[Buddha-l] Non attached & mindful culinary triumphalism?

[andy]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> On Jul 13, 2011, at 14:25 , andy wrote:

> > So Richard, in regard to your project, are you not going to include the
> > other main ethical theory, deontology?
> 
> I am the only person I can find who has suggested that one might regard
>  Buddhist ethics as having a deontological dimension. People who write
>  about Buddhist ethics seem to be agreed that whatever else one might think
>  about Buddhist ethics, it is CLEARLY not deontological. So I guess a
>  deontologist kant be a Buddhist.
> 
Thank you for not missing the set-up!   I am disturbed, only slightly, by the 
point Eric brought up earlier, that there is no normative force behind the 
Buddhist rules.  If you want to keep suffering, by all means keep at it. There 
is your free will.  But, there is a sense in which Buddha  proposes a 
teleological ethics, that claims to be non-defeasible. The Tathagata is he who 
has done what is to be done, which implies it is to be done.  So virtue 
ethics, aimed at consequences, but these are not the usual consequences of 
happiness (a la Aristotle).  So a consequentialist ethics, based on an 
omniscient insight, is equivalent to deontology?  Kant says as much when he 
distinguishes hypothetical imperatives as rules of skill (if you want this, do 
this), and the rules of prudence (if you want to be happy, do this), with the 
difference being that where rules of skill are a priori but hypothetical, 
prudence is assumed to be a priori but the rules are a posteriori, or subject 
to doubt and experiment.  Moral rules, the categorical imperative, is supposed 
to command uncategorically, but that leaves open the possiblity that if the 
rules of prudence were known rather than surmised, they would as well be 
categorical?   Doing what is to be done, that is as close as I can get to 
making Buddhism deontological at this point.   And rationality?  Not sure what 
to make of that from a Buddhist perspective. Probably just me.
-- 
James Andy Stroble