Indian Buddhist Philosophy Metaphysics As Ethics

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Indian Buddhist philosophy from the fifth century BCE to the eighth century CE was a remarkably rich tradition but one that has received little of the attention philosophers have given the ideas of the Greek and Roman contemporaries of the Indian Buddhist philosophers. In this penetrating and absorbing study, Amber Carpenter shows that Indian Buddhism offers profound and insightful contributions to themes central to philosophy understood and practiced in the European tradition.

Organized along rough chronological lines, the book presents the philosophical arguments of the great Indian Buddhist philosophers, examining their core ethical, metaphysical and epistemological views, as well as the distinctive area of Buddhist ethics that today we call moral psychology. Chapters focus on major Buddhist concepts - such as suffering, no-self, klešas, compas- sion and karma - as well as important varieties of Buddhist philosophy - such as Madhyamaka, Yogacăra, and the epistemological ideas of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The treatment throughout is sensitive to intra-Buddhist philosophical disagreements and diversity, and the debates between Indian Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers.

Carpenter shows that while we can recognize the differences between Indian and European philosophy in their driving questions and key concepts, we should resist the temptation to find in Indian Buddhist philosophy something alien, self-contained and detached from anything familiar. On the contrary, it is shown to reward serious study for students of Western philosophy and offer potentially fruitful points of intersection with more recent philosophy.

If ancient philosophy remains alive, this is because it is about life. How- ever abstract the debate may get (and it does get abstract), however abstruse the discussion, a thread leads back, anchoring it in the inescapable concern with how to live and how to be. This is true of the ancient Greek philosophers, which is why their work remains alive for us still; and it is equally true of the philosophers of ancient India, including the Indian Buddhist philosophers whose work is the focus of this book.

My own engagement with Indian Buddhist philosophy was enabled at a crucial moment by a grant from the Einstein Forum, where I was an Einstein Fellow in 2008. I am grateful to them for the rare opportunity to begin something genuinely new and open-ended; the benefits of their willingness to make that kind of investment, and take that kind of risk, will continue to reach far beyond this book. Thanks are also due to the University of York, which followed up with support in the form of an Anniversary Lectureship, allowing a sustained period of study over several months. The careful and encouraging comments of the anonymous reader for Acumen were appreciated, and have certainly improved the book.