Defending 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 this dispute, she notes, is also from virtue ethicists and aimed at all of 'Modern philosophy'). Some disagreement also comes from the realm of feminist philosophy, which she suggests is likely to be misguided.

She writes that "much of what contemporary ethics was faulted for neglecting was, according to the traditional gendered division of labor and of character traits, located under the heading of “feminine.” Rather than diminishing the importance of reason in our conceptions of ethics, Baron suggests:

The problem seems more centrally to be that (a) women have been assumed to be deficient in reason and excessively emotional and (b) it has further been assumed that any such deficiencies reflect inherent differences between the sexes. (p.13)

Quoting J.S. Mill, she suggests that it is not the case that women are less rational and thus 'left out' of contemporary ethical theory unfairly, bur rather that women have simply been oppressed by patriarchal societies.

At the same time, "qualities traditionally associated with women" such as nurturing or caring deserve greater attention in our reflections on morality (p.14).

Must 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 there exists on any subject a philosophy (that is, a
system of rational knowledge based on concepts), then
there must also be for this philosophy a system of pure
rational concepts, independent of any condition of in-
tuition, in other words, a metaphysic.

He goes on:

It may be asked
whether metaphysical elements are  required also for
every practical philosophy, which is the doctrine of du-
ties, and therefore also for Ethics, in order to be able to
present it as a true science (systematically), not merely
as  an aggregate of separate doctrines (fragmentarily). 

So are metaphyics (or a metaphysical edifice) necessary for ethics? Only, perhaps, if that ethics is to be presented systematically rather than fragmentarily (a key difference between Kant and the Buddha's teachings, perhaps).

As regards pure jurisprudence, no one will question
this requirement; for it concerns only what is formal
in the elective will, which has to be limited in its exter-
nal relations according to laws of freedom; without re-
garding any end which is the matter of this will.  

I'm not sure what exactly to make of this sentence. For 'pure jurisprudence', I take it to mean abstract reasoning on the good, in itself, free from particular instances. 'Without regarding any end...' I take to mean without any particular goal in mind, again trying to understand 'the good' in an abstract form. If 'the good' is to be understood on par with matter or mathematics, it must be examined in the most abstract manner possible. And so, Abbott continues:

Here, therefore, deontology is a mere scientific doctrine (doc-
trina scientiae).

Abbott goes on to make a distinction similar to Kant's own in the Groundwork, namely that our reasoning about ethics must begin with the concept of duty in its most abstract form, not from feelings, either the quest for maximizing happiness or avoiding suffering (again a distinction from Buddhism, which begins and ends with suffering). If we are to do this, we ally ourselves with 'feeling by whatever it may be excited' and thus endless possibilities in the empirical realm.

For instance a greedy drug-maker who stumbles upon a miracle drug that saves millions and accidentally releases its patent (and thus earns nothing) might be hailed as a hero as great as Jonas Salk (who did the same but purposely didn't patent the polio vaccine). The consequences of each man's work might be the same, but only one acted according to a sense of duty toward humankind. Thus, for Kant and his followers, only one acted morally.

Abbott then reiterates Kant's understanding of how morality leads to happiness, namely that a 'thinking man' conquers the temptations of vice and is conscious of having come to act according to duty, and 'finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward' (p.10). The happiness-seeker, on the other hand, argues that this happiness was the motive all along and our thinking man merely acts out of duty for the sake of that happiness.

[Now, this may look conspicuously like Buddhism, but I'd argue the opposite. The Buddhist practitioner might start with a quest to just overcome his/her own suffering, but this morphs over time with the realization of interconnectedness, etc, toward a recognition of the need to help all beings, thus abandoning a merely selfish goal and taking up a sense of duty to be of service. It is this shift from a selfish goal toward a universal one that marks a stream-enterer; or something like that. I need to gather sources and justifications, but the point is that the Buddhist 'thinking man' who has conquered vice and done his duty and feels peace and satisfaction will have done so out of an attraction to goodness (kusala) itself in the end.]

In any case, if the Buddhist practitioner merely seeks after whatever appears to remove suffering, he will no doubt chase after a million chimerical solutions, running this way and that. It is only with a firm grasp on certain realizations (or acceptances) about the nature of reality can he/she move forward in a straight line in life. Obeying duty (Dhamma) often means abandoning one's search for the latest happiness-producing-activity. And this is the key point. If one's allegiance is toward happiness, one will not abide by duty, which often requires suffering, temporary as it may be.

