Jonathan Gold

Position
Faculty
Role
Professor of Religion
Title
Director of the Center for Culture, Society and Religion
Office Phone
Office
242 - 1879 Hall
Office Hours

Field of Study
Asian Religions

Bio/Description

Jonathan C. Gold is Professor in the Department of Religion and Director of the Center for Culture, Society and Religion. A scholar of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, he is especially interested in Buddhist approaches to meaning, ethics, language and learning. He is the author of The Dharma’s Gatekeepers: Sakya Paṇḍita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet (2007) and Paving the Great Way: Vasubandhu’s Unifying Buddhist Philosophy (2015) as well as numerous articles, including recently “Wholesome Mind Ethics: A Buddhist Paradigm” in the Journal of Value Inquiry and the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Vasubandhu and Sakya Paṇḍita. He is co-editor, with Douglas S. Duckworth, of Readings of Śāntideva’s Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryāvatāra) (2019). In his current work he is developing a Buddhist approach to politics and social thought.

ABC Religion & Ethics, “Don’t Hand Power to Dangerous People (even when they really want it)—a modest Buddhist proposal,” March 8, 2022. 
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/jonathan-gold-buddhist-proposal-for-keeping-sociopaths-from-pow/13787074

ABC Religion & Ethics, “Trump’s karma, and ours”:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/donald-trump-and-the-question-of-karma/12753916

Conference Talk “What Use is Buddhist Philosophy? Constructing the Path for Academia,”
Numata Symposium on Buddhist Philosophy: The State of the Field, University of California, Berkeley, September 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s94z2h8Ea8o&feature=youtu.be

Co-presenting with Elaine Pagels at the Aspen Ideas Festival 2019 on the topic of ‘Jesus, Buddha, and the Search for Meaning’:
https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/jesus-buddha-and-the-search-for-meaning

Opinion piece in Sightings, “Was it Kavanaugh’s Guilty Conscience, or His Karma?”:
https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/was-it-kavanaugh%E2%80%99s-guilty-conscience-or-his-karma

Panel on “Approaches to Translation & Transmission”
2017 Tsadra Foundation Conference on Tibetan Translation
http://conference-wp.tsadra.org/session/approaches-to-translation-transmission/

Interview with Robert Wright on “The Wright Show”, meaningoflife.tv:
http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/36591

Interview with Ronney Mourad on “Ultimate Concerns” Podcast:
http://ultimateconcerns.org/vasubandhu-and-virtual-reality