Buddhism and Human Rights

The papers in this collection were presented at the first online conference sponsored by the Journal of Buddhist Ethics from 1-13 October 1995. In the context of Human Rights, which was the theme of this conference, an important preliminary question would seem to be whether traditional Buddhism has any understanding of what is meant by 'human rights' at all. Even if it is felt that this objection is overstated, and that the issue of human rights does not have a legitimate place on the Buddhist agenda, there would still remain the separate and no less difficult question of how human rights were to be grounded in Buddhist doctrine, particularly in the light of the fact that the tradition itself provides little precedent or guidance in this area. Questions of the above kind are discussed from a variety of perspectives in the papers in this volume.