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Moral philosophy and‘Buddhist Ethics’Michael McGhee aa University of Liverpool ,Published online: 09 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Michael McGhee (2001) Moral philosophy and ‘BuddhistEthics’, Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2:1, 3-17, DOI:10.1080/14639940108573735

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Editorial Review

Moral Philosophy and'Buddhist Ethics'Michael McGheeUniversity of Liverpool

I recently had occasion to read two new books dedicated to the discussion of'Buddhist ethics'.1 They belong to different genres, one is a powerful and inspiringpersonal meditation, the other a rich and scholarly introduction, yet taken togetherthey evoke the atmosphere and spell out the range of their topic. But the phrases'Buddhist ethics' and 'Ethics for the new millennium' both appropriate a term thatderives from the Greek tradition and they invite the question, how do Buddhistreflections on character, conduct and demeanour relate to the Western enterprisethat goes under the name of'ethics-how do they relate to the critical discipline ofmoral philosophy?

One answer is that they might open up to the attention possibilities of moraldiscourse and of moral life that put pressure on the conception of that life anddiscourse that the philosopher implicitly and often unwittingly relies upon. This isthe attendant danger of ethical theory, that we make premature assumptions aboutthe ultimate nature of the psyche and its predispositions. But critical reflection onthese things is a central concern of the Buddhist traditions: and they offer accountsthat make ethical responsiveness a feature of these predispositions as they emergeunder particular conditions. The implication is that our 'nature' is already a'moral' nature, in the sense that thevery terms of moral criticism reflect emergentattitudes or perspectives that constitute the forms of anatta. So it would be amistake to think of morality as, for instance, a device or code or contract to beexplained or justified by reference to an independent, prior, and no doubt fixedhuman nature.

Religion and spirituality

The books are both addressed to readers who might be thought willing to ponderthe profit and the loss of an anti-metaphysical, post-religious, scientistic culture.The strangle-hold of this culture upon subjective life is the point of departure forTenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama. He announces himself a relative newcomer to themodern world (a pretty well-travelled newcomer, one might think), and thenunerringly focuses on the emotional and interior lives of those who live within theconfines of its dominant culture. He thus implicitly allies himself with a long lineof Western cultural critics. What he finds, unsurprisingly, is suffering and

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personal unhappiness among all classes, which he associates with a pervasive self-preoccupation. Although he does not concern himself directly with the systemicforces that reinforce this condition, he plausibly diagnoses it as the source of aglobal and catastrophic moral failure. This can only be overcome, he believes, bymore and more of us individually fulfilling the real condition of the happiness weseem to seek in vain, viz., a turning away from egocentrism and the developmentof a genuine concern for others.

One of the achievements of his book is the subtle way it makes clear that thephrase 'a genuine concern for others' is one which refers, not to a single and wellunderstood state of consciousness, but to a coiled set of possibilities, each onetranscending the last in its scope and concentration. This gives us the notion of anopen and self-transcending human nature, what we might think of as a 'spiritual'account of the interior of moral life. The Dalai Lama, indeed, calls for a 'spiritualrevolution', but he declares at the same time that 'we humans can live quite wellwithout recourse to religious faith' (p 20). What we cannot do without, however,is 'certain basic spiritual qualities', qualities which have an irreducible ethicalcontent. Nevertheless, he also claims that 'if we consider the world's majorreligions from the widest perspective, we find that they are 'all... directed towardhelping human beings achieve lasting happiness' (p 21).

There is an admirable ecumenical spirit here, but it remains unclear what this'widest perspective' is, or who has it, or how far it is available to the adherents ofthe world religions themselves. And the crucial problem about this apparent unityis the diversity of conceptions of happiness that are involved. Even if they allconcur in the need for a concern for others, the direction of that concern willdepend upon the conception of happiness that each one invokes.

The point is worth making, because the Dalai Lama seems to have a strongerthesis than he wishes to declare, and his real concern, despite his gesture towardsthe world religions, is to find an account of human happiness that by-passesreligious commitments, and speaks to that majority of the human race that are notby his criteria genuine religious practitioners. The distinction that he makesbetween religion and spirituality is that the former is concerned with faith in thesalvific claims of a tradition and involves acceptance 'of some form ofmetaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven ornirvana' (p 23). The latter, by contrast, is concerned with 'those qualities of thehuman spirit - such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness,contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony - which bring happinessto both self and others' (p 23). This gives us the sense of his call for a spiritualrevolution that he wants to be identified in primarily ethical terms.

