Material quoted here is drawn from the paper by Owen Flanagan, Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, which was published in “Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology and Psychology” edited by Nancy E. Snow, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Professor Flanagan opens his paper with a conveniently clear pointer:
“This is my topic. Buddhism is philosophically interesting and unusual as living ethical systems go, or so I claim, in that it is explicit in seeing that training in virtue involves teaching about more than virtue. Becoming virtuous Buddhist style requires a certain understanding of reality and the human predicament, even a metaphysics, according to which everything, including your self, is understood to be interdependent and impermanent.”
So, we do not need to search for the common element of the teaching-learning-cultivation of virtue that we’ve already seen in Aristotle, Confucius, Franklin, Ignatius Loyola and others. An interesting question that this raises is the influence of karma and reincarnation, then. Should we take it that the virtues are not “carried forward” from one lifetime to another?
Another point made by Flanagan as he approaches his analysis:
“This central feature of Buddhist ethics is, I think, best understood as involving a vow, a decision, a calling, a compelling attitude, a conviction that a Buddhist person finds natural to adopt and accept as her own after—or as she is—absorbing Buddhist metaphysics.”
That vow is to “alleviate suffering for all sentient beings.”
“Buddhists clearly care about virtue in the sense that they care about goodness, about good people, about people with good values who behave in a morally decent and upstanding manner. Whether and to what extent Buddhism is committed to virtues—conceived as internal dispositions of character—as the psychological equipment by way of which good persons are good is a different and more complicated question.”
In this attachment to goodness as opposed to virtues we might find an analog to the Aristotelian idea of there being really just one virtue from which all others derive.
“Traditional Buddhist philosophy provides abundant resources for normative ethics. There are expressions of value, norms of behavior, abundant rules, absolute prohibitions, long lists of wholesome and unwholesome states of the heart and mind, self-cultivation techniques, rules of thumb, antidotes to vice, aids to virtue, and all sorts of stories about the Buddha’s past lives to instruct the youth. But there is nothing in the way of metaethics.”
That is, there is no real body of thought about what morality, itself, really is.
“This has led to controversy among Western philosophers as to whether Buddhist ethics is a virtue theory, a kind of consequentialism…a kind of religious ethics with deontic structure, and so on.”
One of the problematic issues that Flanagan raises is the extent of the differences among Buddhist traditions, teachings and practices. The inability of Western philosophers to agree on a category in which to place “Buddhist” ethics, though, is more a matter of its important non-conceptual components.
The meditative and mindfulness practices of the Buddhists and the results on the practitioner are experiential rather than conceptual. It is difficult to explain a non-conceptual understanding in the hyper-precise language of Western philosophy.
“What one grasps in the work of meditation, what one experiences, is a calling—something akin to an overpowering desire, which, thanks to the prior work of philosophical preparation in noself and its suite, one sees no reason to refuse…There are different ways to express what happens: I experience a powerful call; I experience myself as having a duty to all sentient beings; I feel drawn to a life of great compassion (maha-karuna).”
This is clearly not an intellectual process. In fact, Flanagan suggests we understand Buddhist ethics as a combination of three “inextricably interwoven elements”:
a) certain philosophical views that presumably can be conceptualized,
b) a system of mindfulness and meditative practices that produce non-conceptual understandings, and,
c) “a complex moral tool kit akin to a Swiss army knife.”
These three elements, working together over the course of time, are “required to live a good human life”.
Flanagan comments interestingly on what he sees as “conventional morality”. I am not sure I either understand why he says what he does or that I agree with him, but I’ll quote the longish passage to provide context. He writes:
“It is worth noting that a common feature of conventional moralities is that, whereas virtues may differ in range, scope, and extent, it is rare that what one group (Confucians, Aristotelians, Buddhists) thinks is a general virtue type is conceived a vice by some other group. That said, the conventional morality endorsed as virtuous does not consist, not obviously at least, of recommendations that people possess or cultivate certain virtues, where virtues are conceived as traits, as reliable dispositions to perceive, feel, judge, and act in the right ways. What are endorsed are performing certain actions or refraining from certain actions, doing or not doing certain things.”
