Buddhist Philosophy and its Critics

In the guise of a workshop exploring a draft of a new book, Buddhist Philosophy and its Critics: An Anthology of South Asian Sources by Charles Goodman and Malcolm Keating, we offer a rare treat: the chance to taste the fruits of a premodern analytic culture.

 

The Buddhist philosophical tradition of South Asia developed through constant exchanges, disagreements, and even formal public debates. Along with their interlocuters, Buddhist philosophers constituted a remarkably long-lived and vibrant culture and ethos of inquiry and argument. It should be studied with this dialectic in mind. Yet, to date, most introductory readers for philosophy undergraduates present Buddhist philosophers in isolation from their interlocutors.

 

Buddhist Philosophy and its Critics: An Anthology of South Asian Sources is a new volume of translations into lucid, contemporary English, including both Buddhist and non-Buddhist perspectives, thematically organized to show how these authors responded to each other and how the ideas of these entwined traditions stimulated each other’s development and increasing sophistication over time. It includes new English translations intended for a philosophical audience, ranging over topics in metaphysics and epistemology including personal identity, perception, mereology, and causation.

 

Over two days, philosophers specializing in contemporary and premodern areas, and working in a number of different traditions, will meet to discuss the translations, arguments, and concepts put forward in this volume, to better appreciate what it means to pursue philosophy in translation; the conversations which made Buddhist philosophy, and how to extend those conversations to enrich a contemporary philosophical landscape.

Co-sponsored by South Asian Studies Council at Yale and Glorisun Global Buddhist Network