining the main texts of this tradition, we find an absence of a structured moral philosophy that systematically and critically analyzes moral values and principles. Therefore, Buddhist scholars have responded in different ways to the perplexing situation in which Buddhism largely lacks an explicit theory in moral philosophy. Some scholars argue that we should read Buddhist moral teachings as one of the contemporary ethical theories, such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. Damien Keown is one of the scholars who claims that “virtue ethics” is the best way to understand Buddhist ethics. This paper analyzes and critiques Damien Kewon’s reading of Buddhist moral teachings as Virtue ethics. I argue that such interpretation poses problems, primarily because it may overlook key aspects of Buddhist beliefs deemed inconsequential to contemporary ethical debates, and secondly, it could result in the imposition of non-authentic Buddhist ideas on Buddhist ethics.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139760505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Āsakti","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00310-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00310-3","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>Āsakti has its roots in the ancient Indian knowledge system. It precipitates the concept of attachment in the Indian perspective. The following paper explores the psychological perspective of āsakti from the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita while maintaining its philosophical purpose and nature. Āsakti hinders the path of self-realization; hence, from the psycho-philosophical lens, its inquiry with scientific understanding is important for spiritual growth. Āsakti can be understood as a river with five tributaries. Each tributary branches out of the river as an independent water body, but has its traces though in the river. Āsakti is a combination of Rāga (approach), Dveṣa (aversion) and Ahaṁkāra (ego focus), is related to the operation of Triguṇa, moving from āsakti to anāsakti brings peace, happiness and health. In its unregulated form, āsakti leads to intellectual, mental and spiritual decay. Its control and regulation leads to anāsakti, spiritual growth, liberation from bondages and surrenderance to the supreme power.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"125 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139646696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Placing Mind in the Natural World: In Search of an Alternative Naturalism","authors":"Manoj Kumar Panda","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00323-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00323-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In contemporary philosophy, various attempts have been made in relation to placing our minds or mental states in the natural world or nature. In this context, there is a clear divide between naturalism and anti-naturalism, materialism and immaterialism, etc. Driven by the influence of naturalistic turn in philosophy and scientism, many philosophers have tried to put forth various naturalistic accounts of the relationship between mind and natural world. However, many of these accounts are naturalistic based on the modern scientific conception of nature which has been hailed as the dominating conception of nature. John McDowell in his magnum opus <i>Mind and World</i>, while criticizing modern scientific account of the relationship between mind and world, has not resorted back to anti-naturalism. Instead, he has tried to give us certain clues to develop an account of an alternative form of naturalism which is at the same time radically different from both scientific naturalism and mysterious anti-naturalism. In this paper, I will try to search for an alternative naturalism following McDowell and examine to what extent this account is tenable. In this context, we shall discuss various approaches to understand the relation between reason/normativity (which is one of the significant constituting elements of our mind) and natural world.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139057380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bildung as Cultural Participation: The Prereflective and Reflective Self in Hegel’s Phenomenology","authors":"Nisar Alungal Chungath","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00321-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00321-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Contemporary poststructural and hermeneutical theories emphasize the prereflective opacity of the self and the consequent inarticulateness concerning the deep prereflective layers (‘prejudices’) of self-understanding. Some of such ontologically significant prejudices, some hermeneutical views hold, are inescapable and so the self cannot reflectively refuse or overcome them. This paper proposes the Hegelian notion of self-consciousness in the <i>Phenomenology</i> as the restless, unreflective–reflective negation of its own nothingness or contingent, open givenness as an alternative that both accepts the hermeneutical insight concerning the deep prereflective layers of self-understanding and rejects the inescapability of ontologically significant ‘prejudices’. Hegelian self-consciousness is minimally reflective, even though it is intertwined with its prereflective, ritualistic basis and its historical situatedness. The paper depicts the reflective dimension of the prereflectively grounded Hegelian self by explicating the meaning of the <i>Phenomenology</i>’s conception of <i>Bildung</i> as ‘cultural participation’. The self that is continuously remade through its dialectical relation (cultural participation) to the social substance or Spirit is minimally reflective in the sense that it sees itself reflected or externalized in the world of its engagement, and because it inserts its own conception upon the world by participating in it. This reconceptualization of the dialectic between self and social substance, thus, escapes overemphasizing the prereflective layers of the self’s hermeneutical background without falling back on the Cartesian deworlded self of reflection and thought.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138628982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Criterion of Legitimacy in a Government: Analysing Ian Shapiro’s Concept of Representative Democracy","authors":"Neetika Singh","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00322-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00322-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ian Shapiro proposes a representative government that bases its understanding of truth on <i>mature enlightenment philosophy</i>. He examines various enlightenment and anti-enlightenment theories to substantiate his arguments in favour of verifiability as the criterion for defining truth. Contending such a concept of truth he specifies that it is possible only within a representative democracy as it can systematically undermine socially built <i>readymade systems</i>. To examine Shapiro’s fallibilist approach to truth, this paper critically analyses his concept of truth-telling for legitimizing a government and contrasts it with Plato’s explanation of truth-telling. It argues that Shapiro’s procedural mechanisms that override social background presuppose uniform rationality backed by power systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"60 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138564066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emotions and Mahābhārata: A Phenomenological Study of Yudhiṣṭhira’s Grief in Śānti Parva","authors":"Saurabh Todariya","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00320-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00320-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The complexity and fluidity of emotions in the epic of <i>Mahābhārata</i> present before us an interesting case for delving into the phenomenology of emotions. In the rationalist tradition of Kant, emotions are considered as an impediment to moral discernment. The rationalist account of emotions considers it as an animal instinct which needs to be controlled through the exercise of Reason. The paper problematizes the rationalist interpretation of emotions mainly on two counts. First, it ignores the evaluative content of the emotions and considers it as a non-cognitive element. Second, it also overlooks the productive role of various emotions like guilt, shame, remorse in moral deliberation. The paper critically analyzes the episode of <i>Yudhiṣṭhira</i>’s grief in <i>Śānti Parva</i> and argues that the grief of <i>Yudhiṣṭhira</i> cannot be explained as personal loss. Rather, <i>Yudhiṣṭhira</i>’s grief should be understood as a case of moral conflict where a moral agent finds it difficult to justify his moral choices. <i>Yudhiṣṭhira</i>’s analysis of the futility of war and the condemnation of violence should be understood as the evaluative perspective offered by his emotions. The phenomenological analysis of <i>Yudhiṣṭhira</i>’s grief allows us to understand the significance of emotions in constituting the moral perspective on any conflicting situation. Hence, emotions cannot be relegated to the domain of irrationality rather they become the site where the truth unveils itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Michael Bratman: The Notion of Shared Agency in Meshing Sub-plans","authors":"Lizashree Hazarika","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00314-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00314-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"13 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139272232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evolutionary Ethics: Understanding its Transition","authors":"Ikbal Hussain Ahmed","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00319-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00319-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"7 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135391065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does Fate Hinder Freedom? A philosophical Praxis","authors":"Javid Ahmad Mallah","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00316-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00316-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"107 11","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135814164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Solipsism to the Limits of Experience: A Reflection in the Light of Wittgenstein’s TLP","authors":"Rajakishore Nath, Mamata Manjari Panda","doi":"10.1007/s40961-023-00318-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00318-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research","volume":"25 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136067598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}