Ethical Life in South Asia [Paperback]

Breaking from prevailing conceptions of ethics and morality as matters of moral rule or principle, this volume calls attention to ethical life in South Asiathe moral dispositions at work in lived experience, and the embodied practices of ethical engagement through which such dispositions may be cultivated and shared. Taking up themes such as the transmission of tradition, ethical engagements with modernity, ethical practices of the self, and moral relations between self and others, this volume puts South Asian traditions of ethical life into conversation with the Aristotelian, Christian, and liberal traditions that have been so consequential for ethical life in the West.

Moral thought and ethical practice in South Asia, past and present

Anand Pandian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is author ofCrooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India.

Daud Ali is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania. He is author ofCourtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India.

[A] welcome addition to the growing body of literature on ethics in South Asia. While not losing sight of the significance of texts and religion, the essays move the discussion . . . The recurring theme of embodiment of ethical knowledge through memorization and recitation is as much an important and useful intervention in the study of ethics, as it is in the study of the interface between text and performance in South Asia.

Setting a novel and exciting agenda for the understanding of ways through which 'ethical lives' in South Asia are produced, debated and experienced in the every day, this volume will no doubt take a prominent place on the bookshelves of scholars and students researching ethics and morality in the subcontinent and beyond.

This book is a competent and credible illustration of the richness of south Asian ethical traditions and the relÓ#