UNDERSTANDING MORALITY AND NO-SELF IN THE CONTEXT OF WESTERN AND BUDDHIST THEMES

Narmada P holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Hyderabad, India. Her areas of research include Indian Intellectual History, Early Buddhist Ethics, Metaphysics, and Social and Political Philosophy.

In this article, Narmada discusses how western philosophy is essentially a philosophy of the ‘self’— the self is the starting point of all rational and empiricist inquiry — and posits that selfhood and morality are inextricably connected in western philosophical thought.

Narmada then explores how non-western traditions, particularly Buddhism, offer an alternative conception of morality because of its rejection of the ‘unified essential self’, called the doctrine of no-self (anatta).

             Artwork by @yoabhish, apaonline.org