Thus the need for this metaphysical distinction between ultimate aims. As Abbott concludes:

If this distinction is not observed; if eudaemonism
(the principle of happiness) is adopted as the principle
instead of eleutheronomy (the principle of freedom of
the inner legislation), the consequence is the euthana-
sia (quiet death) of all morality. (p.11)

So we have begun with a call to the need for metaphysics and ended with that metaphysics differentiating two key directions that moral philosophers might take: one toward physiology and joys/sorrows as its justification, and one toward a transcendent, unknowable (but feelable) duty or dharma. 

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Buddhism Entries

Vasubandhu
Jonathan C. Gold
Gorampa [go rams pa]
Constance Kassor

Śāntarakṣita
James Blumenthal

Madhyamaka
Richard Hayes

Ethics in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism
Charles Goodman

Tibetan Epistemology and Philosophy of Language
Pascale Hugon

The Theory of Two Truths in Tibet
Sonam Thakchoe

Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy
Christian Coseru

Nāgārjuna
Jan Westerhoff

The Theory of Two Truths in India
Sonam Thakchoe

Language and Testimony in Classical Indian Philosophy
Madhav Deshpande

Logic in Classical Indian Philosophy
Brendan Gillon

Epistemology in Classical Indian Philosophy
Stephen Phillips

Kumārila
Daniel Arnold

Abhidharma
Noa Ronkin

Buddha
Mark Siderits

The Concept of Emotion in Classical Indian Philosophy
Joerg Tuske

Analytic Philosophy in Early Modern India
Jonardon Ganeri

Perceptual Experience and Concepts in Classical Indian Philosophy
Monima Chadha


* Via Jan Westerhoff on H-Buddhism

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. Weerasinghe

This is essentially the topic of my doctoral thesis, and here it is, all in 88 pages plus a glossary and index. Sadly though, I can't really recommend the book. Even though it's short (usually a plus in my world) and covers topics quite dear to my heart, it also has more than its share of flaws. To start, it's written from something of a Buddhist triumphalist standpoint. Statements like "Early Buddhist philosophy is a royal highway for all those who wish to attain the summum bonum. the ideal of human life. It is a remarkable religio-philosophy complete in every respect" (p.11) are nice, but they're a clear sign that scholarly objectivity (an ideal, never actualized) is not going to be present.

On the other hand, the suggestion that "The perfection of morality cannot be achieved without an innumerable number of rebirths (in saṃsāra). Thus the idea of rebirth is implied in Kantianism" (p.9) also shows a total lack of sensitivity to the context of Kant's writing. Particularly appalling is the claim, a few pages later that Kant's "kingdom of ends" is a "fairy tale" from a Buddhist point of view. The Kingdom of Ends is for Kant a sort of heavenly ideal - not a blissed-out happy-go-lucky heaven, but simply one in which all beings treat each other out of respect, i.e. all beings act fully morally.

There are many commendable points though. 

The comparison of Kant's antinomies (pairs of opposing propositions that both cannot be true but could not be proved either way) and the Buddha's silence on certain metaphysical questions is helpful and informative. In Kant's works these include the propositions that

1. the world is infinite or finite, 
2. all composite things are made up of simple parts, or there are no simple parts,
3. free-will or determinism is true, and 
4. there is or is not a necessary being (God).

Discussing Kant's response, Weerasinghe writes:

Kant shows that both thesis and antithesis in the above ‘four pairs’ can equally be supported with a (seemingly) valid proof (CPR., A 426 B 454 - A 463 B 491). Therefore he concludes that they are all pseudo-rational assertions (Ger. vernünftelnde Behauptungen) appearing to rest on an empty concept (Ger. einen leeren Begriff ) (CPR., A 494 B 518). In other words Kant implies that they are all wrong propositions (i.e. judgements) originated from a wrong assumption (i.e. the concept of the world) based on the category of totality (CPR., A 426 B 454 - A 428 B 456) and consequently are having no validity in themselves. (p.31)

This sounds much like the analyses of Buddha's response to the wanderer Vacchagotta  in The Grouped Sayings by the Buddha. Samyutta Nikāya. Book III 257-263 The Vacchagotta section 33. Thread on Not Knowing: Aññānā Sutta (1-55). As he points out, Vacchagotta posed similar questions to the Buddha out of "curiosity without any ethical aim" (p.33).


