Buddhist Moral Teachings is not Virtue Ethics: A Critical Response to Damien Keown’s View

Abstract

In the Buddhist tradition, there is an expansive collection of texts that explore the topic of ethics, addressing moral questions concerning the right and wrong behaviors, virtues, vices, and so forth. However, when examining the main texts of this tradition, we find an absence of a structured moral philosophy that systematically and critically analyzes moral values and principles. Therefore, Buddhist scholars have responded in different ways to the perplexing situation in which Buddhism largely lacks an explicit theory in moral philosophy. Some scholars argue that we should read Buddhist moral teachings as one of the contemporary ethical theories, such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. Damien Keown is one of the scholars who claims that “virtue ethics” is the best way to understand Buddhist ethics. This paper analyzes and critiques Damien Kewon’s reading of Buddhist moral teachings as Virtue ethics. I argue that such interpretation poses problems, primarily because it may overlook key aspects of Buddhist beliefs deemed inconsequential to contemporary ethical debates, and secondly, it could result in the imposition of non-authentic Buddhist ideas on Buddhist ethics.