This open access book presents a comparative study of two classics
of world literature, offering the first sustained consideration of what
unites and divides the Nicomachean Ethics and the Bhagavad Gita.
Focusing on the nature of ethical action and how it relates to the
highest good, Roopen Majithia demonstrates how the Gita stresses the
objectivity of knowledge and freedom from being a subject, while the
Ethics emphasizes the knower, working out Aristotle’s central commitment
to the idea of substance as the primary building block of the world. Yet
both the Gita and the Ethics explain variety in human behaviour in terms
of three driving forces. Both agree moral agency is a construct that is a
function of background, education, and habit, presupposing a cultural,
political, and economic infrastructure, all of which shapes how each in turn
conceives the highest good.
What distinguishes the texts is how the content of right action is
generated. Reading them together, alert to their individual accounts
of how the practical relates to the reflective dimensions of life, Majithia
enriches our understanding of two cornerstone texts in the Greek and
Indian philosophical traditions.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Marjorie Young Bell Faculty Fund, The Philosophy Department’s Baxter Fund and The Hart Almerrin Massey Endowment.
By:
Roopen Majithia (Mount Allison University Canada) Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic Country of Publication: United Kingdom Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g ISBN:9781350215092 ISBN 10: 1350215090 Pages: 264 Publication Date:18 April 2024 Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Roopen Majithia is Professor, Head and Hart Almerrin Massey Chair in the Department of Philosophy at Mount Allison University, Canada.