The chapter comparing the Epistemology (theory of knowledge) of Kant and the Buddha also furthers the Kant-bashing and Buddha-loving of previous chapters, while not failing to point out some central ideas of each. 

Thus our empirical knowledge, according to Kant, is a reconstruction of what we experience in our daily life. In other words, it is a distortion of the true picture of the external world or, for that matter, anything which is experienced as knowledge. (p.41)

This is well-compared to the Buddha's concept of ignorance (avijjā) giving rise to our perception of the world of compound objects. To see without ignorance is to see the voidness of all things.

I'll stop there for tonight. Tomorrow I'll finish up with the Epistemology and the largest chapter, Ethics. Then, maybe, I'll get back to Buddhism, Brain, and Mind, a thought-stream I started over a week ago and left hanging. Oh, and then there are some Buddha-barn pics to post... Should be a fun Monday. :)

Part 2:

A comparative study of early Buddhism and Kantian philosophy by S.G.M. Weerasingh

One of the first things that drew me both to Kantian and Buddhist ethics was the notion of a morality that is at once transcendent and imminent. This means that there is a sense in which morality lies beyond our normal conceptions of the world and yet it is accessible to us always. In Buddhism it is beyond our normal conceptions because of egoic ignorance, fed by our clinging to pleasures and pushing away of negative feelings. Insofar as we are unenlightened, we all do this. Moments of awareness help break the habit-cycle.

In Kant's works we are dominated by heteronomy - other (hetero) laws (nomos). To be ruled by heteronomy is to be subservient, subservient to our desires for power, addictions, and even moral and political rules set down by others. It is by employment of reason that we begin to untangle ourselves from these laws - choosing those we follow instead of blindly following.

But hitherto I have seen little or no mention of the Pāli term papañca (Skt. prapañca), explained by Weerasinghe here in relation to Kant's use of 'phenomena':

The Kantian concept of phenomena immediately reminds us at the doctrine olpapa4ca in early Buddhism The word papañca (Skt. prapañca) derived from pra+√pañc, to spread out, conveys the sense of expansion, diffuseness and manifoldness (cf: PTS., Dic. q.v.). In doctrinal use it signifies expansion, diffuseness or manifoldness of the world we perceive with our senses. It may also refer to the ‘phenomenal world’ in general, and to the ‘mental attitude of worldliness.’ (p.48)

Keown's Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism (Danny Fisher informed me in January that "there's an App for that" - you can download the whole thing to your iPhone/iPod) has no entry for papañca but does have prapañca on page 220: "Term meaning 'proliferation', in the sense of the multiplication of erroneous concepts, ideas, and ideologies which obscure the true nature of reality...." NYANATILOKA MAHATHERA's great Buddhist Dictionary has a more detailed explanation, including references here:

Dhp. 254: "Mankind delights in the diffuseness of the world, the Perfect Ones are free from such diffuseness"(papañcābhiratā pajā, nippapañca tathāgatā). - The 8th of the 'thoughts of a great man' (mahā-purisa-vitakka; A. VIII, 30) has: "This Dhamma is for one who delights in non-diffuseness (the unworldly, Nibbāna); it is not for him who delights in worldliness (papañca).

So in Buddhism papañca appears to have a clearly negative flavor not found in Kant's understanding of phenomena, which in Caygill's Kant Dictionary is given a much more nuanced treatment than either Weerasinghe or I have presented. But they are similar in suggesting a 'this-world' (understanding) and a transcendent understanding - one which is fully in the flow/flux of reality free from conceptual proliferation.

ETHICS

The opening assertion that the:

Buddhist revolution in ethics consists of the discovery that "one is responsible for ones deeds (kamma)". That is that one is the cause of ones predicament. Hence one is the creator of oneself. So the solution to the problem of suffering is within oneself and not in the hands of a supposed creator-God. (p.58)

does indeed seem to resonate well with the teaching of Early Buddhism (later forms of Buddhism rely on the logic of not-self to move away from this teaching somewhat).  Weerasinghe is unfortunately caught up by Kant's insistence in a belief in God even more than usual in this section. For Kant, God is simply the agent necessary for ensuring that deeds do have moral consequences, i.e. that good ultimately comes to those who are good and vice versa.  It is quite different from karma but it serves much the same role in moral thinking. After ranting on about this for a couple pages, we find this conclusion:

