Buddhist Ethics; Eightfold Path; Consequentialism; Virtue Ethics
摘要
In recent scholarship, an ongoing debate about Buddhist ethics has been taking place. On one side, some adhere to the position that Buddhist ethics resembles consequentialism. One noteworthy figure, Charles Goodman, has written on this subject at length in a book titled The Consequences of Compassion. Others hold that Buddhist ethics is akin to Aristotelean virtue ethics. Damien Keown is a key proponent of this view, which he argues in a work titled The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. Both of these views attempt to offer the best interpretation of Buddhist ethics so that it can better understood and analyzed. In the pages that follow, I will argue for two claims: First, both Goodman and Keown make crucial errors in their methodology by failing to lay out the best set of necessary conditions for virtue ethics and consequentialism. I aim to shed light on this methodological error and to offer a basis of comparison that is more precise. Having recalibrated the starting point of this debate by setting out the necessary conditions virtue ethics and consequentialism, I develop my second main claim—viz., that a third, distinct approach to interpreting Buddhist ethics is available.
