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  • The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency

    The Forerunner of All Things by Heim, Maria;

    Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 52.00
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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 14 November 2013

    • ISBN 9780199331048
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages272 pages
    • Size 231x155x20 mm
    • Weight 363 g
    • Language English
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    Short description:

    Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention, agency, and moral psychology were interpreted in all branches of early Theravada thought, paying special attention to the thought of the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa.

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    Long description:

    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

    This book will be a major contribution to scholarship in Buddhist Studies, as well as to the discipline of moral psychology more generally. The scholarship is impeccable, the attention to canonical material and secondary literature in Buddhist Studies as well as to relevant work in Western philosophy and social theory is meticulous. The book is rich in hermeneutical and philosophical insight, carefully argued, and written with uncommon perspicuity, grace and even humor I would not be surprised if it were to be recognized as one of the most significant recent contributions to Buddhist philosophy.

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    Table of Contents:

    Table of Contents
    Abbreviations
    Introduction
    Chapter One: Constructing Experience: Intention in the Suttas
    Chapter Two: The Work of Intention: Mental Life in the Abhidhamma
    Chapter Three: Culpability and Disciplinary Culture in the Vinaya
    Chapter Four: Making Actions Intelligible: Intention and Mind in Stories
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
    Notes
    Index

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