Outline of a sketch of what categories or labels to use

People often tell me a Ph.D. is a daunting task. Yup. Others say it's just like all those 20-25 page philosophy papers I've done, only times six or eight. While appealing, that analogy doesn't quite cut it. For such a paper about four-ten sources is sufficient, with about a third of those being used extensively. So, realistically, all of the source-material can be kept somewhere rattling around my noggin (that is, I can keep everything organized in my mind - no need for external organization skills or strategies).

The Ph.D. is a different animal though - I'm looking at hundreds of sources, with probably two dozen as primary. I'm sifting out primary materials (suttas mostly) from scholarly articles from books. I'm doing Kant scholarship, which involves ethics, history, aesthetics, and more. I'm doing general Ethics scholarship: classical virtue theory, Christian ethics, modern ethics: Kant and Mill primarily, and contemporary articles and debates. Thirdly, I'm piecing together "Buddhist Ethics," a category that really doesn't exist except in contemporary Western thought. That means we're making it up as we go. It's the "wild west" of the academic world, filled with wild men, straight shooters, and plenty of outlaws.

A daunting task indeed.

So here I hope to categorize things as best I can as I come across them. I suppose it will be of some help to begin by establishing a categorization system. (here goes)

By Time Period: All materials should be classified as following. These are subject to change and input is warmly welcomed.

early source (pre - 0 CE)
early medieval (0 CE - 700CE, covering everything pre-Shantideva)
middle medieval (700 CE-1200 CE)
late medieval (1200 CE - 1800 CE)
early modern (1800 CE - 1900 CE)
late modern (1900 CE - 1980 CE, covering everything pre-me - ha)
contemporary (1980 - current)

By type:

source (includes abhidhamma/abhidharmas)
commentary (includes such works as the Visuddhimagga and the lam rim chen mo)
scholarly (a somewhat 'false' distinction, as the commentaries are no-doubt 'scholarly' too, but nonetheless, this will denote early Western attempts to understand Buddhism, all the way through the current, as well as recent non-Western works who use the approach of Western scholarship to analyze Buddhism)

By Content: this will be the toughest category/label to manage. Here is a start.

metaphysics (broadly defined)
self (/no-self, anatman, anatta)
emptiness (sunyata, sunnata)
morality (sila)
virtues (perfections, paramitas)

More to come soon...

Categorizing people/work

D. Keown (1992) opens his work with a great review of past writings in Buddhist Ethics. Some of that effort will have to be replicated in my own and should be sketched out here.

Keown himself: (p.1) "In the face of the complexity of Buddhist metaphysics it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Buddhism is a response to what is fundamentally an ethical problem - the perennial problem of the best kind of life for man to lead."

N.B. Keown clearly sets the stage with this sentence. In fact, if you agree with this it is very easy to follow Keown down the path to an Aristotelian interpretation of Buddhist Ethics. However, one must then ask what to do with all that darned metaphysics. Other thinkers, myself included, will find metaphysical issues central to Buddhist Ethics (not a red herring as Keown suggests, cf. p19)

p. 4 "Previous Research"

Most has been descriptive (not normative or metaethical).

Tachibana (1926) "So far as I know, no work is specifically devoted to this single subject" i.e. ethics in Buddhism.

Saddhatissa (1970, Buddhist Ethics)... Keown comments favorably.

Poussin (1927, La Morale Bouddhique) - based on the Abhidharmakośa, a record of debates; its as close as the tradition gets "to the discipline of moral philosophy."

~

(p.5)
Roderick Hindery (1978, Comparative Ethics in Hindu and Buddhist Traditions) "a 'lacuna' or 'perhaps a total gap' in the contemporary analysis of Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics (p.223)."

G.S.P. Misra (1984, Development of Buddhist Ethics); included work on psychology (Abhidharma) - ch.3; morality of the bodhisattva (ch.5); and transcendence of ethics in Tantra (ch.6).

~
more to come...

Buddhist Ethics is Born!

In my ongoing efforts to use technology to overcome my inherent laziness and scatterbrainedness - a blog, devoted to Buddhist Ethics.

Goals:

To categorize previous thought in Buddhist Ethics (rationalist, romantic, essoteric, etc)

To categorize previous thinkers (")

To categorize my own thoughts

To think aloud

To (eventually) invite feedback from interesting people

and anything else related to the above.