Mercedes asked:

How would you classiffy Budhism: under Utilitarian, Formalist or something else ( under another
category )?. Is any religion that will be out of the category or Moral Theist?

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Buddhism, as I understand it, is a religion, a metaphysics and also a non-theist moral philosophy.

I have always been struck by the close similarity between the Buddhist view that moral wrong-doing
harms one's own self and Socrates' dictum that 'It is worse to do harm than to suffer it'.

The most notable difference between Buddhism and the philosophy of Socrates which set the pattern
for thought about the soul in Western philosophy up to Descartes and beyond, is that in Buddhism the
self is viewed as a mere appearance or illusion, a temporary combination of qualities, having no
substantial reality.

In recent Western philosophy, however, views about the self have inclined strongly away from the
Cartesian notion of a soul substance and towards a conception of the self which is much closer to
Buddhism.

Derek Parfit argues in his book Reasons and Persons(Oxford 1984) that the relation between my
present self and my past and future selves is one of similarity, not identity. I therefore have no reason
to consider the needs of 'my' own future selves above the needs of other, more or less equally
'similar' selves. It is therefore irrational to put myself before others. This leads to a utilitarian moral
philosophy, where, in calculating the 'greatest happiness for the greatest number', my own happiness
is given the same value as the happiness of any other person.

Geoffrey Klempner