Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Philosophy Then

Meat is Murder

Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.

In my last column, I talked about the challenges and excitements of tackling ancient Indian philosophy in my History of Philosophy podcast – thankfully with the help of an expert, Jonardon Ganeri. We’ve already received some feedback about the series, young though it is. One of the most common queries is whether we can really talk about philosophy in ancient India, as opposed to religious belief systems. Is Buddhism a religious tradition, or a philosophical tradition? Are the Upanisads really philosophical texts? My response to these questions has been twofold: first, they’re slightly above my pay grade, and second, even if we think that these texts and traditions are religious, they certainly contain philosophical material.

An interesting test case is the Indian concept of ahimsa, meaning ‘non-injury’ or ‘non-violence’.

…