ETHICA

Ethics and Health: An International and Comparative Arena

1997 Nr. 2:2 August

Lectures on Buddhist Ethics

Auditorium E, Sydneshaugen Skole, September 10 and 17, 10:15 - 14:00

Professor P. D. Premasiri, professor of Pali and Buddhist Studies, University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, will give a seminar on Buddhist Ethics. Professor Premasiri has degrees from the University of Ceylon, Cambridge University in England, as well as the University of Hawai in the US, and has published extensively on Buddhist Philosophy and Buddhist Ethics.He is a guest researcher in the Department of Philosophy during the 1997 Fall semester.

BUDDHIST ETHICS

The goal of Buddhism is the overcoming of human suffering. Buddhism explains human suffering as caused by the moral depravity of human beings. According to Buddhism, if human beings can effect a complete inner transformation they will overcome their own suffering as well as cease to create suffering for others. The highest goal of Nibbana can be conceived as the attainment of moral perfection. It is defined by the Buddha as the destruction of greed, hatred and ignorance which are considered as the three roots of moral evil.

Moral evil is to be found at three different levels in the human person, namely the latent, the level of inner excitation, and the level of outward bodily and verbal expression. There are three stages of moral training which progressively and systematically eliminate moral evil. They are (1) the cultivation of wholesome habits and practices, (2) the development of mental composure and (3) the development of understanding or insight. Buddhism presents a non-authoritarian attitude towards morality. Moral decision making is considered to be an autonomous activity of rational human beings. Therefore Buddhism rejects all external authority such as tradition, revelation, holy scriptures, authority of teachers etc. as valid grounds for making reasonable ethical decisions.

One fundamental criterion used in Buddhism in moral decision making is consequentialist in form. The second criterion conforms to what is generally recognized as the Golden Rule criterion. The content of Buddhist morality is largely determined by the two above mentioned criteria. Evil in the moral sense is considered in Buddhism as rooted in greed, hatred and ignorance. These inner unwholesome traits express themselves in unwholesome bodily, verbal and mental behaviour. Morality consists of abstaining from unwholesome modes of behaviour and positively cultivating wholesome modes of behaviour. The fundamental principles involved in moral development are the cultivation of (1) non-maleficence, (2) benevolent attitudes and modes of behaviour and (3) a sense of impartiality and justice.

Buddhist ethical values are not outmoded by contemporary developments in science and technology. In fact they seem to have become even more relevant in the contemporary global context. It has the basic principles for a sound environmental ethics. Buddhism recognizes the importance of the moral foundations for a satisfactory economic, political and social order and presents certain basic principles which can be seen as universally valid. It offers a system of ethics that suits the modern age of science and technology.

Health Ethics in South East Asia

The WHO South East Asian Regional Office (SEARO) has funded a two year program in health care ethics in the region. A number of activities will be carried out in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The program builds on the experience of the Bergen-Colombo collaboration in medical ethics, and the training workshops organized as part of this collaboration. The aims of the program are:

To describe the existing values among physicians in relation to a range of common ethical issues in medical practice, including patient autonomy, the doctor-patient relationship and decision-making in treatment and care, in the participating countries; this will be done by conducting a two part baseline study in the region.
To develop a profile of the value systems in the participating countries as input for the development of a teaching module and for presentation during national workshops in each participating country
To develop a teaching module on health ethics that a) targets ethical concerns of major relevance in the Region and b) includes country-specific materia
To establish and support a South East Asia Health Ethics Network (SEAHEN) among relevant institutions and individuals, and to produce a newsletter for this network
To produce a country report on health ethics from each participating countryTo establish a regional health ethics literature database, accessible through Internet/E-mail
On the basis of the baseline study and the teaching modules to conduct national workshops located at teaching hospitals to promote health ethics at various levels, including teaching, clinical practice and health planning.

The baseline study has two parts and data gathering will take place between December 1997 and February 1998. The first part is a qualitative study that will serve to investigate ethical dilemmas as they arise and are handled in the clinical setting in the seven centres participating in the study. While there will be a guiding definition of an ethical dilemma, the study will otherwise be exploratory and open-ended. The purpose of this method is to show ethical issues as identified by the health personnel participating, rather than as identified by the researchers, and to obtain some detail and contextual information for the identified ethical dilemmas. The second part is a questionnaire study where the respondents are presented with hypothetical scenarios highlighting relevant ethical dilemmas. There is also a section on ethics and resouce allocation.

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Bibliography on equity and health policy

An annotated bibliography on ethics and health policy has been compiled. It is available on the WEB:

http://www.hf.uib.no/i/Filosofisk/ethica/equity.html

For more information, contact

ETHICA, Department of Philosophy, Sydnesplassen 7, N-5007 Bergen, Norway

http://www. hf.uib.no/i/Filosofisk/ethica