Thus we may notice that the Kantian view of ethics is not consistent and systematic in comparison to the moral philosophy of early Buddhism which is consistent, systematic and founded on an ethico-psychological basis. (p.61)

In fact most modern scholars would say the opposite, that Kant is systematic and Early Buddhism is somewhat lacking in clarity (though clearly filled with various 'moral' teachings). Back to Early Buddhism, we find:

(i) Morality needs no religion to support it. (ii) This idea is well established in EB. which maintains that dhamma or morality is something independent and is discovered by the Buddhas from epoch to epoch. (iii) Morality in EB. [is] atheistic to the core has nothing to do with any divine being. (p.62)

And likewise in both Kant and Buddhism is found a teaching of morality as a discovery (not an invention, social norm, revelation, etc.). "According to Buddhism morality means, inter alia, to live in accordance with what is implicit in the nature of things" (p.64).

While Weerasinghe goes on to be overly harsh on Kant (and outright wrong in too many places to address) and praising of early Buddhism, his criticism that Kant is missing the applied aspect of ethics seems fair (cf. p.70). Kant was at the same time perhaps too confident in humanities ability to use reason to evaluate motivations and break free from superstition and manipulation, as well as pessimistic that one could ever truly do this in this lifetime.

But beyond this, Weerasinghe's accusations and confusions only continue - for instance lambasting Kant for his thoughts on human evil (suggesting that Kant painted a "pathetic picture of man"(p.65)), and praising him for his philosophy of the Good will, which is by it's own nature good as "a great teaching apparently unknown to, and unheard of in the then Western philosophy" (p. 77). One assertion, which would be merely amusing if it weren't in a supposedly academic text is that those aspects of Kant that are good and useful are "not European, but Indian in spirit" (pp. 85-86 emphasis in original). Sigh.

As I suggested in my last post, it's a hard book to recommend. The book didn't make any real splash in the Western academic world, so even academics seem to have ignored it. It has a fair number of typos, is not terribly easy to get ahold of, and sadly hacks up Kantian philosophy.  Between the last comment I quoted and the one starting the book in my last post, "Early Buddhist philosophy is a royal highway..." you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Selected Q & A from the Comments:

From Tom:

Speaking of "kingdom of ends," the local library here tells me "Creating a Kingdom of Ends" is ready for me to pick up. I ordered the book based on a post in one of your other blogs from 2 1/2 years ago that reread a handfull of days ago.

Kind Mr. Whitaker, since you are more of a Kantian than Mr/Ms Weerasinghe, can you give me your response [on behalf of Buddhism] to the "kingdom of ends?"

Justin:

Great book, Tom - let me know what you think of it. If I understand your question correctly, you'd like me to give a Buddhist version of the Kingdom of ends. Such a kingdom would simply be the end result of the Bodhisattva's vow - where all beings are awakened from suffering and ignorance. Is this technically possible? Not really in any of our lifetimes - so some could call it an empty wish. But it's an ideal we do well to strive for, in this lifetime and, if there are more, in those as well.

Tom:

OK. I know I stupid as dirt, but put up with me for a moment.

Can you expound on this: "For Kant, God is simply the agent necessary for ensuring that deeds do have moral consequences, i.e. that good ultimately comes to those who are good and vice versa."

How does Kant perceive God!? A guy-like superbeing on a cloud with an intense aversion to sin? How does this agency function? Are gears or computers a part of God?

Worldliness is "diffuse," you say. I am trying to understand the sense in which that is so, employing my probably-diffuse mind. A good mind, then, is more focussed? Attentive? Won't have typos in his book?

Justin:

Oh much wiser than dirt, Tom: "How does Kant perceive God!?"

That's just it. He doesn't perceive God at all, for God (like morality) lies on the other half of the noumenal/phenomenal divide from perception. God is just an "idea" of perfection that we *need* to believe in in order to do the often hard work of being moral. In that sense he's more like the Buddha (as a perfectly awakened being, not just a great teacher) than he is like the action of karma.

A good mind, I think, is focused, and able to balance both the manifold world (conventional reality) and the world of flux and no-self-natureness (ultimate reality). 

Dharma as a (transcendent?) foundation for ethics

As stated in the Saṃyutta Nikāya II 25ff:

‘…whether there is an arising of Tathāgatas or no arising of Tathāgatas, that element still persists, the stableness of the Dhamma, the fixed course of the Dhamma, specific conditionality. A Tathāgata awakens to this and breaks through to it. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it.’[1]

---

[1] Bhikkhu Bodhi 2000, p.551.