But the notion of spirituality and its derivatives is couched in a language ofhuman transformation which nevertheless derives from particular religioustraditions. These traditions have determined the method of projection for thatlanguage and were no doubt the vehicles that secured the possibility of notions oftransformation that still, however, owe something to the world as it is religiouslyconceived. One cannot help noticing, after all, that the Dalai Lama's list of

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'spiritual qualities' has a definite Buddhist resonance. The delicate issue is howfar and in what way the spiritual can be peeled away from the religious in a post-religious age. It is tempting to think of 'spirituality' as universal and religion asspecific, but the two cannot be so easily dichotomised. Even those who have 'losttheir faith' in a particular religious tradition, but retain a sense of'spirituality', willbe inclined to tread a pathway through some tradition, will find a style ofspirituality, drawing on particular favoured narratives, parables, metaphors.Different traditions, moreover, may for a variety of historical reasons, be morefocused on one aspect of human reality than they are on another, some things areforegrounded in one, under-emphasised in another. This multiplicity of traditionscan cause conflict-but it may help us to see each other's blind spots. It is amistake to think that we need to look for 'a common spirituality' that transcendsindividual traditions. What human beings have in common is the possibility ofsome form of'spirituality'. The real criterion of what we thus share is not found inthe convergence of formulae but in conduct: in who is able to collaborate withwhom, and towards what goals, and with what motivation.

Now when we think of ourselves as 'post-religious' it is presumably becausewe no longer think of ourselves as living in the 'world' that is determined byreligion, though we should be cautious in our scepticism about just what world wethink is thus determined and rejected. The Dalai Lama sometimes talks in termsof 'faith' and sometimes in terms of 'belief, but it may be better to think of'religious faith' as itself a form of spirituality, summoned forth in a worlddetermined by 'belief: faith is a venture of the spirit, belief its conceptualbackground, and the dialectic between them is intricate. Once such beliefevaporates we are required to give an account of the 'world' that remains, andwithin which spiritual qualities continue to be summoned forth. It may be that ourspiritual lives will open out our conception of just what world we live in, ratherthan be constrained by a prior conception. But if there is a tension between thepossibilities of spirituality and the cramps of a particular religious orthodoxy, theDalai Lama returns us to the cramps of our present secularism and materialism.And we have to ask ourselves further, what kind of world must we live in ifspirituality is to be possible at all, and whether that world can be as it is conceivedby some forms of physicalism. In any event our dominant contemporary cultureand the unhappy state of our consciousness seem to obstruct access to what theDalai Lama calls 'ancient wisdom', and our danger is that we lose our culturalsense of the human possibilities that can be disentangled from what within ourtraditions we properly discard.

A problem about naturalism

The Dalai Lama speaks in his own voice and his words have the natural authorityof a sustained and well pondered meditation on personal experience, as he moveseloquently and sometimes movingly between practical reflection andautobiographical recollection. For his part, Professor Peter Harvey makes

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available to us, in a wide-ranging, detailed and sensitive survey, not only thepractical Buddhism of the past, but also the ways in which Buddhist thinking canbe brought to bear upon contemporary issues. He does this by richly illuminatingparticular Buddhist traditions, and by usefully drawing our attention to a nascentand so very contemporary Buddhist 'tradition' of intellectual engagement in theWest, as it concerns itself with questions of war and peace, of economics, theenvironment, gender and sexuality, as well as other issues. Readers of his bookwill be well briefed about the current state of Buddhist thinking, though they willfind Professor Harvey reticent about his own views. Perhaps this is as it should bein a survey of this kind. But in any event 'ethics', as he shows, is so close to theheart of the Dharma that his book also makes an excellent general introduction toBuddhism.

But what are we to understand by the expression 'Buddhist ethics' in the firstplace? How are 'we' to receive these books? Obviously there are mainstreamBuddhist traditions of practical reflection about how to 'act well1, with implied andexplicit views about what counts as acting well, and these are judiciously analysedby Harvey and tellingly exemplified by the Dalai Lama. What emerges is adistinctive conception of acting well, and a distinctive atmosphere of moralreflection, a serious 'ethos' without (too much) moral anxiety.

It is not so clear, though, that there is within Buddhism any prominent traditionof contest against moral scepticism, of responsive, critical thought about the verycategories of acting well. But this is not to say that the broad Buddhist conceptioncannot engage fruitfully, challenge or correct, the critical, theoretical tradition ofWestern ethical thinking, or even contribute to the resolution of long-standingcruces.

One crux of Western moral philosophy (discussed elsewhere in this volume)has been how to deal with David Hume's recognition of the problem of deriving'ought' from 'is', the problem of ethical naturalism, in which statements of factseem miraculously to generate unexplained evaluations. This is not really an issuethat it would be fair to expect either Professor Harvey or the Dalai Lama toconsider or comment on in the course of their books. However, they both seem to'commit the naturalistic fallacy'. On the other hand, their different representationsof the Buddhist tradition provide material that can be used to overcome theproblem. This is not to say that Buddhism solves the problem of naturalism-thepoint is that the possibility of an unproblematic naturalism is available inBuddhism as elsewhere.

