Conceptualizing Personhood for Sustainability: A Buddhist Virtue Ethics Perspective

Virtue Ethics for Christians

If one would tackle any major problem in life it is helpful to observe the comprehensive nature of the thing from an external vantage point before diving into the gritty details. This is also described as grasping the “big picture” or getting a birds-eye-view on the problem. I think that this holistic approach is helpful when dealing with ethical issues as well. In this paper I will first defin...

Truth telling and severe fetal diagnosis: a virtue ethics perspective.

PURPOSE Increased use of prenatal technologies has increased the numbers of women and partners whose fetus is diagnosed with a severe impairment. Virtue ethics provides a useful perspective to consider truth telling in this context, specifically how couples and providers interpret the diagnosis and prognosis to create truth. Virtue ethics is person-centered rather than act-centered, with moral ...

Journal of Buddhist Ethics

I argue that central Buddhist tenets and meditation methodology support a view of free will similar to Harry Frankfurt’s optimistic view and contrary to Galen Strawson’s pessimistic view. For Frankfurt, free will involves a relationship between actions, volitions, and “metavolitions” (volitions about volitions): simplifying greatly, volitional actions are free if the agent approves of them. For...

Talking Virtue: professionalism and virtue ethics

The twentieth century phenomenon of professionalism had a major impact on the economy of nation states and has been recognised as a key element of post-industrial societies. As an anointed class, professionals reserved the right to prescribe their own roles and responsibilities. Critics of professional interests, however, have described professionals’ own definition of their roles and responsib...

Journal of Buddhist Ethics