Gethin poking some fun at modern revisionist scholars

...the "ethical" portion of the discourse is to be preferred to the "mythic" precisely because it is ethical, and, as we all know, the earliest Buddhist teachings were simple, ethical teachings, unadulterated by myth and superstition; we know that early Buddhist teaching was like this because of the evidence of the rest of the canon. Here the argument becomes one of classic circularity: we arrive at a particular view about the nature of early Buddhism by ignoring portions of the canon and then use that view to argue for the lateness of the portions of the canon we have ignored. (p.215)

From "Cosmology and Meditation: From the Aggañña-Sutta to the Mahāyāna," Rupert Gethin, History of Religions, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Feb., 1997), pp. 183-217

Notes on Keown's review of Kalupahana's Book on Buddhist Ethics 1997

I have not read the book, "Ethics in Early Buddhism", or anything (that I recall) of substance from David Kalupahana. This review makes me want to read it (eventually) just to see what NOT to do in my own work. I recall being warned to be wary of Kalupahana's ideas by Paul Williams in Bristol as well.

The review is in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 337-340

Notes on Masao Abe's 1983 paper "God, Emptiness, and Ethics"

Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 3. (1983), pp. 53-60.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.orgsici?sici=0882-0945%281983%293%3C53%3AGEAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

1: key people:

• Masao Abe: Japanese Pure Land practitioner in Kyoto School
  
• Malcolm David Eckel: American, Boston U, philosopher / comparative relig.
  
• Robert Thurman: American scholar of (primarily) Tibetan Buddhism
  
• George E. Rupp: American educator and theologian
  
• John Cobb Jr.: Process philosopher, Christian, social activist
• - T.R.V. Murti: Indian Philosopher who wrote the "Central Philosophy of Buddhism..." which was too heavily filled with his own ideas to be a trustworthy source of knowledge of early Buddhism.
  

2: key themes:

• Ultimate reality - ontology - metaphysics
• Epistemology
• Soteriology
• Ethics
• Eschatology
• Two Truths, Samsara/Nirvana (n.b. this discussion shows the complexity of this doctrine in a way that is parallel to that of Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction. Each has both ontological and epistemic import throughout, and each has been misunderstood as applying to only one of these realms)
  
• Buddhist-Christian Dialogue
• kataphatic / apophatic (via-negativa)
  

3: argument:

Christian ethics are Eschatological, pointing to an end-time (judgment, coming of God, etc) and therefore temporal and historically oriented. "Buddhist ethics and its dynamism are
based on this dialectical tension of 'already' and 'not yet', a tension which is not future-oriented but absolute-present-oriented. Thus, in Buddhism, at each and every moment of history, a development toward the endless future is at once the total return to the root and source of history, that is, unchanging eternity." (p.60)

Rupp and Cobb, as per Thurman's criticism, misunderstand this ahistoricity as implying a certain death (or lack) of ethics.

Notable Quotes:

Thurman also emphasizes the inseparability of the insight of Emptiness from
ethical action and the interdependency of metaphysics and ethics in Buddhism. (p.54)

... Murti overlooks the discontinuity between samsara and Nirvana. In Bud-
dhism, samsara is realized as the beginningless and endless process of living-
dying. There is no continuous path from samsara to Nirvana; (p.54)

Buddha thus showed the way to attain Nirvana by realizing the dependent co-
origination of everything in the process of samsara. (p.56)

In order to make this point clearer, let me quote a well known discourse of a
Chinese Zen master, Ch'ing-yuan Wei-hsin of the T'ang dynasty. It runs as
follows:
Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen I said, 'Mountains are
mountains; waters are waters.' After I got an insight into the truth of Zen
through the instruction of a good master, I said, 'Mountains are not moun-
tains; waters are not waters.' But now, having attained the abode of final rest
(that is enlightenment), I say, 'Mountains are really mountains; waters are
really waters. ' (p.56)

Along the lines of Wei-hsin, we can state with full justification:
Before Buddhist practice, I thought 'good is good, evil is evil.' When I had
an insight into Buddhist truth, I realized 'good is not good, evil is not evil.'
But now, awakening to true Emptiness I say, 'good is really good; evil is
really evil.' (p.57)

As both Eckel and Thurman emphasize, Buddhist Emptiness is not merely
an ontological ultimate reality devoid of practical commitment. (p.57)

As I suggested before, ethics belongs to conventional truth. However, true
and genuine ethics may be in the mundane world, it cannot arrive at ultimate
truth as Emptiness. There is no continuous path from ethics to Emptiness. In
order to reach Emptiness ethics must be realized as "ignorance" and be turned
over completely. However, this is only the negative aspect of Emptiness. In its
positive and affirmative aspect, in which Emptiness empties itself, ultimate
truth expresses itself in the form of ethics and ethics is thereby reestablished in
light of Emptiness.

