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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Damien Keown

Endorsing and rejecting the views of the modern West

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural, Western Thought

≈ 7 Comments

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Aristotle, Damien Keown, Evan Thompson, Martha Nussbaum, modernity, rebirth, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

Friend of this blog Seth Zuihō Segall has a new book out entitled Buddhism and Human Flourishing, which he kindly sent me a pre-print review copy of. There is much to like in the book and I am very sympathetic to it. Indeed, my first worry about the book was that I would be too sympathetic. For the basic idea of the book – a modern Buddhist ethics understood in roughly Aristotelian terms –  is quite close to the book I have been starting to work on writing myself. Did Segall scoop me?

Having read the book, I think this is not the case: my take on Buddhist ethics does turn out to be significantly different from his. Continue reading →

Does the kammatic/nibbanic distinction fit the facts?

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Karma, M.T.S.R., Monasticism, Self-Discipline

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Burma/Myanmar, Charles Taylor, Damien Keown, Henpitagedara Gnanavasa, Mahāvaṃsa, Melford Spiro, Pali suttas, rebirth

How helpful is Melford Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic distinction in describing Buddhism? It can be tempting to line it up too closely with other dichotomies – to say that kammatic Buddhism is practised by householders and nibbanic Buddhism by monks, for example. Damien Keown (Nature of Buddhist Ethics 86) notes that in Spiro’s own survey of Burmese villagers, many laypeople say that they would prefer nirvana for their next life and most monks do not describe striving for nirvana as one of their main functions; so such a mapping of kammatic/nibbanic onto householder/monk would be false.

But Keown takes this point about laypeople and monks much too far when he draws the conclusion that therefore Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic “theory does not fit the facts”. Continue reading →

Aristotelian vs. Buddhist eudaimonia

05 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Greek and Roman Tradition, Karma

≈ 4 Comments

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Aristotle, Augustine, Charles Taylor, Damien Keown, Epicurus, Itivuttaka, John Cooper, Martha Nussbaum, Nirvāṇa Sūtra, Pali suttas, Udāna, virtue ethics

Damien Keown’s The Nature of Buddhist Ethics closes by arguing for parallels between Buddhist and Aristotelian ethics. He claims that “there are many formal parallels between the ideal of human perfection conceived by the Buddha and that envisaged by Aristotle” (193), such that “Aristotelianism provides a useful Western analogue which will be of use in elucidating the foundations and conceptual structure of Buddhist ethics.” (196)

Is Keown right? Is Buddhist ethics like Aristotle’s? Continue reading →

“Indian philosophy” vs. “Buddhist ethics”

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Emotion, Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics

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Bimal Krishna Matilal, Damien Keown, Dan Arnold, David Chapman, Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Engaged Buddhism, Śāntideva

It is not especially controversial to say that ethics is a branch of philosophy. I’ve occasionally heard people dispute that claim, but mostly on the grounds that ethics extends beyond philosophy per se, to narrative and the like; few would say that ethical reflection is in general not a philosophical activity. Likewise it is not controversial at all to say that Buddhism began in India, or that Buddhism played a central role in the development of Indian philosphy.

So why is there so little overlap between “Indian philosophy” and “Buddhist ethics”? Continue reading →

Ethics of disposition, not decision

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Action, Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Psychology, Unconscious Mind, Virtue

≈ 9 Comments

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Andrew Ollett, Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Damien Keown, Daniel Kahneman, Śāntideva, trolley problem, virtue ethics

I’ve been thinking further on the decision/capacity distinction first articulated by Andrew Ollett, and I want to take a further step. So far Andrew and I have merely acknowledged the existence of this distinction – identifying different thinkers on either side and exploring the distinction’s implications for philosophical methodology. But I am, at this point, ready to make a more substantive claim: the “capacity” approaches are better. In ethics, we should be “capacity” rather than “decision” thinkers. I had stressed before that we can and should address the “capacity” approach philosophically and not merely historically; now I want to actually do so, and say that it is correct. Continue reading →

Karmic punishment is not a good thing

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Free Will, German Tradition, God, Karma, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Morality, Patient Endurance, Politics, Self

≈ 7 Comments

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Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Disengaged Buddhism, Immanuel Kant, Jātakas, justice, Justin Whitaker, Pali suttas, Śāntideva, Sutta Nipāta

I’m continuing to examine Justin Whitaker‘s interpretation of Pali Buddhist ethics as Kantian moral law. I argued last time that the concept of dhamma does not serve in these texts as a universal, trans-human moral law. Here I want to take a similar look at the concept of kamma – better known in English as karma.

