First, Buddha’s approach focuses on reasons to accept one position and reject another, without any appeal to unargued beliefs. True, he also presented a metaphysics of the world, but his championing of particular ethical conclusions – such as the equality of all human beings irrespective of community and caste, the treatment of animals with kindness and the replacement of hatred towards others by universal love – was not conditional on accepting that metaphysics. On the contrary, each ethical conclusion demanded support from reasoning, even if it was sometimes implicit rather than explicit.
