Traces of Consequentialism and Non-Consequentialism in Bodhisattva Ethics

🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins
view on research edit on research Add an excerpt Add a bilingual page Add full text subpage

Journal Article

Conduct

LibraryArticlesBibliography PDF Link

Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.

Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

It is difficult to generalize about ethical values in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, let alone in Buddhist philosophy more generally. One author identifies seventeen distinct ethical approaches in the Mahāyāna scholarly traditions alone (i.e., not including various folk traditions).[1] Nonetheless, in comparative studies in the history of ethics, there is increasing recognition that several different Buddhist traditions have stressed a foundational role for universalist altruism that was largely absent from ancient Greek eudaimonism and perhaps even absent - qua foundational - from most other premodern traditions of moral reflection in the West, including much of the Christian tradition.[2] In particular, ancient and medieval Indian works on what Barbra Clayton has called "bodhisattva ethics" may now be seen as collectively constituting a unique achievement of moral reflection prior to the modern period, at least as regards moral reasoning that is focused on ideals of impartiality and a universalist concern for sentient beings. In recent work, Clayton and Charles Goodman have independently stressed the depth and scope of this achievement. More controversially, however, they have also advanced the more specific claim that the mature Mahāyāna conception of morality is either straightforwardly consequentialist or a hybrid form of perfectionist consequentialism.[3]
      Clayton and Goodman have succeeded in highlighting some consequentialist aspects of Mahāyāna ethics, while also reminding us of the inherent theoretical strengths of universalist act-consequentialism as a moral theory.[4] In the present article I will not be casting any doubt on those strengths per se, which are indeed formidable from a theoretical standpoint. However, when we scrutinize a range of Mahāyāna discussions of bodhisattva vows, we notice some pervasive non-consequentialist reasoning that seems to have been overlooked by these authors and others (and not merely at the level of practical deliberation, but also at the foundational level of what is ultimately thought to justify vows, precepts, and other moral norms). Most commentators admit that there are at least signs and symptoms of consequentialism in Mahāyāna ethical writings - even those who deny any definitive evidence of a unified underlying consequentialist foundation. But there appear to be grounds for a stronger counterclaim, namely that there is also evidence of a commitment to foundational non-consequentialism in some of the key texts.
      Like most ethical theorists, I use the terms 'consequentialism' and 'non-consequentialism' in such a way that the claims they denote cannot be combined into a unified or hybrid view (I offer definitions of these terms in the next section).[5] Even a 'trace' of each in the same work may thus indicate an inconsistency, unless one of the claims can be interpreted as strictly theoretical and the other as a theoretically noncommittal expression of a practical mindset. However, in light of my title, I should clarify at the outset that I am not charging any particular vision of the bodhisattva ideal with inconsistency. The traces that Clayton and Goodman cite in support of a consequentialist interpretation, and those I see as indications of non-consequentialist thinking, are scattered enough that the issue is not necessarily one of consistency or inconsistency, at least as regards any particular text or any particular school of thought. Ironically, though, it may be that it is contemporary systematizers who come closest to risking inconsistency, in attempting to distill and refine the putatively consequentialist insights of mature Mahāyāna ethical theory.[6]
      Since the first part of this article addresses these consequentialist interpretations on their own terms and deals with the possibility of Mahāyāna non-consequentialism only indirectly, it may be worth previewing the general shape of the non-consequentialism that we will ultimately find to be operative within the bodhisattva ideal. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not the sort of virtue-based non-consequentialism that Damien Keown has defended and that Goodman sees as the main rival to his interpretation.[7] While Goodman acknowledges that virtue is one of the goods worth promoting (along with happiness, wisdom, and other goods, thus allowing trade-offs between these in the interest of maximizing the overall good), Keown retains a more traditional understanding of virtue as something whose importance to the agent precludes impersonal calculations and the trade-offs they entail. In any case, both of their approaches highlight virtue as a central concept (generalizing from conceptions of kuśala-dharma, kuśalamūlāni, pāramitā, and brahmavihāra), and perhaps it is indeed one central concept. However, it may be that the most important form of non-consequentialism that surfaces in Mahāyāna ethics takes the very different form of a view based on deontological restrictions - restrictions that are grounded in distributive considerations.
      In the last two sections of this article, I will compare this view to one of Kant's formulations of the categorical imperative. The deontological element that emerges in my analysis of bodhisattva ethics will turn out to be analogous to the one that is operative in Kant's ideal of a 'kingdom of ends,' in which every person contributes equally to a system that safeguards virtue and happiness. It is not the combination of virtue and happiness per se, however, that indicates the key parallel with bodhisattva ethics, but rather the idea that eventually a status quo involving an unequal distribution of duties will be superseded by an equal distribution (when all are equally engaged in sustaining the highest good). It is understandable that some would treat Kantian deontology as a view that, compared to the other main positions in contemporary moral theory, seems to have the least affinity with Buddhist ethics in general.[8] Yet we will find that there are important aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that parallel the Kantian notion of a deontologically structured kingdom of ends. Goodman and others may be right that some Buddhist insights provide grounds for critiquing some aspects of Kantian ethics, and it may be understandable, in light of other theoretical considerations, that they would reject Kantian principles; but, for better or worse, we find analogous principles at the heart of many classic versions of the bodhisattva vows.
       The most persuasive case that Clayton and Goodman make for the role of consequentialist reasoning in the Buddhist tradition is with respect to Śāntideva's writings. The realization that Śāntideva's moral philosophy may have at least the rudiments of a consequentialist structure is an insight of potentially enormous importance, not only for how we think about Buddhist philosophy but also for how we in the West account for the origins of major ethical ideas - considering that we may have to advance the date of birth of universalist consequentialism by at least one thousand years. For the present purposes, I do not wish to rule out the consequentialist interpretation of Śāntideva, which is in any case sufficiently persuasive that it deserves recognition of its potential importance, even if - as both Clayton and Goodman admit - the case cannot be airtight, and the theoretical orientation of Śāntideva cannot be made out with certainty. I will give only cursory indications that some of the same doubts I have about the alleged consequentialism of the whole Mahāyāna tradition also apply to some remarks by Śāntideva. Meanwhile, however we might qualify our conclusions about Śāntideva, we will see how strong indeed is the case for reconceiving the history of ethics in light of these new interpretations, insofar as there may be more than a few 'traces' of consequentialism in these Indian Mahāyāna writings on ethics.[9]

