James Laidlaw (University of Cambridge)
Detachment, disinterest, and indifference.
In some respects the virtues of detachment or non-attachment aimed at in soteriological religious and ethical traditions such as Jainism and Buddhism resemble those we find to be regulative in forms of scientific practice or in the modern state. In others they are distinctive. The question of whether detachment enables or requires, or whether on the other hand it precludes or excludes, disinterest or indifference - whether indifference will tend to be a virtue, where detachment is - is one dimension along which an ethnographic understanding of forms of detachment may be pursued.
