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Stephen E. Harris [4]Stephen Harris [2]
  1. Does Anātman Rationally Entail Altruism? On Bodhicaryāvatāra 8: 101-103.Stephen Harris - 2011 - Journal of Buddhist Ethics 18.
    In the eighth chapter of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva has often been interpreted as offering an argument that accepting the ultimate nonexistence of the self (anātman) rationally entails a commitment to altruism, the view that one should care equally for self and others. In this essay, I consider reconstructions of Śāntideva’s argument by contemporary scholars Paul Williams, Mark Siderits and John Pettit. I argue that all of these various reconfigurations of the argument fail to be convincing. This suggests (...)
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  2. Suffering and the Shape of Well-Being in Buddhist Ethics.Stephen E. Harris - 2014 - Asian Philosophy 24 (3):242-259.
    This article explores the defense Indian Buddhist texts make in support of their conceptions of lives that are good for an individual. This defense occurs, largely, through their analysis of ordinary experience as being saturated by subtle forms of suffering . I begin by explicating the most influential of the Buddhist taxonomies of suffering: the threefold division into explicit suffering , the suffering of change , and conditioned suffering . Next, I sketch the three theories of welfare that have been (...)
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  3. Demandingness, Well-Being and the Bodhisattva Path.Stephen E. Harris - 2015 - Sophia 54 (2):201-216.
    This paper reconstructs an Indian Buddhist response to the overdemandingness objection, the claim that a moral theory asks too much of its adherents. In the first section, I explain the objection and argue that some Mahāyāna Buddhists, including Śāntideva, face it. In the second section, I survey some possible ways of responding to the objection as a way of situating the Buddhist response alongside contemporary work. In the final section, I draw upon writing by Vasubandhu and Śāntideva in reconstructing a (...)
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  4. On the Classification of Śāntideva’s Ethics in the Bodhicaryāvatāra.Stephen E. Harris - 2015 - Philosophy East and West 65 (1):249-275.
    In this essay several challenges are raised to the project of classifying Śāntideva’s ethical reasoning given in his Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva, as a species of ethical theory such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. One set of difficulties highlighted here arises because Śāntideva wrote this text to act as a manual of psychological transformation, and it is therefore often difficult to determine when his statements indicate his own ethical views. Further, even assuming we can identify (...)
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  5. Antifoundationalism and the Commitment to Reducing Suffering in Rorty and Madhyamaka Buddhism.Stephen Harris - 2010 - Contemporary Pragmatism 7 (2):71-89.
    In his Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues that one can be both a liberal and also an antifoundationalist ironist committed to private self creation. The liberal commitments of Rorty's ironists are likely to be in conflict with his commitment to self creation, since many identities will undercut commitments to reducing suffering. I turn to the antifoundationalist Buddhist Madhyamaka tradition to offer an example of a version of antifoundationalism that escapes this dilemma. The Madhyamaka Buddhist, I argue, because of his (...)
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  6. Where Does the Cetanic Break Take Place? Weakness of Will in Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra.Stephen E. Harris - 2016 - Comparative Philosophy 7 (2).
    This article explores the role of weakness of will in the Indian Buddhist tradition, and in particular within Śāntideva’s Introduction to the Practice of Awakening. In agreement with Jay Garfield, I argue that there are important differences between Aristotle’s account of akrasia and Buddhist moral psychology. Nevertheless, taking a more expanded conception of weakness of will, as is frequently done in contemporary work, allows us to draw significant connections with the pluralistic account of psychological conflict found in Buddhist texts. I (...)
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