This article has developed in response to a series of observations made over a decade ago by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in his The Meaning and End of Religion . In that work, Smith made the point that the concepts ‘religion’, ‘religions’, ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Buddhism’ are rather recent, of Western origin, and, in an attempt to understand mankind's religiousness, inadequate. In developing his argument, Smith considered the Buddhist case with penetrating insight but, because his thesis was of such comprehensive scope, chose (...) not to go into a detailed consideration of relevant matters in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition. (shrink)

The Buddhist cumulative tradition is enormously complex and variegated, having been a part of the human record for over two thousand years, and having contributed massively to the shaping of a variety of cultures in South, South‐East, sand East Asia. More recently many in Europe and the Americas are responding to the teachings offered by one or another of the continuing strands of this cumulative tradition. Attempting both to communicate and to interpret in any degree of detail the positions this (...) great tradition has developed about what constitutes the ideal in human relationships and polity, in an ever changing process over these many centuries and in the remarkable variety of these many contexts, would border on the bewildering. But the attempt might be instructive, since it could creatively place in juxtaposition an awareness that we human beings begin at different starting points in constructing our views of ourselves and the contexts in which we live out our lives. (shrink)

In light of recent reevaluations of the work of Hugo Grotius, this essay analyzes the respective roles of Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius in the construction of the “Grotian tradition” of international law and human rights. In contrast to conventional accounts which understand the two within a progression, this essay argues that Vitoria and Grotius can alternatively be understood as representing two distinct strains of international law and ethics, forms of which persist to this day. The first is that strain (...) which privileges local governance based on the natural law and which insists that international law must have a moral or equitable valence (represented today by liberal internationalism). The second, competing strain which, with its focus on “neutral” rules of commerce and international order, presumes that it need not have such a valence (essentially, neoliberalism). In the process, this essay examines the role of the natural law in Vitoria’s thought, which for him was most often a reason against interference or intervention, not for. The essay also highlights the role of the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch United Provinces and Spain in the development of Grotius’s understanding of sovereignty, in contrast to the Thirty Years’ War which is given more prominence in conventional accounts. (shrink)