Does "Buddhist Ethics" Exist?

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Does "Buddhist Ethics" Exist?
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A central question of this work is what a specifically Madhyamaka Buddhist ethics might look like, given that Madhyamaka denies there is much if anything that can be said to be ultimately true. Ethical theorists commonly resort to metaphysical claims to support their views about ethics: think, for example, of the role of the Forms in Plato, of God in divine command theories, of li in neo-Confucianism. The Madhyamaka claim that there are no ultimately real entities (dharmas), with its implication that the metaphysical enterprise simply makes no sense, suggests to many that Madhyamaka must lead to moral nihilism. (Chapter 3 of this volume raises that question in an especially dramatic form.) The present chapter responds to that charge. But it does so in a roundabout way. It begins with the question of whether there is such a thing as ethical theory in the Buddhist tradition as a whole. The answer turns out to be a qualified yes, but insofar as what it identifies as a distinctively Buddhist contribution to ethical theory relies on the metaphysics of non-self, one wonders whether a Mādhyamika can endorse it. The rest of this chapter addresses that question. (Siderits, preliminary remarks, 119)

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Siderits, Mark. "Does 'Buddhist Ethics' Exist?" In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 119–39. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
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Contains essays exploring a variety of ways in which to understand important Buddhist texts on ethics and Mahayana moral theory.