Philippine E-Journals

Ethics East And West: An Encounter Between Utilitarian And Buddhist Ethics

Jerry Degollacion Imbong

Discipline: Philosophy, Humanities

 

Abstract:

Utilitarianism and Buddhism are two philosophical systems, which came from two different Traditions (Utilitarianism belonging to the Western Tradition and Buddhism belonging to the Eastern Tradition). Although both systems differ in origin, history, context and culture, both share a lot of commonalities. First, both beliefs seek what is “the good”, second, both are geared towards the search for happiness of humankind (and consequently of all sentient beings) and third, to some extent both focuses on the effects of the actions that the agent performs. Based on these three commonalities mentioned above, we could say that there are indeed parallelisms, which we could find in both systems of thought.