Bhagavad Gītā as Duty and Virtue Ethics

ABSTRACT The paper examines the ethical conception of the most well‐known and much discussed Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gītā , in the context of the Western distinction between duty ethics and virtue ethics. Most of the materials published on the Gītā make much of its conception of duty; however, there is no systematic investigation of the notion of virtue in the Gītā. The paper begins with a discussion of the fundamental characteristics of virtue ethics, before undertaking a discussion of the conceptions of duty and virtue in the Gītā. The paper clearly demonstrates that (1) both duty and virtue coexist in the Gītā , and (2) the Gītā accords virtue an important place.