{"id":3030,"date":"2011-02-25T15:46:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T19:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2011-02-25T15:51:13","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T19:51:13","slug":"does-anatman-rationally-entail-altruism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/2011\/02\/25\/does-anatman-rationally-entail-altruism\/","title":{"rendered":"Does <em>An\u0101tman <\/em>Rationally Entail Altruism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>ISSN 1076-9005<br \/>\nVolume 18, 2011<\/h6>\n<h3>Does <em>An\u0101tman <\/em>Rationally Entail Altruism? On <em>Bodhicary\u0101vat\u0101ra <\/em>8:101-103<\/h3>\n<p>Stephen Harris<br \/>\nUniversity of New Mexico<\/p>\n<p>In the eighth chapter of the <em>Bodhicary\u0101vat\u0101ra<\/em>, the Buddhist philosopher \u015a\u0101ntideva has often been interpreted as offering an argument that accepting the ultimate nonexistence of the self (<em>an\u0101tman<\/em>) rationally entails a commitment to altruism, the view that one should care equally for self and others. In this essay, I consider reconstructions of \u015a\u0101ntideva\u2019s 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 that, for Madhyamaka Buddhists, an understanding of <em>an\u0101tman <\/em>does not entail acceptance of the Bodhisattva path, but rather is instrumental to achieving it. Second, it suggests the possibility that in these verses, \u015a\u0101ntideva was offering meditational techniques, rather than making an argument for altruism from the premise of <em>an\u0101tman<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/files\/2011\/02\/Harris_AnatmanAltruism1.pdf\">Read article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISSN 1076-9005 Volume 18, 2011 Does An\u0101tman Rationally Entail Altruism? On Bodhicary\u0101vat\u0101ra 8:101-103 Stephen Harris University of New Mexico In the eighth chapter of the Bodhicary\u0101vat\u0101ra, the Buddhist philosopher \u015a\u0101ntideva has often been interpreted as offering an argument that accepting the ultimate nonexistence of the self (an\u0101tman) rationally entails a commitment to altruism, the view &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/2011\/02\/25\/does-anatman-rationally-entail-altruism\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Does <em>An\u0101tman <\/em>Rationally Entail Altruism?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6784],"tags":[2720,2693,2608,1317,2611,2732],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-18-2011","tag-bodhisattva","tag-compassion","tag-madhyamaka","tag-philosophy","tag-santideva","tag-selflessness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5X8HA-MS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}