The two points that I find very interesting are: a) the commonality of virtue ideas across cultures, and b) the idea that it is the actions expressive of virtue and that cultivate it that are endorsed. I think that there actually are others, as we have seen, who “recommend that people possess or cultivate certain virtues”. That’s really not in question. So, I don’t understand Flanagan’s point. He does, in fact, go on to present the four “immeasurable virtues” of Buddhism.
“These immeasurable virtues are: • Compassion—the disposition to alleviate suffering for all sentient beings. •Loving-kindness—the disposition to bring happiness to all sentient beings. •Sympathetic joy—the disposition to experience joy at the successes of all others including in zero-sum games. •Equanimity—the disposition to want the well-being of all sentient being equally. These traits involve dispositions to perceive, feel, think, and act in ways characteristic of the virtue in question. They develop slowly and much of the work of development involves self-work, self-cultivation, and mindfulness.”
These four virtues seem to be central to Buddhist belief and practice. If they are expressions of the single idea of “goodness” that Flanagan points out earlier, the pattern again seems Aristotelian. And the notion of slow cultivation over time is again like that of several others we’ve discussed.
“Buddhists often use the language of skill to describe what we might call a virtue. Developing the relevant skills or virtues involves self-cultivation.”
Virtue is developed through skillful action is a recurring theme.
“In the Dhammapada, we read: All tremble at violence; All fear death. Seeing others as being like yourself, Do not kill or cause others to kill. And later: Doing no evil, Engaging in what’s skillful, And purifying one’s mind: This is the teaching of the buddhas.”
Here the reference to “seeing others as being like yourself” is a fundamental Ethic of Respect idea.
But now Flanagan appears to explicitly differentiate the Buddhist from the Aristotelian ideas. He writes:
“There is no text I know of that provides, for example, anything like an Aristotelian theory of habituation in virtue. But here are some surmises: Buddhist children are raised into the Buddhist form of life in all the usual ways, by direct instruction in do’s and don’ts, and in the norms and values that one would expect in socio-moral ecologies we think of as Buddhist. The methods of developing as a good Buddhist person are all the familiar ones, including Aristotelian virtue education.”
So, with or without a specific textual basis, the actual educational approach of the Buddhist is not different from the Aristotelian. But there is a distinction that appears to be meaningful for Flanagan.
“One feature that emerges in Buddhism, and that is different from principle-based theories or divine-law ethics, is that the Buddha practices what Buddhists call “skillful means”; he reveals his compassion and loving-kindness in the ways that particular situations call for. There are elements of particularism in Buddhism. The widespread use, and possible importance, of exemplars is worth thinking about. It is not incompatible with virtue theories, or utilitarianism or Kantianism, but it is not often emphasized in discussions in these traditions.”
This use of the “exemplar”, as Flanagan describes it, seems consistent with the study of the lives of the saints, for example, in Catholicism. And Hasidic Judaism has a wealth of stories about those who study Hasidic masters, both living (at the time of the story) and dead, as exemplars in the same fashion.
As he concludes, Flanagan brings a sort of “reality check” for Westerners who might be tempted to find more influence of the Buddhist tradition in the lives of those who live in that tradition. He writes:
“If the question is about life-long practice of what in the West we think of as meditation—for example, sitting Samadhi or Vipassana, or even chanting (“Namu Amida Butsu”)—then the best answer is that Buddhist children— outside of monasteries—meditate about as often as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian people pray. That is to say, again, that how much is highly variable, but the worldwide average is in the vicinity of not-very-much…”
And, further:
“…if one subtracts belief in karma and rebirth from Buddhism, then there is no prudential basis for a life of great compassion and loving-kindness. So why would we want or aim to be that virtuous?”
However…
“If one starts with the metaphysic of no-self and massive cosmic interdependence, then an ethic of great compassion and loving-kindness is a sensible place to build toward.”
I take this to mean that there is a basis for great compassion and loving-kindness if one believes in karma and rebirth, which are central to Buddhist understanding, but that for those who do not hold those beliefs there is another route to the same end.
Why the existence of that alternate route might be important to Buddhists I do not know, but it is clearly a point that Flanagan finds important.
©Charles R. Lightner