Buddhism and the State: Rājadhamma after the Sattelzeit (New Paper)

Published today in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

abstractRājadhamma is a list of ten royal virtues or duties that occurs in the jātaka tales and that has been influential in Southeast Asian Buddhist political thought. Like pre-modern political thought in Europe — that is, thought before the Sattelzeit — Buddhist political thought lacks a concept of the “state” and is concerned with kings and similar rulers. Here I propose a modernized interpretation of rājadhamma as virtues/duties of the state.

The full text (in pdf format) can be downloaded here.

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