Towards a Buddhist Theory of Shared Agency

For those who aspire to provide Buddhist answers to contemporary moral issues, classical Buddhist sources on ethics often pose a challenge: whereas Buddhist texts tend to consider the morality of individuals as part of a personal path towards awakening or full enlightenment—taking little notice of social and political contexts—many of the modern ethical problems that we face today arise in collective settings. They include, for example, questions related to the foundations of a just society, the normative justification of environmental ethics, and the responsibility of groups, such as commercial entities and political institutions for the injustices that they commit. In this paper, my aim is to introduce a theoretical framework for Buddhist ethics in a social context by reconstructing an account of shared agency, which can explain the responsibility that individual agents bear for actions undertaken together with other individuals and offer a Buddhist point of view on current debates in Western philosophy of action.

This account will primarily draw on the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Treasury of Metaphysics) and Vimśatikā (Twenty Verses), two philosophical works by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth centuries CE), in which he formulates his Buddhist action theory. In particular, my analysis will treat three vignettes from his writings that consider the problem of group action. I will argue that the Buddhist paradigm raises considerations that differ from those guiding contemporary treatments of shared agency. These considerations are linked to two philosophical elements that feature in Vasubandhu’s analysis of action and its outcomes (the theory of karman) and in Buddhist thought more broadly: first, the extension of the scope of action so as to include the preliminary sociological preconditions of intending and the psychological and experiential outcomes of the action, and second, a standard of moral evaluation that places emphasis on the internal consequences of shared actions for the acting members of the group rather than their effects on individuals outside of the group.

The paper will open by sketching the key principles of Vasubandhu’s action theory, which serves as the basis for his account of shared agency. Particularly relevant are his interpretation of the Buddha’s classification of threefold action, the two kinds of intention that he introduces, the Buddhist understanding of the four phases of vocal and bodily actions, and the recursive nature of action. I will then consider the question of why shared action matters to Buddhist thinkers. The sources used in this part of the discussion are narrative works from early Buddhism that show that their authors’ primary concern with joint actions is their formative force; that is, their role in shaping human psychology and experience and in forging virtuous and non-virtuous interpersonal relationships. The main part of the presentation will be dedicated to an analysis of three passages from Vasubandhu’s works, which together illuminate different aspects of shared agency, including the issue of coercion. I will suggest that according to Vasubandhu’s account. one is involved in a joint action when these three conditions are met: (1) one performs a “root” action assisted by other agents’ preliminary actions or a preliminary action leading to a “root” action; (2) one shares the goal with other agents; and (3) one has a “positive” or “neutral” intention to perform the action that accomplishes the goal. In this, I will argue, Vasubandhu’s model is reductive—that is, considers group agency to be reduceable to the individual agency of group members—and displays an internalist standard of moral judgment, according to which the ethical significance of joint action lies in its impact on the acting members rather than in their responsibility for the impact of their actions on others.