Towards a Jungian Integrative Ethic
Red Book, Middle Way - How Jung Parallels the Buddha's Method for Human Integration - Robert M. Ellis
Robert M. Ellis [+ ]
Middle Way Society
Robert M. Ellis is author of a range of interdisciplinary books on Middle Way Philosophy, both within and beyond Buddhism. These have included The Buddha’s Middle Way: Experiential Judgement in His Life and Teaching (Equinox Publishing, 2019) and Archetypes in Religion and Beyond: A Practical Theory of Human Integration and Inspiration (Equinox Publishing, 2022). He is also founder of the Middle Way Society and of Tirylan House Retreat Centre in Wales.
Description
Jung is an overwhelmingly moral thinker, and the Red Book demonstrates how much his outlook was ethical even more than his other work. The Red Book also shows how much the development of moral responsibility can be understood as dependent on the integration process. It also shows that whilst Jung recognised the moral value of moral principles, goals and virtues (the basis of the three types of normative moral theory) he rejects the absolutising of these approaches – making his approach to ethics comprehensible in terms of a Middle Way approach. This interdependence of moral principles with the rest of the path is also implicit in the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path.