Thus Harvey quotes Dhammapada 130, 'Life is dear to all. Comparing otherswith oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill1. He glosses this and similarremarks as follows: 'These passages emphasise that other beings are just likeoneself in desiring pleasure and disliking pain, so that there is no good reason toadd to the common lot of suffering by inflicting it on others' (p 34, italics added).But as it stands it is hard to see how there is any justification for Harvey'sconfident 'so'. His remark seems to exemplify Hume's problem. Now Hume didnot say it was impossible to proceed from 'is' to 'ought', he simply remarked

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ironically that the passage from the one to the other went unexplained. In factHarvey himself provides us with a possible explanation in his remarks on thefollowing page, when he refers to the Tathagata-garbha: 'Whatever a person islike on the surface, it is held that the depths of their mind are 'brightly shining' andpure ... This depth purity, referred to as the 'embryo of the Truth-attained One'...represents the potential for ultimate change...' Notice that Harvey here quiteproperly reports that 'it is held that' the depths of the mind are brightly shining.The Dalai Lama, as we have seen, has already adumbrated a problem about howwe are properly to relate ourselves to such a doctrine. He is concerned withspiritual qualities rather than with religious 'belief, including the belief in nirvana.So how are we supposed to evaluate 'the potential for ultimate change'? Well, thepotential for change is presumably well attested, people do change, even thoughthere is a gesture of faith in every moral appeal. But the notion of ultimate changeis the projection of a possibility that beckons and engages the imagination, thatbecomes plausible the more we are carried along towards it. Whether it isrealisable, as an experienced transformation, remains, for most of us,undetermined, though we may have glimpses of luminosity that encourage faith inthe possibility.

But even in terms of the very beginning of the trajectory, what we have here isthe idea of an appeal to a possibility of growth. Comparing others with oneself inthis context is an act of imagination that needs to be seen as belonging already toan atmosphere of moral striving, that cannot simply be assumed to be present. Itbrings home to a person so disposed the interiority of others. But the sameinteriority can be brought home to a person not so disposed. The unacknowledgedpremise is that in comparing others with oneself one represents to oneself theobject of a possible compassion (that can only begin to stir and awaken to theextent that it is presented precisely with its own objects). This presentation is as itwere one of the means by which the embryo is stimulated into growth. Unlessthat feeling of compassion is stirred, the relevant act of imagination, the insightinto another's condition, is compatible with and may register on an unregenerateconsciousness and simply stimulate sadism or provide a cue for cruelty. Thenatural gift of empathy can be used for bad ends. This is why Harvey's 'so'remains unearned. However, the Tathagata-garbha doctrine implies the idea of anawakening mind that fastens compassionately on the fact of, the presence of,suffering. It is only in the presence of that attitude of mind even in its earlieststirrings that the suffering of another counts at all as a reason for taking remedialaction. It is this awakening mind that mediates between Hume's 'is' and 'ought'.The 'is' (the presence of suffering) presents for a certain mind an actuallymotivating reason for taking action (one is moved by the suffering), a reasonwhose presence is implied and acknowledged by the derivative 'ought' of practicaljudgement-about what to do in the light of one's response. What is missing fromHarvey's equation is reference to the presence of an attitude of mind that can beappealed to in the relevant terms. It is implicit in the Buddhist texts, since it is anappeal to someone already on the path, but in the context of moral theory it would

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need to be made explicit. Reasons are functions of formations of mind.A similar problematic attends some crucial remarks of the Dalai Lama. He is

properly concerned to find a way between 'crude absolutism and trivial relativism'(p 29), and he shrewdly points out that moral rules cannot 'provide us with theanswer to every ethical dilemma'. On the other hand, he poignantly remarks that'we must have some means of adjudicating between, for example, terrorism as ameans to political reform and Mahatma Gandhi's principles of peaceful resistance.We must be able to show that violence towards others is wrong' (p 28).

