BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//ceres.rub.de//events//
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:South Asia Guest Lecture Series - Claire Maes (Tübingen)
DTSTART:20240110T170000Z
DTEND:20240110T183000Z
DTSTAMP:20260420T051433Z
UID:south-asia-guest-lecture-series-claire-maes-tubing-10765@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:South Asian Section - Guest Lecture Series\n\nGuest Lecture by
  Prof. Dr. Claire Maes\, Asian Orient Institute\, Indology Department\, 
 University of Tübingen\n\nZoom link: https://ruhr-uni-bochum.zoom.us/j/6
 3715524351?pwd=emNseDAveC90d2RvZWN1SDkxWVlCZz09\n\nSallekhanā and the End
 -of-Life Option of Voluntarily Stopping of Eating and Drinking: An Ethical
  Argument to Consider the Jain Practice of Fasting to Death as Different f
 rom Suicide\n\n\nJains have a wide constellation of different types and le
 ngths of fasts. Within this constellation\, sallekhanā\, or the soteriolo
 gical practice of fasting to death\, is the summum bonum. While the rite w
 ent uncontested for over two millennia\, in recent years it became a matte
 r of the courts. Declaring death by sallekhanā as an unnatural death\, th
 e Rajasthan High Court criminalized the practice as illegal on 10 August 2
 015. Soon after the Supreme Court of India stayed the ban on sallekhanā. 
 While the final ruling is still pending\, the Rajasthan Court case brought
  to the foreground pertinent questions around fasting and the ethics of dy
 ing. Is\, for instance\, sallekhanā a form of suicide? Or also\, does the
  support of a sallekhanā-aspirant constitute assisted suicide? In this le
 cture\, I make an ethical argument to consider the Jain practice of fastin
 g to death (known as sallekhanā) as different from suicide. To this end\,
  I bring the Jain fast into conversation with the practice of ‘Voluntari
 ly Stopping of Eating and Drinking’ (VSED)\, an end-of-life option\, ava
 ilable in various countries for competent adults\, to hasten the end of li
 fe by consciously choosing to not eat and drink. From a medical and legal 
 point of view sallekhanā can be considered a form of VSED. Although diffe
 ring in terms of intent and historical context\, the two practices are sim
 ilar insofar that they relate to capable and sound individuals who volunta
 rily forego food and water until death. Showing the critical similarity be
 tween VSED and sallekhanā\, I argue that the grounds put forward by major
  medical associations and legal societies to differentiate VSED from suici
 de are equally applicable to the case of sallekhanā.\n\n\nClaire Maes stu
 died Indian Languages and Cultures at Ghent University\, Belgium\, and Ind
 ian Philosophy at the University of Mysore in India. She earned her Ph.D. 
 degree in 2015 from Ghent University with a dissertation that examines the
  influence of Jain thought and practice on the Buddhist monastic community
  in early India. Soon after\, she joined the University of Texas at Austin
  where she worked for several years at the Asian Studies Department\, firs
 t as a postdoctoral fellow of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Progra
 m in Buddhist Studies\, and subsequently as a Sanskrit lecturer. Since Sep
 tember 2021\, she is an assistant professor at the Department of Indology 
 at the University of Tübingen\, Germany. Her principal research topics ar
 e the Jain understandings of what constitutes a good death and the develop
 ment of the Buddhist monastic community in ancient India.
LOCATION:Online Event
URL:https://ceres.rub.de/en/events/south-asia-guest-lecture-series-claire-
 maes-tubing/
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR