Ethics (Garfield)

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Ethics
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Contemporary normative ethics is dominated by debates between deontologists, consequentialists of various stripes and areteic ethicists with varying degrees of allegiance to Aristotle, with a few antirealists thrown in. That is, moral theorists are debating the subject matter of ethics. Does it concern our obligations and rights? Or is it concerned with the preconditions of happiness or human flourishing? With the maximization of good and the minimization of harm? Or perhaps with our feelings and dispositions? Or is there perhaps no subject matter at all? Of course despite all of this theoretical debate, there is a great deal of common ground between divergent ethical theories regarding the moral valence of most states of affairs, maxims of action and traits of character. We can fruitfully see these debates, and, as we shall see, the Buddhist intervention into these debates, as a kind of generalization of the Euthyphro problem: Are deontological maxims good because they maximize utility, or the other way around? Are virtues good because they conduce to the discharge of duty, or the other way around? In short, what, if anything, grounds moral value? I will argue that Buddhist moral theory enters this debate not through disagreements about the value of happiness, virtue or duty, but rather by arguing that these values depend on a more fundamental value: our phenomenological orientation toward the world. (Garfield, introduction, 278)

Citation
Garfield, Jay L. "Ethics." Chap. 9 in Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
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