(But notice the difference if we substitute 'force' for 'violence' in that lastsentence. The word 'violence' carries the evaluative implication of an illegitimateuse of force, so its wrongness is already written in, it is already conceived as aform of harm. It is not so clear, though, that 'force' is automatically harmful in thisway: more needs to be said. There is no doubt that this is an enormously difficultarea, not least in a Tibetan context. But we do need to mark the distinction. Civilsociety itself represents a kind of incomplete victory of force over violence for thesake of social justice: it depends upon many things if it is to survive, and one ofthese is the sanction of force. We do not criticise the police or the bodyguard forusing physical restraint and force when they have to. But we do criticise them ifthey become violent, and presumably the point here is that 'violence' is theexpression of a determinate (negative) state of mind and the use of force need notbe. Force is instrumental, violence is expressive, though it may be countered thatthere is a relation between one's mental states and the instruments one is preparedto use. The instrumentality of force (the fact that it works) is not itself a sufficientjustification, it has to be minimal and genuinely of last resort. So the violentterrorist is one thing, and maybe in some cases the freedom fighter who uses forceis another: but it is unlikely. It cannot ever simply be that force works. Anyfreedom fighter must answer the question whether their resort to force is not anexpression of political impatience or intemperance, is not, therefore, violence afterall. This is not the place to discuss these sensitive issues, but when civil orderbreaks down, for instance, judgment is hard and judgment is urgent. At least inthe context of civil society there are sanctions available if the police 'get out ofcontrol1: outside that context, even alas within it, it is easy to see how thedisciplined use of force, carried out with a heavy heart, can descend intounrestrained violence. And one also has to make realistic judgments aboutpossible outcomes, about escalation and the scale of reprisals. There will alwaysbe a question about whether 'peaceful resistance' is a policy or an absolute. Ineither case, quand lesjeux sontfait, as Sartre observed, when the chips are down,our decisions and actions will reflect the state of our interior dispositions.)

What we must do, the Dalai Lama says, is take as our starting-point theobservation that 'we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering'. But this is astarting-point for more than one kind of calculation. That we all (or at least theEnglish) desire happiness is itself & source of conflict for one thing, one outcomeof which may be a contractual resolution based on prudential self-interest.However, the Dalai Lama goes on: 'ethical conduct is not something we engage in

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because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desirehappiness and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural disposition, sharedby all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Accordingly, Isuggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not isits effect on others' experience or expectation of happiness. An act which harmsor does violence to this is potentially an unethical act' (p 29, italics added). TheDalai Lama is correct in his assertion that 'ethical conduct is not something weengage in because it is somehow right in itself, but it does not 'follow' from thenatural disposition to avoid suffering etc., that each individual has a 'right' topursue this goal. We may under certain political conditions give each other, orwin, rights. Or we may think that we and others 'ought' to have them. But in thatcase don't we have to make sense of that judgment in the light of a fundamentalattitude - an emerging compassion or sense of justice, perhaps, exemplified in justsuch reactions? 'Ethics' may have no other 'foundation', which is to say that it hasno foundation at all. In other words, it may depend upon, or better still beconstituted by, the development of that shen-pen hyi-sem, the thought to be of helpto others, that the Dalai Lama refers to. But this is aroused by perception ofpossible danger to the well being of others, though it may be better to think ofcompassion as the developed form of this, transcending and focused on theunredeemed human condition itself (with a correlatively tough-minded view ofwhat constitutes well being).

Or at least, what is highlighted here is the contention between two views orconceptions of moral life. One conception sees moral life start as a wary contractbetween opposing powers with fixed kinds of interest to protect, and the other inthe stirrings of a sense of justice and compassion. And both may be focused onthe possible happiness of the contending interest groups. Happiness or well beingare at stake in both, but the motivations for taking the interests of another intoaccount differ radically, and the views of what the interests could be varyaccordingly, and, of course, live in the same street, and when it gets to street-fighting they have different views about the merits of terrorism or peacefulresistance. In other words, the problem with the adjudication the Dalai Lamainsists on here is that it is not clear any longer what would count as anadjudication of what are fundamental stances-except one which was internal tothe one stance or the other, rather than being independent of both. There is noposition of even-handedness here. Nor is it a matter of choosing. 'Here I stand, Ican no other' is philosophically accurate as well as psychologically. The onlypossibility of movement on this issue appears to lie in the thought that where onestands, and where one could stand, depend upon conditions. In any event, it is notclear that we can show 'that violence towards others is wrong'. What we can do istrace out the pattern of transformation, the steps by which someone may pass fromthe one judgment to the other. And it may turn out that it is a path towards certainactions becoming in some strong sense impossible, a path to becoming a certainsort of person. But this kind of movement is constituted by the coming to takeseriously considerations that formerly may have meant nothing, and it is that

