Friday, October 14, 2022 10:30am
About this Event
The Self / No-Self Debate in Classical Indian Indian Philosophy. Two new arguments from Rāmakaṇṭha.
Abstract: The central point of contention between Buddhist and 'Hindu' (or, less anachronistically, 'Brahmanical') philosophers in what is sometimes termed the 'Golden Period' of Indian Philosophy (roughly 500-1200 CE) was the existence or non-existence of a self. The protagonists in this protracted debate belonged to, on one side, the Buddhist Epistemological tradition of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti (c. 550-650 CE) and, on the other, the Brahmanical tradition of Nyāya. I will explain what the issues were in this debate and examine some arguments. I will then introduce 2 new arguments given by Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha (950–1000 CE), who belonged to the tradition of Śaiva Siddhānta. They are 'new' both in the sense that no one, to my knowledge, had made them before him, and in the sense that they had not been noted in the secondary literature prior to my work on this little known author.
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