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Buddhist Ethics - Context
First we must see the context in which Buddhism arose. I like using a comparison between the times of the Buddha and our own age as a way to engage the students, so that they think about contemporary...
View ArticleKant and Religion Review
Today the following review appeared in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online:Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Werner S. Pluhar (tr.), Stephen R. Palmquist (intro.),...
View ArticleSources of Buddhist Ethics
The following are thoughts on Buddhist ethics... brainstorming roughly... based on the first sections of Peter Harvey's book, "An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics."To begin, worldview finds a central...
View ArticleDestroying Mara Forever 1
I've completed the first chapter, "Śāntideva, Virtue, and Consequentialism" by the great Śāntideva and Buddhist ethics scholar, Barbara Clayton.The chapter argues for a version of "character...
View ArticlePeter Harvey in - Destroying Mara Forever
coming soon... (sounds like a cheesy horror movie, I know)
View ArticleDhamma as indispensible
The following from Bhikkhu Bodhi appears to present an argument against Aristotelianism or reducing or getting rid of cosmology/metaphysics:The importance of this directly visible side of Dhamma...
View ArticleDhammapada: life is hard
244-245(accesstoinsight) Life's easy to live for someone unscrupulous, cunning as a crow, corrupt, back-biting, forward, & brash; but for someone who's constantly scrupulous, cautious, observant,...
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A Comparative Study of Early Buddhism and Kantian Philosophy - reviewed
Originally posted at American Buddhist Perspective here and here.A comparative study of early Buddhism and Kantian philosophy by S.G.M. WeerasingheThis is essentially the topic of my doctoral thesis,...
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Enlightened View, from Charles Goodman
I'm working my way through Charles Goodman's excellent Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics, and finding gem after gem of clarity and wisdom.That might be...
View Article[INDOLOGY] Summer courses in Oxford
A wonderful opportunity for those in/around England this summer. I would definitely attend if I could. Next year...The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and the Society for the WiderUnderstanding of...
View ArticleKant and the right to Lie
Kant's ethics surrounding truth and lies is quite complex, even though it is often taught with the simplistic example: if a murderer comes to your house and asks you where his desired victim is; and...
View ArticleStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Buddhism Entries
VasubandhuJonathan C. GoldGorampa [go rams pa]Constance KassorŚāntarakṣitaJames BlumenthalMadhyamakaRichard HayesEthics in Indian and Tibetan BuddhismCharles GoodmanTibetan Epistemology and Philosophy...
View ArticleSarcasm in the Pali Canon
From DN 3 (pp.122-3 in Walsh):‘And was the Reverend Gotama such [107] as he is reportedto be, and not otherwise? And is he of such nature, and nototherwise?’ ‘Sir, he is as he is reported to be. and he...
View ArticleWhy Philosophy: from The Mansions of Philosophy
The busy reader will ask, is all this philosophy useful? It Is a shameful question: We do not ask it of poetry, which is also an imaginative construction of world incompletely known. If poetry reveals...
View ArticleWhy Philosophy: From Bertrand Russell
If we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called “practical" men. The “practical man, as this...
View ArticleKant on Virtue (or character)
The human being who is conscious of having character in his way of thinking does not have it by nature; he must always have acquired it. One may also assume that the grounding of character is like a...
View ArticleKantian Subject vs Nibbana
(after discussing the 'conditioned' world...)Nibbana, by contrast, is depicted as the allaying of differentiation. For example, while in AN IV. 174 Sariputta spoke of that beyond the six sense-contacts...
View ArticleMust all 'Philosophy' include metaphysics?
Such is the assertion at the outset of T.K. Abbott's translation of Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals, Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), translated by Abbott as The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics:If...
View ArticleDeontology in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
For simplicity, hard lines are often drawn between Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, as ideal exemplars of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. However, whenever we look more closely, we will find...
View ArticleAristotle's "Anger"
I was surprised today to read Aristotle's account of anger, in the Nichomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7:In what concerns anger too there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean;and although these are...
View ArticleBhikkhu Bodhi's essay on non-dualism and the Buddha's pragmatic philosophy
Dhamma and Non-dualityIn contrast to the non-dualistic systems, the Buddha's approach does not aim at the discovery of a unifying principle behind or beneath our experience of the world. Instead it...
View ArticleBecoming a Dhamma teacher, some guidance
"It's not easy to teach the Dhamma to others, Ananda. The Dhamma should be taught to others only when five qualities are established within the person teaching. Which five?"[1] The Dhamma should be...
View ArticleDefending contemporary moral theories from feminist critiques
In Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian and Virtue Ethics, Marcia Baron offers an intriguing introductory essay discussing the history of dispute between virtue ethics and Kantian ethics (much of...
View ArticleWhat *is* Virtue Ethics?
This question is raised and discussed in Marcia Baron's chapter "Virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics" (see book in last post). The question is important as we try to set out virtue ethics as...
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