Accordingly, although ethics belongs to the conventional realm, it is not
subordinate to the realization of Emptiness, for ultimate truth can express itself
only in the mundane world. In this sense Emptiness may even be said to be
subordinate to ethics. In Madhyama-kakarika,Nagarjuna says, "The ultimate
truth is not taught apart from practical beha~ior."~ In Nagarjuna the ontologi-
cal realization of Emptiness is always connected with practical and soteriological
concerns. (p.58)

When Nirvana is simply taken as the goal, ethics may be dissolved in Emptiness and history may not be clearly realized. This is why throughout its long history Mahayana Buddhism has emphasized "Do not abide in Nirvana" and severely rejected an attachment to Emptiness as a "rigid view of nothingness' ' or a "literal understanding of negativity." (p.59)

Cobb says, "In the Bible, Yahweh is portrayed as righteous, and the appropriate response to Yahweh's righteousness is human righteousness." Due to the transcendent character of this divine righteousness, if I am not wrong, Christian ethics becomes an eschatological ethics which is somewhat future-oriented. (p.59)

Buddhist Ethics - is there one?

This a question that has been posed, to some extent or another, by various writers over the years. One of those is Damien Keown (author of "The Nature of Buddhist Ethics" and various articles) and another is Georges Dreyfus (see his 1995 JBE article here). Both contend that Buddhism never developed an actual "ethics" as we in the West would see it.

One defender of the theory that Buddhists DID in fact have substantive ethical deliberation (and thus a real 'Buddhist ethics') is Amod Lele (unpublished 2007 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation - my gratitude to him for sharing this with me) in his work on Śāntideva.

What do we think?

Some questions:

1. What constitutes "Ethics"?
2. When did it arise in the "West"?
3. What prevented it from arising in Asian contexts (if in fact it didn't)?

Keown's claim (borrowed from Lele, p.49):

While Buddhist teachings include normative aspects, such as
the Five Precepts and the rules of the Vinaya, these are typically
presented simply as injunctions, rather than as conclusions
logically deduced from explicitly stated values and principles. In
other words, the Precepts are simply announced, and one is left
to figure out the invisible superstructure from which they are
derived. Thus although Buddhism has normative teachings, it
does not have normative ethics. (Keown 2005, 50)

Dreyfus's claim:

First, Tibetan Buddhist traditions did not develop systematic theoretical reflections on the nature and scope of ethics. This is not to say, as has been often misunderstood, that these traditions are ethically weak. Like other rich traditions, Tibetan Buddhist traditions have developed substantive ethical systems, at the personal, interpersonal and social levels, while lacking a theoretical reflection on the nature of their ethical beliefs and practices. This lack of theoretical ethics, what we could call second degree ethics in opposition to substantive ethics, affects not only Tibetan Buddhism, but Indian Buddhism and other related traditions, and is quite remarkable given the richness of Indian Buddhist philosophical reflection in general. Compared to domains such as the philosophy of language and epistemology, Indian Buddhist traditions never developed a similar systematic reflection on the nature of ethical concepts. This is not to say that notions such as virtue or goodness are unknown in Indian Buddhist traditions, but that they are not taken to be philosophically interesting. Ethical concepts are studied, but they are not thought to warrant a theoretical discussion. For example, in the Vinaya literature, which is often taken as the main reference in ethical discussions in many Buddhist traditions, there are extensive substantive discussions: what are the precepts, what is included in them, what is excluded, etc. Very little attention is devoted, however, to the nature of ethical concepts. Precepts are discussed practically, but their status is not systematically theorized. (p.28-9 in aforementioned article)

Keown's article cited by Lele is in:

Keown, Damien. 2005. Buddhism: Morality Without Ethics? In Buddhist
Studies From India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish, edited
by Damien Keown. London: Routledge.