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which sets a limit on what can be shown and to whom.However, it is relevant to remind ourselves of the distinction between

sympathy and compassion, and this counts in favour of Harvey's insistence on theimportance of natural sympathy, at least as a starting-point. Buddhists can be glibabout compassion. But it is worth pondering whether and to what extentcompassion is an attitude that is available to us. Sympathy belongs betweenpeers, it is an expression of solidarity between people who share the samecondition. But compassion does not belong between peers. It is a prerogative, ifthat is the right word, of the Bodhisattva. Or at least, talk of Buddhas andBodhisattvas is a way of representing the possibility and ideal limit ofcompassion. It is directed towards those who struggle and suffer within acondition from which the one who feels compassion has been released. There are,of course, contexts in which it is possible for us to feel compassion on thatcriterion, even though it may be hindered or prevented by egocentricpreoccupations. But what is distinctively Buddhist is not so much compassion asa particular, developed object of compassion. There is a point to talk of thepossibility of a development within compassion of concentration and scope, sincethe ideal limit of compassion as it is represented in the traditions appears to focuson the human condition itself: and that seems to require a position outside thatcondition. Or a profound turning around of one's conception of what the humancondition could be. But it is only here that compassion becomes Buddhist. It isworth remarking at this point that compassion does not arise 'because' we see howthings really are. The relationship is more complex and more straightforward.Sympathy and compassion are both forms of natural responsiveness, though todifferent objects, as we have seen. But delusion is connected to the dominance ofcraving and aversion. Craving and aversion, however, also inhibit the formationand the sustaining of our natural disposition towards both sympathy andcompassion. When craving and aversion subside, we are more likely to see howthings really are. However, when craving and aversion subside, there is also morespace for the emergence of sympathy and compassion-and compassion is a formof response to delusion when delusion is seen for what it is.

Moral languages, scepticism and agon

The study, and that is not the right word, of what we in the West have called'ethics', has traditionally been an investigation into what constitutes good or badcharacter as it pertains to and expresses itself in good or bad conduct, right orwrong action. In fact the word ambiguously covers both the theoretical inquiryand the phenomena it inquires into. But in one way this is far too narrow. Forthere is also a more fundamental, essentially Platonic, conception of ethics, as anactivity of moral philosophy, as an agon or contest with protagonists, ethics as anintellectual and public response to a shamelessly aggressive challenge that belongsto a context of real political and psychological struggle. It is not an accident that ina political context in which outcomes matter, and where interested parties and

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elements of the psyche are in conflict and behaviour is unreliable, that thelanguage of'imperative', 'requirement', 'command', 'sanction', 'force', 'coercion','control', should have strongly influenced Western ethical thinking and penetratedour moral language: it is precisely because of its political context, its situationwithin a history of emancipatory political struggle, its relation to a profoundhuman interest in a precarious outcome, where emancipation is not an unexplained'value', but the convulsive life-struggle of the human animal. More to the pointthis language has reinforced the deeply tense subjective formations that gave riseto it. On the other hand, it is easy to see how in quieter times the political originsof this language become forgotten, even become irrelevant, so that it begins tolook foundational, and unexplained, and yet apparently the very form of theethical itself. The obtrusiveness of this language prevents our seeing what thealternatives might be. The ubiquity of force and sanction occasions dread, anemotion which drenches and preoccupies the mind, and this dread was renderedabsolute in once dominant versions of theological ethics in which human,monarchical commands became divine. Not that Buddhism is free from attemptsto control action through fear of consequences, in the form of vivid references tokarma and rebirth, to hell realms and heavens, whether or not these are conceivedas reward or punishment (cf. Harvey, p 16). Contemporary Buddhists are oftenagnostic about rebirth, but whether they are so or not there is a resilientexperiential residue or analogue of the doctrine in the proposition that you arechanged by what you do, become better or worse able to judge or act well, andthere is always the special, final punishment of not knowing any more that you arebeing punished.

The question for a Western reception of something called 'Buddhist ethics' iswhether its exponents can make explicit a conception of acting well that canchallenge, correct, reinforce or underpin related conceptions in the West. Harveycorrectly genuflects in the direction of Aristotle, Kant and Mill, but keeps adiscreet distance and does not raise the traditional problems, though he insists, asdoes the Dalai Lama, on the importance for Buddhism of the state of mind of theagent, though this is an importance acknowledged by most ethical theorists, even,perhaps even especially, the much misrepresented John Stuart Mill. The Achillesheel of the moral philosopher is not so much the implicit view of moral life thatthey draw on, as the moral possibilities they are unconscious of or otherwiseneglect, so that their moral theory privileges one point of view among others thatwere never considered, and which are now to be disregarded on the strength of theprior theory. The crucial point for a deployment of 'Buddhist ethics' is thatwhereas the theorist's account can be infected by a limited or distorted conceptionof the ethical possibilities, there is a remedy to be found in the perspicuousrepresentation of the alternatives, and both of these books offer us such a remedy.The striking, remedying contrast to the ethical language of command andsanction, and its characteristic tones of voice, is of course the context of spiritualpractice, and the language of kusala and akusala as well as that of 'precept' asthese are focused on conduct conducive or otherwise to bodhi and karuna. The

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tone of the Dalai Lama when he refers to the need for ethical restraint, and thenature of the considerations he appeals to, including the sober acceptance of thereality of dependent origination, need to be set side by side with the peculiar, butunderstandable anxieties of Western ethics. By this token, though, what the DalaiLama appeals to engages and encourages the alternative undercurrents of ethicalthinking in the West, traditions of transformation over against traditions ofrepression, the thinking of Spinoza, Schiller, Blake, Nietzsche.

