ABSTRACT
In the last several chapters we have considered a number of rather theoretical issues pertaining to normative ethics, meta-ethics and moral psychology. In the remaining chapters we will discuss several more practical concerns, some issues that in Western philosophy are usually considered topics in applied ethics. As we saw in Chapter 3, applied ethics employs the resources of moral philosophy, especially normative ethics, to analyze specific moral topics about which, typically, there is some controversy. These topics may pertain to personal life, but they commonly involve broader social concerns with a political, legal or economic dimension. For example, analyses in applied ethics may pertain to human rights, war and terrorism, environmental problems and a host of other issues. In recent decades, there have also been numerous examinations of these same issues from the perspective of Buddhist ethics. Moreover, many of these accounts have a philosophical character (sometimes in a more interpretive mode and sometimes with a more constructive orientation). Hence, there is now a body of literature that might well be called Buddhist applied ethics, a literature that has some affinity with applied ethics in contemporary Western philosophy. As we will see, Buddhist applied ethics is closely connected with a broader movement in recent Buddhist thought and practice called socially engaged Buddhism (or sometimes simply engaged Buddhism). Before we consider the specific issues in applied Buddhist ethics in the chapters to come, it will be helpful to situate these discussions with respect to this movement. After identifying some characteristic features of socially engaged Buddhism, we will consider its roots in the tradition and some representative manifestations of it in the world today.
