The Epistemological Foundations of Theravāda Buddhist Philosophy: Knowledge and Moral Responsibility in the Bhikkhu Pātimokkha

This article examines how knowledge conditions moral and disciplinary responsibility in the Bhikkhu Pātimokkha. It asks how intention, factual awareness, mistaken perception, and communal judgment interact when conduct is classified as an offence. The study adopts qualitative textual analysis and philosophical reconstruction, reading ten selected rules with their canonical explanations in the Bhikkhuvibhaṅga and examining related procedures in the Khandhakas. Relevant Nikāya discourses provide a wider ethical context. The analysis distinguishes the mental conditions of an action from the evidence through which a community establishes responsibility. It finds that knowledge plays a variety of roles across the rules; a mistaken belief mitigates guilt under certain rules, whereas other rules preserve liability even in the face of factual wrong. Rules about false spiritual claims, unfounded charges, and ignorance of facts govern ethical communication of knowledge, too. Communal procedures make disciplinary judgment dependent on conditions that extend beyond an individual’s assertion. The article argues that the Pātimokkha supports a practical epistemology of accountability, in which responsible conduct involves learning, truthful representation, and answerability to inquiry. This interpretation connects epistemology with ethical training without equating disciplinary liability, karmic significance, and liberating wisdom.