[Buddha-l] What's the point

[Randall Jones]

Thank you, Richard.

I'll get Goodman's The Consequences of Compassion 
and keep a look out for the upcoming Sophia article.

Randall

At 12:45 PM 7/12/2011, you wrote:
>On Jul 12, 2011, at 9:01, Randall Jones 
><randall.bernard.jones at gmail.com> wrote: > Maybe 
>it's just a senior moment, but I'm having 
>trouble remembering > what's the point of the 
>prohibition against killing. Assuming the 
>context is traditional Buddhism, and that we're 
>not talking about vinaya rules, there are no 
>prohibitions. What there are instead are 
>voluntary training principles that one 
>undertakes. The point, broadly speaking, is 
>conformity with a community to which one has 
>chosen to belong. In an excellent book (with 
>which I find myself in profound disagreement on 
>several points), Charles Goodman argues that 
>Buddhists follow precepts out of respect for the 
>Buddha. One honors him by acting as he did. (I 
>don't disagree with that at all.) Buddhas, 
>arhants and bodhisattvas, says Goodman, do not 
>engage in any kind of moral reasoning. They do 
>not deliberate at all on how to behave. They 
>simply act. Moreover, since there is no free 
>will in Buddhism (says Goodman), buddhas etc 
>have NO CHOICE but to act harmlessly. It's not 
>that they choose not to kill and to be honest 
>and to desist from harsh speech and backbiting; 
>it's that a buddha, arhant or bodhisattva simply 
>cannot deliberately step on a cockroach, tell a 
>lie, say a negative thing (even true) about 
>another or drink a beer. Goodman has argued 
>these points in various papers in several 
>different journals, but much of what he has said 
>is recapitulated in The Consequences of 
>Compassion. A breathtakingly excellent critique 
>of Goodman's position will be coming out soon in 
>Sophia (the philosophical journal by that name 
>published by Springer). I don't know the 
>author's name, but I did a blind review of the 
>article and have heard that it was indeed 
>accepted after receiving praise from several 
>reviewers. It's called "Freedom with a Buddhist 
>Face." (As one can infer from the title, the 
>author is convinced that there is freedom of 
>will in Buddhism, even among buddhas and 
>bodhisattvas.) One more thing to say about 
>Goodman is that he rejects Keown's position that 
>Buddhist ethics are of the virtue-ethics 
>variety. His claim is that Aristotle (and also 
>most Stoics) sees virtue as something that 
>results in eudaemonia, which is usually 
>described as having a healthy and flourishing 
>self (which is in turn seen as the best way to 
>be instrumental in the flourishing of others). 
>But if there is no self, says Goodman, there is 
>no one or nothing to flourish. Therefore a 
>Buddhist who adheres to anˆgtman can't be a 
>virtue ethicist. He is quite adamant on this 
>point. So Buddhists must be consequentialists, 
>he says. But what kind of consequentialist? His 
>answer is: character-consequentialist, that is, 
>someone who believes that cultivating good 
>character by accumulating virtues has good 
>consequences. That is fine, but it ends up being 
>just about exactly what a virtue-ethicist says 
>in the first place. So it looks as though 
>Goodman is rejecting a position when it is 
>called by one name and then endorsing that very 
>same position when it goes by another name. He 
>certainly wouldn't be the first philosopher, or 
>even the first Buddhist philosopher, to do that. 
>There is more to say, but if I said it now, I 
>would be late to an appointment with a student. 
>And keeping others waiting is inconsiderate, and 
>that is no virtue. Richard (one of many) 
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