This volume collects Jay Garfield 's essays on Madhyamaka, Yogacara, Buddhist ethics and cross-cultural hermeneutics. The first part addresses Madhyamaka, supplementing Garfield 's translation of Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, a foundational philosophical text by the Buddhist saint Nagarjuna. Garfield then considers the work of philosophical rivals, and sheds important light on the relation of Nagarjuna's views to other Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical positions.

This work is primarily an interpretation of Indian Logic preserved in China.

Dreyfus examines the central ideas of Dharmakīrti, one of the most important Indian Buddhist philosophers, and their reception among Tibetan thinkers. During the golden age of ancient Indian civilization, Dharmakīrti articulated and defended Buddhist philosophical principles. He did so more systematically than anyone before his time (the seventh century CE) and was followed by a rich tradition of profound thinkers in India and Tibet. This work presents a detailed picture of this Buddhist tradition and its relevance to the history of (...) human ideas. Its perspective is mostly philosophical, but it also uses historical considerations as they relate to the evolution of ideas. (shrink)

This is a philosophical investigation of the nature of the limits of thought. Drawing on recent developments in the field of logic, Graham Priest shows that the description of such limits leads to contradiction, and argues that these contradictions are in fact veridical. Beginning with an analysis of the way in which these limits arise in pre-Kantian philosophy, Priest goes on to illustrate how the nature of these limits was theorised by Kant and Hegel. He offers new interpretations of Berkeley's (...) master argument for idealism and Kant on the antimonies. He explores the paradoxes of self reference, and provides a unified account of the structure of such paradoxes. The book concludes by tracing the theme of the limits of thought in modern philosophy of language, including discussions of the ideas of Wittgenstein and Derrida. (shrink)

Graham Priest presents an expanded edition of his exploration of the nature and limits of thought. Embracing contradiction and challenging traditional logic, he engages with issues across philosophical borders, from the historical to the modern, Eastern to Western, continental to analytic.

The work of 6th century Indian logician Dharmakirti is explored in detail in series of twelve articles analyzing deviant logic, subject failure, andther important aspects of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist logical tradition.riginal.

v. 1. A-I -- Bd. 2. U-Pū -- Bd. 3. Pra-H.

The last work of the eminent philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal, this book traces the origins of logical theory in India.

Taking language as its general theme, this book explores how the tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophical speculation exemplifies the character of scholasticism. Scholasticism, as an abstract and general category, is developed as a valuable theoretical tool for understanding a variety of intellectual movements in the history of philosophy of religion. The book investigates the Buddhist Scholastic theory and use of scripture, the nature of doctrine and its transcendence in experience, Mahayana Buddhist hermeneutics, the theory and practice of exegesis, and questions (...) concerning the authority of sacred texts. It also deals with the Buddhist Scholastic theory of conceptual thought as the mirror of language, the Scholastic defense of logic and rationality as a method, as well as the role of language in the idealist and nominalist ontologies of the Mahayana. Finally, the author treats the question of ineffability and the silence of the Buddha from a new perspective. (shrink)

Most of the papers presented at a conference held at Oxford in August 1982.

An accompanying website offers a set of interactive debate tutorials, which include photographs of debates; a guide to the participants; a grammar of Tibetan debating, which includes sample propositions, responses, and strategies; the ethnomethods employed by debaters; videos of illustrative debates, complete with English translations, all analyzed in detail in the book; and an appendix comprising an interactive debate, glossary, manual, and illustrations. Please see www.thdl.org/DebateTutorials/ for this material. -- back cover.