This volume of essays offers direct comparisons of historic Western and Buddhist perspectives on ethics and metaphysics, tracing parallels and contrasts all the way from Plato to the Stoics, Spinoza to Hume, and Schopenhauer through to contemporary ethicists such as Arne Naess, Charles Taylor and Derek Parfit. It compares and contrasts each Western philosopher with a particular strand in the Buddhist tradition, in some chapters represented by individual writers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santideva or Tsong Khapa. It does so in (...) light of both analytic concerns and themes from the existentialist and phenomenological traditions, and often in an ecumenical spirit that bridges both analytic and continentalist approaches. Some of the deepest questions in ethics, dealing with the scope of agency, value-laden notions of personhood and the nature of value in general, are intertwined with questions in metaphysics. One set of questions addresses how varying conceptions of selfhood relate to moral values ; another set of questions addresses how a conception of oneself or one’s selves should or should not affect how one thinks of happiness, or eudaimonia, or – in classical Indian terms – artha, sukha or nirvana. Western philosophy has featured discussion of both, but some would argue that certain traditions of Asian philosophy have offered a more sustained and even treatment of both sets of questions. The Buddhist tradition in particular has not only featured much discussion on both fronts, but has attracted many contemporary philosophers to its distinctive spectrum of approaches, and to what is – from many ‘Western’ points of view – a seemingly subversive analysis of ego, selfhood and personhood, whether in metaphysical, phenomenological or other incarnations. (shrink)

We formulate a distinctly 'political liberal' conception of mutual respect, which we call 'civic respect', appropriate for governing the public political relations of citizens in pluralist democratic societies. A political liberal account of education should aim at ensuring that students, as future citizens, learn to interact with other citizens on the basis of civic respect. While children should be required to attend educational institutions that will inculcate in them the skills and concepts necessary for them to be free and equal (...) citizens, parents should be granted as much freedom as is compatible with the requirements of civic respect to raise their children in accordance with their respective 'comprehensive doctrines' (systems of beliefs and values, including religious doctrines). We consider an objection to our position drawn from the account of upbringing recently advanced by Matthew Clayton, namely, that the conception of civic respect that we advance rests on an implausible view about the limited scope of the requirements of political justice. We develop an account of the 'basic structure of society' as the appropriate subject of political justice that can overcome this objection. (shrink)

In recent years, discussions of Buddhist ethics have increasingly drawn upon the concepts and tools of modern ethical theory, not only to compare Buddhist perspectives with Western moral theories, but also to assess the meta-ethical implications of Buddhist texts and their philosophical context. Philosophers aiming to defend the Madhyamaka framework in particular – its ethics and soteriology along with its logic and epistemology – have recently attempted to explain its combination of moral commitment and philosophical scepticism by appealing to various (...) forms of meta-ethical anti-realism. This paper argues that those attempts do not succeed, even in their own terms. Their emphasis on universal compassion, among other features of their approaches, is difficult to explain normatively so long as it is embedded within an anti-realist framework. Soteriological values – such as enlightenment and liberation – also seem to require a realist account of their normativity. Though many Buddhist philosophers disagree, there is at least one form of Buddhist philosophy, that of the Yogācāra school, that can be interpreted as articulating a meta-ethical realism of the kind that the broader Mahāyāna tradition (if not other Buddhist traditions as well) seems to require. To a greater extent than stressing common anti-realist themes would allow, the paper argues that finding common ground, where Western moral realism and Buddhist moral realism can coalesce and jointly vindicate a repertoire of shared ethical concepts, may also facilitate the efforts of those engaged in comparative ethical theory. (shrink)

It is difficult to generalize about ethical values in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, let alone in Buddhist philosophy more generally. One author identifies seventeen distinct ethical approaches in the Mahāyāna scholarly traditions alone (i.e., not including various folk traditions).1 Nonetheless, in comparative studies in the history of ethics, there is increasing recognition that several different Buddhist traditions have stressed a foundational role for universalist altruism that was largely absent from ancient Greek eudaimonism and perhaps even absent-qua foundational-from most other premodern (...) traditions of moral reflection in the West, including much of the Christian tradition.2 In particular, ancient and .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Political Liberalism—The Main Elements Civic Respect and Civic Education Comprehensive Doctrines and Families Coercion and the Basic Structure Conclusion Notes References.

In the nineteenth century, Henry Sidgwick struggled with the apparent paradox that utilitarians might only attain their goal if they renounced utilitarianism in practice; he also noticed a parallel problem that anticipated what has been called the ‘paradox of desire’ in Buddhist ethics – the paradox that desiring desirelessness is self-defeating. In fact, he regarded only the latter as a genuine paradox. I consider three approaches that might mitigate the problematicimplications for Buddhist ethics and certain forms of consequentialism. One approach (...) draws on recent defences of moral realism that find echoes in at least one Buddhist tradition. The other two draw on what I call the ‘comparative cartography of ethical concepts’; one is due to David Webster, who compares Western andPali-based Buddhist concepts, while the other offers an extension of his approach, comparing ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ ethical concepts, again mainly in the context of ancient Indian Buddhism. I argue that these latter two approaches offer promising defences of Buddhist ethics against objections based on the so-called ‘paradox of desire’. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to Mahayana Buddhist moral philosophy and its relationship to consequentialism.