Tag: Concept of the State

Buddhism

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

Published today in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. abstract β€” Rājadhamma 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 β€” that is, thought before the Sattelzeit β€” Buddhist political thought lacks a concept of the β€œstate” 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.