Karma, Character, and Consequentialism

Karma is a central feature of Buddhist ethics, but the question of its classification in terms of ethical theory has so far received little attention. Granting that karma is foundational to Buddhist ethics and arguing that what is fundamental to the Buddhist understanding of karma is the saṃskāric modification of the agent, this article relates the doctrine of karma as understood in Theravāda Buddhism to Western ethical concepts and challenges the casual consensus that treats Buddhist ethics as a variety of consequentialism. The contrary argument, that Buddhist ethics is best understood in terms of virtue-mediated character transformation, is made dialectically through a critique of recent discussions of karma by Roy Perrett and Bruce Reichenbach and through an assessment of the plausibility of Philip Ivanhoe's concept of "character consequentialism." ANY SYSTEMATIC ACCOUNT OF BUDDHIST ETHICS must before long make reference to karma. Belief in karma is a constant which underlies the philosophical diversity of the many Buddhist schools, and it is one of the few basic tenets to have escaped major reinterpretation over the course of time. There now exists a voluminous body of scholarly literature on karma, from both Hindu and Buddhist perspectives (for a bibliography, see Potter 1980), but surprisingly, in view of the frequent references to karma as an "ethical" doctrine, almost no attention has been paid to how karma is to be classified in terms of ethical theory. There seem to be two families of Western theories to which karma bears a resemblance: consequentialism and virtue ethics. The 1 Of course, much effort and debate went into clarifying the nature of karma and its operation. However, there appears to have been no substantial revision or development in the basic concept. Some modification might have been expected from the Mahāyāna schools in the course of their revisioning of other basic teachings such as those on causation, nirvana, and the nature of the Buddha, but no significant developments seem to have taken place. 2 The terms "consequentialism" and "utilitarianism" are used interchangeably in what follows. I think it will be clear that the account of karma and Buddhist ethics offered here is of a descriptive rather than a normative kind.