Two new journals

A couple new journals have popped up that may be valuable for those looking to get published in the academic (publish or perish) world:

The International Journal of the Asian Philosophical Association (IJAPA)

and

Public Reason: Journal of Public and Moral Philosophy

Notes from a talk with Damien

I just had another meeting with Damien Keown, my advisor - this time at an Italian cafe near his home in North Lambeth, London.

A quick summary -

• I'm on a good track with things so far.
• Needn't worry about defending a holistic approach generally, just perhaps note that there is dispute in this area as a general methodological concern.
• Avoid the Vinaya vs Kantian Casuistry area discussed before. Try to stick with the interesting elements that have come up out of the summaries.
• Be balanced = equal parts Kant and Buddhism, then analysis and bringing them into discussion (this might be the hardest part)
• Keep the focus on the values of each, don't be derailed by the metaphysics.

Ok, off I go...

Kant's Ethics Literature

Just found this here and figured it would be worth posting.

Secondary Literature Available through JSTOR

Henry Allison, "Morality and Freedom: Kant's Reciprocity Thesis"
Stephen Darwall, "Autonomist Internalism and the Justification of Morals"
Stephen Darwall, "Kantian Practical Reason Defended"
Stephen Darwall, "Two Kinds of Respect"
David Gauthier, "The Unity of Reason: A Subversive Reinterpretation of Kant"
Barbara Herman, "Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons"
Barbara Herman, "On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty"
Barbara Herman, "The Practice of Moral Judgment"
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Humanity as an End in Itself"
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Kantian Constructivism in Ethics"
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "The Hypothetical Imperative"
Christine Korsgaard, "Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value"
Christine Korsgaard, "Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations"
Christine Korsgaard, "The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil"
Andrews Reath, "Legislating the Moral Law"

Kant on Animals, not so different from Buddha?

For both Buddhism and Kant, there is something special about humanity even though we clearly are (biologically) mere animals. One of Kant's key statements on the difference comes here

“Thus what remains to us for indicating the human being’s class in the system of living nature and thus characterizing him is nothing but this: he has a character that he himself makes, in that he has the faculty of perfecting himself in accordance with ends he takes for himself; whereby he can make himself, from an animal endowed with a capacity for reason (animal rationabilis), into a rational animal (animal rationale); and as such he first, preserves himself and his species; second; exercises, instructs and brings up his species for domestic society; and third, governs it as a whole that is systematic (ordered in accordance with rational principles) and fitted for society” (Ak 7:321-322).

(borrowed from Allen W. Wood's paper here) Wood goes on to say that, "Following Rousseau, Kant identifies as the distinctive feature of humanity the faculty of self-perfection. Kant rejects the traditional definition of the human being as animal rationale, allowing only that the human being is an animal rationabilis (Ak 7:321). "

This, it seems, is similar to Buddhist statements of animals: that they lack the potential for awakening. Or is this not so? Is this a later development perhaps? What do the early (Pali) texts say about animals and the difference between us (human-animals) and them (non-human animals).

THE COSMOLOGICAL CONTEXT

"Cosmology orients us. It provides us a place within the universe, a home where
our story can be told in such a way that it makes sense to ourselves and the
people with whom we live. For millennia, the earth and water, the light, the
weather, and the heavens have been accounted for in myriad tales from diverse
cultures. Humans have found meaning in reading their own story against the story
of the place in which they find themselves. From the local shrines arising out
of archaic sensibilities to the elaborate Ptolemaic spheres and Dante-esque
hells of Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the study of the cosmos begins
and ends with an exploration of self. For the past 300 years there has been a
slow and steady erosion of cos- mological theory. "

Christopher Key Chappel - Thomas Berry, Buddhism, and the New Cosmology
Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 18 (1998), pp. 147-154

And so it is with our study of Buddhist Ethics. We must understand the cosmology of Buddhism, the story that orients us - oriented the Buddha and his earliest followers. Yes, the study of specific terms and doctrines will shed light on us and the meaning of Buddhist Ethics, but without the cosmology, the framework, we tend to be shining a particularly bright beam on tiny specks of earth before us. What is needed is a greater understanding of the path as a whole...

Meditation and the Moral Cosmology of Buddhism

That's a title idea for a talk I will give at The University of Montana next spring. I want to discuss how meditation is filtering into modern society from the East (particularly from Buddhism, of course). But I also do want to cover some of the theoretical or cosmological significance of meditation and ethics from a Buddhist POV.

The notion will be that Meditation 'atunes' one to the cosmos, or the Dharma. It is a sort of 'turning away from' the mundane way of seeing life - a way dominated by greed, aversion, and delusion.

...

More to come...

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.