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Buddhist Ethics is Itself and Not Another Thing

Schultz, Aaron
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0519-066X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1429632826

Abstract Details

2015, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy.
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.
David Pereplyotchik (Advisor)
Michael Byron (Committee Member)
Jung-Yeup Kim (Committee Member)
76 p.
Ethics; Philosophy; Religion
Buddhist Ethics; Eightfold Path; Consequentialism; Virtue Ethics

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Schultz, A. (2015). Buddhist Ethics is Itself and Not Another Thing [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1429632826

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Schultz, Aaron. Buddhist Ethics is Itself and Not Another Thing. 2015. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1429632826.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Schultz, Aaron. "Buddhist Ethics is Itself and Not Another Thing." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1429632826

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1429632826
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Buddhist Ethics is Itself and Not Another Thing by Aaron Schultz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.