Jay L. Garfield, "Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration" (Oxford UP, 2021)
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What is Jay Garfield’s main goal in writing *Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration*?
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Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating. Today we'll be talking to Jay Garfield, author of Buddhist Ethics A Philosophical Exploration, published in twenty twenty one by Oxford University Press as part of their Buddhist Philosophy for Philosophers series. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, Jay.
Thanks very much for having me, Malcolm. It's a real joy to be here.
Well great, I'm glad to talk to you too. Uh so let's dive in. Your book is an introduction to Buddhist ethics written specifically for philosophers. And we'll get into the details of the philosophy in a minute, but like also what kind of introduction it is, how we should understand Buddhist ethics and so on. Uh but let's start with the big picture about the book. What is the book's main goal and why did you think it was an important book to write?
Yeah. Um a few years ago I published a book with Oxford called Engaging Buddhism Why It Matters to Philosophy. And Oxford decided that it would be a really cool thing to follow that book up. with a series of books on specific topics in philosophy for philosophers. One on metaphysics, one on epistemology, one on ethics, and so forth. And so this is the ethics volume in that series. And um I thought it was just really important to have one on ethics because even though there are a number of good introductions to Buddhist ethics Um, I didn't feel like there was one that did exactly what I wanted to do, um, which was to approach Buddhist ethics on its own terms in the context of Buddhist philosophy more generally.
Um so I thought it'd be a good idea to actually contribute to this series of ideas.
Okay. We'll talk about why your approach is different than some existing approaches in a little bit. But first let's back up to and ask a question I usually ask us, um, how did you come to be interested in the book's topic? And for you, I mean you've been working on Buddhism for a long time. So Maybe let me ask a more narrow question. How did you get interested in Buddhist ethics specifically? Uh I mean a lot of people are looking at like metaphysics or epistemology. What drew you to ethics?
That's a really good question. Um, 'cause I first came to Buddhist philosophy interested in questions in metaphysics and epistemology. And a lot of my work was in that area. But um one of my teachers in Buddhist philosophy, the Venerable Geshe Yeshitopka, is always fond of emphasizing whenever he teaches that whatever the apparent topic is in Buddhist text, the real topic is really ethics, and that Buddhism really is first and foremost about transformation and the kind of transformation that it's about is ethical transformation.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Jay Garfield’s main goal in writing *Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration*?
0:00–8:57
2
How did Garfield become interested specifically in Buddhist ethics rather than other Buddhist topics?
8:57–16:44
3
What are the ‘Four Noble Truths’ and how do they structure Buddhist ethical practice?
16:44–25:21
4
Why does Garfield describe Buddhist ethics as a form of moral phenomenology?
25:21–33:35
5
How do narrative and metaphor function as tools for conveying Buddhist ethical ideas?
33:35–41:50
6
In what way does the Bhava‑Chakra (Wheel of Life) illustrate a naturalized reading of rebirth and moral sets?
41:50–49:43
7
How does engaged Buddhism address contemporary issues such as capitalism, politics, and the environment?
49:43–58:56
8
What projects is Garfield working on next and how do they build on his work in Buddhist ethics?
58:56–1:01:06
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