But there is more. The political context of Western ethics has also set the scenefor the way we have answered the question, what determines our judgment aboutwhat is to count as good or bad conduct? The obvious answer is that there is ahuman interest underlying it, a human interest in promoting well-being andavoiding harm, which, as the Dalai Lama points out in other terms, shall be themeasure of what we judge good or bad conduct. The problem with this is thatmore needs to be said about how we conceive the ethical issues. In any case wehave merely displaced the problem, since most of us are in favour of well beingand against harm. The real question is, who determines what is to count as wellbeing or harm?

This is traditionally presented as a major area of disagreement, both betweenindividuals and between cultures, and some precipitate (trivial) form of moralrelativism is the lazy or defeated intellectual option. In one way this is surprisingsince our unexamined views about well being and harm are virtually universal andprecisely the source of dukkha and the kind of disappointment that leads to despairand/or spiritual inquiry. The confessional temptation, though, that 'we' have the'right' notion of well being and harm, should be resisted, partly because, for others,this move simply places one's own preference among an array of contenders, andthis is fuel to the relativist. But it should also be resisted in the spirit of the DalaiLama's concern to focus on spiritual qualities and to avoid the commitments ofbelief, including the belief in nirvana. So perhaps the crucial contribution ofBuddhism to ethical debate is not that it offers us a notion of well being in termsof enlightenment (which, of course, it does) but that it offers us the apparentlyempirical thought that our conception of well being arises in dependence onconditions, including, crucially, the condition of the mind. To put this anotherway, Buddhism has persistently claimed that we are ignorant of or deluded aboutthis feature of existence or that. What it constantly holds out to us is the thoughtthat we do not know how things really are, and this ignorance is partly associatedwith our grasping, with craving and aversion, which are also after all features ofour egocentrism and unconcern for the well-being of others. Implicit in this, then,is the idea that ethical action is one of the means by which the world reveals itselfto us, and that it is progressively revealed as our ethical action becomesprogressively more enlightened. In that sense ethics is prior to 'metaphysics' andnot vice versa. The point is that we are talking here about those features ofexistence that make a difference to us, that we would take account of in ourcalculations, that we would want to conform our behaviour to: once we realise thatsome course of action depends upon a false belief we are unable to proceed, and

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the formation of our concept of what will be good or bad for us, or for anyoneelse, depends upon our changing assessment of what kind of world we live in.This makes the Four Noble Truths, for instance, critical for our account of wellbeing, since we proceed through life with or without knowledge of their truth orfalsity. Their truth or falsity makes a difference to our perception of what is in ourbest interests.

But this returns us to the Dalai Lama's comment that links our generalunhappiness with our egocentrism. Furthermore, this opening up of the world andthe psyche provides an interesting possible corrective for Western ethics. Thusthere is a plausible remedy against or rather limit on moral relativism in ourcommon reactions against tyranny and slavery, which takes us straight to theemancipatory interest of the Enlightenment. But perhaps for obvious reasons thatproject was more preoccupied with emancipation from than emancipation for.The danger here is that metaphysics might get in the way prematurely, in the waythat the Dalai Lama sought to by-pass, but Buddhism does offer us anexperientially testable account of the ways in which human nature might open out,so that we have the means of forming a distinctive conception precisely of whatemancipation might be for. Buddhism offers us not only a diagnosis of theinterior dispositions that tend towards tyranny, and from which, hard lesson, one ismanifestly not released if one is freed from slavery, but also offers usrepresentations of an enlightened or awakened human nature.

However, it would be a mistake to suppose that morality or ethics is merely aninstrument for the attainment of that nature, whether merely in oneself or also inothers, since a recognisably ethical disposition is clearly also constitutive of it. Inthat case we should perhaps highlight the distinction between precepts, or whatHarvey calls 'moral guidelines', which become means to the attainment of acertain "brightly shining mind', and the ethical dispositions and demeanours thatare expressive of that state, though the distinction is presumably a graduated onemarked by the progressive elimination of self-regarding motives. But thepurification of the motive was already an ethical impulse, quite independently ofBuddhism, and that should remind us to be wary of expressions like 'BuddhistEthics', unless we take them to indicate that at a certain moment our ethical lifetakes a distinctively Buddhist turn. You do not need to be a Buddhist to beconcerned about slavery, or environmental interdependence, for instance. It is notso much pratityasamutpada that is distinctively Buddhist, as its applications.What becomes crucial then in our deployment of a Buddhist ethics is to separateout very clearly in our minds the motivation for becoming a certain sort of personfrom the motivation for doing what such a person is naturally disposed to do,which is presumably a concentration and development of a prior but intermittentethical impulse. I may have self-regarding reasons for becoming the sort ofperson who has stable other-regarding reasons for action, and this should provideus with the template for reflecting with a proper caution on the human tendency toact for others for self-regarding reasons. On the other hand, Harvey shows us verywell how pragmatic and realistic the Buddhist tradition is with regard to egoism,