Justin claims that for Kant “the Moral Law is universal, concerned with all (rational) beings, and is holistic in its conception of morality as a guarantor to a just realm of ends (supported by the moral argument for belief in God).” (47) I think this interpretation of Kant is missing something in that Kant does not view the moral argument as demonstrating that there actually is a guarantee of cosmic justice, only that we must act as if there is (it is a regulative ideal). But I’ll leave that aside here because I want to focus on the comparison to Buddhism. Continue reading →

On the very idea of Buddhist ethics

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Action, Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Free Will, Greek and Roman Tradition, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Morality, Self

≈ 27 Comments

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Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Christopher Gowans, Damien Keown, David Chapman, John Rawls, Maria Heim, Peter Harvey, virtue ethics

I’ve recently been reading Christopher Gowans’s Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction. It is an introductory textbook of a sort that has not previously been attempted, and one that becomes particularly interesting in the light of David Chapman’s critiques of Buddhist ethics. While Gowans and Chapman would surely disagree about the value and usefulness of Buddhist ethics, they actually show remarkable agreement on a proposition that could still be quite controversial: namely, that the term “Buddhist ethics” or “Buddhist moral philosophy” names above all a Yavanayāna phenomenon. That is: the way that Gowans and Chapman use the terms “Buddhist ethics” and “Buddhist moral philosophy”, what they name is a contemporary Western (and primarily academic) activity, even if it is one conducted primarily by professed Buddhists. Continue reading →

The Buddhist problem of value

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, God, Karma, Mahāyāna, Self

≈ 21 Comments

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Alasdair MacIntyre, Andrew Skilton, autobiography, Damien Keown, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.E. Moore, John Stuart Mill, Kate Crosby, Paul Williams, Penelope Trunk, Sam Harris, Śāntideva

Today’s post follows up on those from two and three weeks ago, and there’ll be another one next week. I intend the four posts, taken together, to make a statement about the continuing importance of the idea of God: why, in the face of the very real problem of suffering and the scientific ability to easily do without God as an explanation of life’s apparent design, God is still hard to do away with. I mean this on an intellectual and philosophical level, not merely an emotional one; it is not just that we need to bother with God because so many people out have some neurological need for him, but that there yet remain ways in which God helps us to make sense of reality.

I’m going to begin this week not with God, but with Buddhism. Continue reading →

Of anātman and altruism

06 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Self

≈ 45 Comments

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Damien Keown, David Cooper, Ethan Mills, Paul Williams, Śāntideva, Stephen Harris

The new Journal of Buddhist Ethics has an interesting article up on Śāntideva, by Stephen Harris, a grad student at U of New Mexico. Harris is a colleague of Ethan Mills, who gave the APA talk about skepticism that I discussed in late December (and who has since made thoughtful contributions to this blog’s comments); Harris also gave a talk about Śāntideva on Mills’s panel.

Harris’s article returns us to the most famous passage in Śāntideva’s work: the meditation on the equalization of self and other in Bodhicaryāvatāra chapter VIII, in which Śāntideva takes metaphysical arguments for the nonexistence of self (Buddhist anātman) and uses them as a premise to argue for altruism, ethical selflessness. He asks: “Since both others and myself dislike fear and suffering, what is special about my self that I protect it and not another?” The self that I was three minutes ago is a different entity from the self I will be three minutes from now; the present self has as much reason to protect others as it does its future self. He adds: if you object that suffering should be prevented only by the one it belongs to, well, your foot’s suffering does not belong to your hand, so why should the hand do anything to protect the foot?

The Catholic Buddhologist Paul Williams has criticized this passage in depth, arguing that altruism makes no sense without selves. I’ve discussed Williams’s criticisms twice before, though I haven’t taken a position on the debate yet. I will note that several Buddhologists have already come to Śāntideva’s defence on these arguments – with varying degrees of success.

Harris is the first writer I’m aware of to defend Williams’s position (other than Williams himself). Continue reading →

Taking back ethics

09 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Buddhism, Flourishing, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Virtue

≈ 1 Comment

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Aristotle, Bernard Williams, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Harry Frankfurt, Michael Barnhart, religion, Robert M. Gimello, SACP, virtue ethics

In the past few years, especially since the publication of Damien Keown’s The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, there has been a small academic cottage industry devoted to the question of how one might best classify Buddhist ethics. Which of the three standard branches of analytical ethics does it fall under: consequentialism (à la J.S. Mill), deontology (à la Kant) or virtue ethics (à la Aristotle)? The debate has generally been a tussle between virtue ethics (Keown’s position) and consequentialism (Charles Goodman). My friend (and contributor to this blog) Justin Whitaker suspects that a deontological interpretation of Buddhist ethics is possible, but he’s a voice in the wilderness so far.

At the SACP, Michael Barnhart proposed a way of sidestepping this debate entirely. As far as ethics itself goes, he says, Buddhism is particularist; it doesn’t adhere to any real theory, it just responds to particular situations. Where it does have a theory isn’t in ethics at all, but in something else entirely: the question of what we care about, or should care about. (Specifically, he argues, Buddhists claim we should care above all about suffering.)

Barnhart based this idea on Harry Frankfurt’s essay, “The importance of what we care about.” I didn’t comment on his paper right after the SACP, because I wanted a chance to read Frankfurt’s piece first. Having read it, I would now say that Barnhart and Frankfurt both run into a common problem: an unreasonably narrow definition of ethics. Continue reading →

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