What determines the likelihood of textual reuse to occur? The genre, the time, the personality of the author? And what are the reasons for not naming one’s source?
Tag Archives: Dignāga
IABS, IDhC, etc.: which paper did you like more? UPDATED FOR THE THIRD TIME with further papers
UPDATE: I received further new suggestions per email or personally. You can add yours in the comments below.
I cannot help but enjoying papers dealing with Mīmāṃsā (especially if from a philosophical viewpoint, as it happened during the last IABS), they are just more interesting to me, but I asked friends and colleagues to forget about their personal interests and to tell me which papers of the IABS and IDhC they enjoyed more and why. The following ones are the results I collected.
Dharmakīrti Conference—Summary of my posts
You can read my views on the written version of the paper presented by Kei Kataoka on apoha (and of the views by Kiyotaka Yoshimizu discussed in it) here, here and here.
A discussion of K. Yoshimizu’s paper (on the chronology of Kumārila and Dharmakīrti) can be found here.
A summary of likes and dislikes of my readers and colleagues can be read here (don’t forget to add your own favs).
What was Dignaga’s theory of apoha? On PS 5.43
The sequence of opponents and discussants within the Pramāṇasamuccaya is difficult to reconstruct and one might need to gather informations from many different sources. In the following I will focus on a specific problem:
- is the example of the presence of horns as leading to “non-horse” an instance of the way apoha works (as with Yoshimizu, which supports in this way his analysis of Dignāga’s procedure as entailing a compositional analysis) or just an example about an inference, which works in a way similar as the apoha, i.e., does not need to exclude elements one by one (as with Kataoka, who thus supports his claim that Dignāga does not need any positive postulation).
What was Dignaga’s theory of apoha? On PS 5.41–42 SECOND UPDATE
The main point of departure for any inquiry into Dignāga’s theory of apoha is his Pramāṇasamuccaya, chapter 5. Unluckily enough, this text is only available as a reconstruction from the two (divergent) Tibetan translations and from Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary.
How exactly does one seize the meaning of a word? K. Yoshimizu 2011 (and Kataoka forthc.) on Dignāga and Kumārila UPDATED
We all know that for Dignāga the meaning of a word is apoha ‘exclusion’. But how does one seize it and avoid the infinite regress of excluding non-cows because one has understood what “cow” means? Kataoka at the last IABS maintained (if I understood him correctly) that Dignāga did not directly face the problem of how could one seize the absence of non-cows. He also explained that the thesis he attributes to Hattori and Yoshimizu, which makes the apoha depend on the seizing of something positive (e.g., one seizes the exclusion of non-cows because one seizes the exclusion of dewlap, etc.) contradicts the negative nature of apoha, since it indirectly posits positive entities, such as dewlaps. But this leaves the question of how apoha can take place in the worldly experience open.
(Third day at the IABS:) Franco on the datation of Dharmakīrti and some further thoughts on Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Kumārila
The datation of Dharmakīrti is a topic I am not competent enough to speak about, but I will nonetheless try to summarise other people’s arguments.
The departing point is the traditionally accepted date of Dharmakīrti, namely 600–660, settled by Erich Frauwallner mainly on the basis of the reports of Chinese pilgrims,
K. Yoshimizu on valid inferences in Kumārila (and on the chronology of Kumārila and Dharmakīrti)
All nice things come to an end, and so did the IABS conference. Now, many among you will be heading to Heidelberg for the Dharmakīrti Conference. Although I will not be able to attend, I received from K. Yoshimizu his paper for it, with the assent to discuss it here.
Fifth day at the IABS: “Buddhism and Philosophy of Mind” panel, Siderits and Coseru
Today, I went to the panel on Buddhism and Philosophy of Mind, which was announced as involving Christian Coseru, Mark Siderits and Jonardon Ganeri. In fact, Ganeri could not make it (“obviously he did not feel fit for the match” commented Coseru at the beginning, among general laughter), but this had the beneficial consequence that there was a whole slot free for discussion.
Third and forth day at the IABS: “Pramana Across Asia”: Introduction to the panel, Katsura, Lusthaus
The “Pramana across Asia” panel has been opened by Eli Franco, its convener, with the following hope: “In some years, through stimuli such as this panel, we will speak of Indo-Sinic Buddhism, just like we speak of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism”.