Notes

Ono, Daijo kaikyõ no kenkyû, whose analysis is summarized by Chappell, "Are there Seventeen Mahāyāna Ethics?"
I define 'foundational' — in the sense, here intended, of fundamentally justificatory — in the first section. One might hesitate to say the same thing about the historical foundations of, for instance, Christianity. In relation to the latter sense of 'foundations,' one might argue that the founders of Christianity advocated a kind of universalist altruism, which, however, gradually developed justifications based partly or mainly on non-altruist considerations — already present in one form or another — such as personal salvation or the imitation of divine models (which then became major forms of motivation for moral engagement in various Christian traditions).
Clayton, Moral Theory in Śāntideva's Śikṣāsamuccaya; Clayton, "Śāntideva, Virtue and Consequentialism"; Goodman, Consequences of Compassion.
Remarks comparing Theravāda ethics with consequentialism — arguably a much more problematic comparison — can be found in Premasiri, "Moral Evaluation in Early Buddhism"; Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy, p. 61; and Dharmasiri, The Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics, p. 27. In the case of Mahāyāna ethics, the possibility of a consequentialist interpretation is noted with some skepticism in Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, but endorsed by Mark Siderits in "The Reality of Altruism" and in some of his other writings. Meanwhile, in the context of a particular area of applied ethics, comparisons with consequentialism have also been suggested by Wendy Donner in "The Bodhisattva Code and Compassion." There are deep and interesting questions, of course, about the extent to which these Western ethical concepts are commensurate with Buddhist ones. Though there is not room here to discuss these questions in detail, I do acknowledge some related methodological problems in note 24.
Though this may sound obvious, it is not uncommon to hear of a theorist such as John Rawls being described as consequentialist in some respects (e.g., in his use of the maximin principle and the difference principle), but non-consequentialist in others (e.g., in the absolute priority given to human rights). As we shall see, proper consequentialism cannot allow any limitation on the maximization of value, so any appeal to a non-consequentialist standard will make a view (such as Rawls') fundamentally non-consequentialist. (See below for a definition of 'standard,' as I use the term here.)
For reasons that will become apparent, Clayton is less vulnerable to this charge, though the closer she comes to agreeing with Goodman that an unqualified consequentialism is present in Śāntideva (and she is perhaps closer in "Śāntideva, Virtue and Consequentialism" than in her earlier book), the more vulnerable her interpretation may be as well.
Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics.
As Goodman argues, and as Peter Harvey suggests in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, pp. 50-51 — and as is suggested by the relative paucity of comparisons with Kantian ethics in the archives of journals such as the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.
For some persuasive arguments to the effect that later Mahāyāna ideas — both consequentialist and non-consequentialist — have antecedents in the Pāli Canon (hence the term 'trace'), see Dharmasiri, The Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics; Velez de Cea, "The Criteria of Goodness"; and chap. 3 of Goodman, Consequences of Compassion.

Citation

Davis, Gordon. "Traces of Consequentialism and Non-Consequentialism in Bodhisattva Ethics." Philosophy East and West 63, no. 2 (2013): 275–305.

Interconnections

Works related to this item