A Buddhist Ethics Concept of Good in Sophist's and Plato's Viewpoint: An Analytical Study

Abstract

In this research, an attempt was purposely made to critically take five precepts in Buddhist ethics into account in order to provide the answer to the question as to whether or not the Greek two ethicists whose prominent demarcation was in their own ways, a subjectivist Sophist and an objectivist Plato, once considered the mentioned precepts as the Buddhist ethical value, would have shown the agreement, if agreed, then what would be the reason, if not, then what would be the reason. By virtue of these, how will the Buddhist ethics respond to the opposed viewpoint? Once reasonably proved, this research was interestingly found that Sophist entirely agreed with Buddhist ethics while Plato agreed with Buddhist ethics to some extent that if it possesses objective value, but he might not agree with it because of five precepts’ existence in the material world; the Plato’s objective value is in the world of Form or Idea only. However, Buddhist ethics will respond to Plato’s viewpoint that if viewed from the real world in which it was without killing, competition, and violence, for instance, then, earlier it must possess the world of Form or Idea whereby man can utilize the moral conscience given by Plato as the tool to obtain the mentioned world of Idea. Therefore, in this research, it argues that Both Sophist and Plato will wholeheartedly agree with Buddhist ethical value eventually.