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even in its most subtle forms. Among some contemporary moral philosophers it iscommonplace to highlight and despise such forms of motivation, and there ismore than one perhaps over-intellectualised tradition in which they aretriumphantly exposed. Of course such exposure, in the right spirit, is entirelyproper at one level, but the Buddhist tradition, without being alone in this,heuristically acknowledges a hierarchy of motivation, and seeks to secure ethicalaction on the basis of human consciousness both as it is and as it might be. Thismay be a comfort for those who have become desperate not to think of the fruitsof action, as though they could simply will into being the state of consciousnessthat did not do so. The Dalai Lama, for instance, is very good at connectingsympathetically with the natural desire for happiness and showing almost bystealth, though there are occasional glimpses of a steely tough-mindedness, how'happiness' depends upon conditions that include the development of hard-wonpractical virtues that issue in as well as protect a concern for the welfare of others.

The notion of a Buddhist diagnosis allows us to make a further connection, andto start to defend the claim that the difference between the two conceptions of themoral life is itself grounded in an internal moral disagreement that cannot beindependently adjudicated. The question that the hard men of Plato's Republicaddressed to Socrates was 'why should I be just?' It has drifted down to us overthe centuries in different forms - 'why should I be moral?' or 'why should I beconcerned with the happiness of others?' - and has been a main point of entry intomoral philosophy. In Plato's dialogue, the question is a truculent scepticalchallenge: to respond to the charge that really there is no reason to 'act justly1,except that of force majeure - no one is just save under compulsion, so that wherethere are no sanctions or where it does not pay there is therefore no reason. Butthe question need not be asked in that truculent spirit, it can also express agenuine, disinterested doubt about how morality is motivated or to be justified.However, students of philosophy have to learn early that questions can be assuspect as answers, and that their presuppositions need to be brought to light.Notice the surreptitious move from 'being just' to 'acting justly', which is at theheart of nearly all of this, and is connected with the need to distinguish 'moralguidelines' from 'ethical dispositions'. The question asked is 'why should I bejust?' but the answer that is expected is actually to the different question, 'whyshould I act justly?' To be just is to be disposed towards acting justly, so thequestion really requires an answer to the question, why should I become a certainsort of person? To that question it is relevant to offer a self-regarding answer, tomake the claim that you will be 'happier' or more 'fulfilled', enjoy a state ofeudaimonia and so forth. To act justly, on the other hand, is a behaviour that mayor may not express the disposition to be just, and is therefore compatible withconforming one's behaviour to a set of agreed rules or laws for self-interestedmotives, where such behaviour is not an expression of a person's naturaldemeanour or disposition. It is tempting to say that the questioner who conflates'being just' with 'acting justly' shows no strong sense of the distinction, does notcomprehend what in the Buddhist tradition might be said to depend upon a change

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in the form of a person's consciousness, so that their intellectual attitude ortheoretical stance reflects a state of consciousness itself. But we have to make theproviso that a person's intellectual attitude can be out of kilter with their practicalattitude.

So what is the relationship between the Glauconian challenge and the idea ofethics as an investigation of character and conduct? Well, the point is that thechallenge expresses an ethos or state of character already, a prior condition that isitself susceptible of scrutiny in ethical terms. The self-confident challengedemands a reason for 'acting justly1, but what escapes its awareness is a distinctionbetween 'acting justly', conceived as an external conformity of behaviour topragmatic rules of conduct, and acting with justice, where the considerations thatprompt or motivate action are reasons internal to or constitutive of a just mind.Now the Glauconian challenge reduces morality to a matter of acting in certainagreed ways for prudential reasons, but the temptation is to resist this even whileretaining the same adverbial model of 'acting justly' and then looking for someother kind of reason or motivation than the instrumental for morality.

Thus if you reject the idea that morality is properly to be commended forprudential reasons, say, on the grounds that it then becomes merely instrumental, ameans to an end, so that it is prudence rather than morality that is beingcommended, then the next temptation is to assume that what we must rather seekto do is to commend morality for its own sake, and to make the connection withrationality by attempting to show, as Immanuel Kant did, that acting for the sakeof duty is itself in some way an exercise of (pure practical) reason.

