Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defence of Buddhist Ethics.

• Author: Heim, Maria
• Position: Book review

Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics. By CHARLES GOODMAN. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009. Pp. vii + 250. $74.

This book offers an exercise in comparative ethical theory and argues that Buddhist ethics is best interpreted as a kind of consequentialism. Goodman takes his readers through the three main families of ethical theory in contemporary western philosophy (virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism) and argues that not only does Buddhism have its own distinctive variants of rule- and act-consequentialism, but that it can make a valuable contribution to contemporary western ethical discussion on many points. The book is aimed primarily at refuting Damien Keown's work, which argues that Buddhist ethics is most similar to Aristotelian virtue ethics. Although Goodman refers to "the Buddhist tradition" as a whole, the book focuses on a careful selection of Theravada and Indian and Tibetan Mahayana sources. Goodman also takes up in a constructive manner questions about Buddhism's views on punishment and argues that Buddhists offer a coherent, compassionate, and nonretributive theory of punishment. Finally, he argues, again constructively rather than descriptively since Buddhists do not use these categories, that Buddhists reject free will and moral responsibility, and they advance what he calls a "hard determinism."

While the writing is clear and accessible and the comparative work on the side of the western theorists is solid, the book is marred by a holistic approach that plagues much of the current philosophical work in Buddhist ethics (including that of Keown). The methodology involves a careful mining of the textual sources for passages that support the western ethical theory that the author advances. The resulting selection of passages is construed as representing the "moral core" or the "unity" of Buddhism's ethical theory. This methodology elides Buddhist traditions' own systematic ethical theorizing, their distinctively different ways of asking questions about morality and moral agency, and the highly textured and heterogeneous nature of the vast assortment of thinkers that fly under the banner of "Buddhism." Moreover, by treating ethics primarily in terms of dilemma-based problem solving rather than, say. explorations of moral psychology, the possibilities for engaging deeply the ways that Buddhists themselves set up formal moral reflection are preempted.

For example, the...