Prof Pens Comparative Ethics Book

Rich Reilly’s new book bridges the gap between Buddhism and philosophical ethics with an unforeseen ally — Christianity.

Released by Rowman and Littlefield, Reilly’s “Ethics of Compassion” places central themes from Buddhist (primarily) and Christian moral teachings within the conceptual framework of Western normative ethics. The book bridges Eastern and Western cultures, philosophical ethics and religious moral discourse, and notions of acting rightly and of being virtuous.

“When I started the project I envisioned writing a book on Buddhist ethics for Western readers, utilizing the conceptual framework of philosophical ethics in the Western intellectual tradition,” said Reilly, a 40-year professor of philosophy at St. Bonaventure University. “What was particularly surprising, and really transformed my project as it developed, was my recognition of deep similarities between the fundamental truths of Buddhist ethics and fundamental teachings of Jesus and certain theological interpretations of them.

“My book sheds light, I think, on the meaning of ‘The Golden Rule,’ the story of the Good Samaritan, the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, and on a number of points made by well-known Christian (mainly Catholic) theologians that do not seem to be well-understood today.”

The book has been praised widely.

Reilly’s book “not only bridges ethical theory and religious moral discourse more generally, but also Buddhist ethics and Western moral theory, in the process enlarging the scope of both. This is a much needed and brilliant work in the relatively new field of comparative ethics, which falls in the sparsely populated category of ‘must read,’” said Joseph Prabhu, professor at California State University, Los Angeles.

Reilly said the book “really is a distillation of my ‘teaching-learning’ throughout my career at St. Bonaventure. In particular, the work I had been doing in the 1970s on ‘freedom of the will’ and ‘action theory’ was resurrected as the final chapter and is very much an important, central piece of it.”

Ultimately, Reilly said he hopes readers will realize that morality and “doing the right thing” are not simply matters of doing what one was taught to do.

“Rather, we each have the responsibility and intelligence to devise a coherent, sublime moral orientation for ourselves,” he said. “This requires us to reflect on our vulnerabilities and aspirations as well as on the inherited traditions of our culture. Understood in this way, the virtuous life, I argue, is a joyful, happy life.”