But there is a false disjunction behind this procedure. The choice appears to beone between 'acting justly1 or 'morally' as a means to an end, or ... doing so as anend in itself. It looks as though Harvey is tempted in this direction (cf., p. 17, 19),though it is rejected, as has been seen, by the Dalai Lama. But in order to exposethe false disjunction we need to look more closely at what is involved in the ideaof being moved to action by considerations of justice. The figure of theBodhisattva offers an alternative model, since it is the figure of a person who ismoved to act by the distress of sentient beings, by concern for the welfare of themany. The point is that such a person does not 'act for the sake of justice', ormorality, but, rather, they act for the sake of those on whose behalf they act, andthis is what constitutes them 'just'. It is true that an action's being good does notconsist in its having 'pleasant karmic results', but that it has these results because itis good or wholesome-but what makes it good is not that it is done for the sake ofgoodness but that it is done for the sake of sentient beings, and this is as it werethe judgment of the Bodhisattva.

However, we need to be clear what this means. The Bodhisattva's conduct is anatural expression of what we might call an achieved formation of mind, anexpression of the natural direction of a liberated disposition. Thus such a personis not concerned for the welfare of the many because they believe that they oughtto be so concerned, it is just that the concern has developed, as a kind of innernecessity of orientation, under a developed concept of well being, where the

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whole samsaric struggle itself is the fundamental object of compassion. But ittakes a Bodhisattva to have that perspective. It is one thing to act out ofcompassion, and another to act on the grounds that one ought to becompassionate. And this is a genuine and crucial disjunction. Although there is amajor moral difference between the two it is clear that acting in the latter way is apossible route to the former, in the sense that the one motivation can be a means ofachieving the other. In a Buddhist context the distinction that has just been madehelps us to determine the role of the precepts, as means by which the mind of theBodhisattva may be brought about or achieved.

However, the 'ought' that has just been invoked, in referring to the belief thatone ought to be compassionate, is widely misunderstood. In order to understand itaright as a source of motivation, it is helpful to connect it to the notion ofdevelopment that has also just been invoked. There is a sense in which aBodhisattva ought to be concerned with the welfare of the many which derivesfrom the fact that Bodhisattvas are concerned for that welfare. This is thepredictive or epistemic sense of ought {not the practical sense), so that theproposition that a Bodhisattva 'ought' to be concerned with the welfare of themany implies that there is good reason to believe that a Bodhisattva will be soconcerned. The forensic bite to this claim is that the absence of such a tendency isprima facie evidence that the being is not after all a Bodhisattva. On the otherhand, if a person believed that their deepest impulse was towards compassion, andfelt that their inner impediments to its expression were indeed impedimentspreventing them from their own authentic action, it would be appropriate for themto form the judgment, in particular cases, that they ought to be compassionate,again in the epistemic sense that there is reason to believe that they would act outof compassion if they were not prevented by their own internal impediments, andthis would itself act as a spur to the action necessary to eliminate the impediments.Such a person may have reason to believe that they would act out of compassion ifthey were free to do so, and this is the Buddhist rationale for a programme aimedat liberation, from tendencies thus seen as defilements, from the perspective of adeveloping citta.

What we might thus call the Bodhisattva ethic in fact has much in commonwith Plato's approach. Socrates' response to the hard men who assert that no oneis just save under compulsion is essentially to acknowledge the empiricalplausibility of the claim - it does seem that people will generally do what they canget away with - and then to offer a diagnosis of this reality, one that invokes adistinction between an ordered or harmonious psyche, on the one hand, and adisordered one on the other. Justice is the peculiar excellence of the mind, we aretold, and injustice its defect. A certain 'character', as Aristotle might say, isdisposed to act justly, or better, to act with justice, another is disposed to actunjustly, though it will act justly if it sees an advantage to itself in so doing.

Now there is an incompleteness about this account. It seems clear enough thatif someone is dominated by unruly passions or appetites then they are likely toride roughshod over the interests of others in order to get what they want. But

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there remains a question-why is it that someone with a harmonious psyche, one ofthe spiritual qualities mentioned by the Dalai Lama, is disposed to act withjustice? On the other hand, maybe we shouid more properly ask why someonewho is disposed to act with justice has a harmonious psyche? If we do not ask thisquestion, this way round, then we may suppose that we can understand the idea ofa harmonious psyche quite independently of any account of the directions of aperson's dispositions. The Platonic account depends upon a view about thedevelopment of eros, and there is a stage of its development in which it is focusedwithout resistance on moral beauty. The Buddhist analogue is the figure of theBodhisattva radiantly and without inner resistance dedicated to the welfare of themany.

Notes1 Ancient Wisdom Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium. (2nd Edition). By

Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama. Little, Brown, 2000, pp 241.An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics. By Peter Harvey. Cambridge University Press, 2000,

pp 478.

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