Studies in Buddhist philosophy

337 Pages·2016·1.837 MB·English

by  Jones, Christopher Victor, Siderits, Mark, Westerhoff, Jan

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/05/2016, SPi
Studies in Buddhist Philosophy
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/05/2016, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/05/2016, SPi
Studies in Buddhist
Philosophy
Mark Siderits
edited by
Jan Westerhoff
with the assistance of Christopher V. Jones
1
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3
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United Kingdom
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© in this volume Mark Siderits 2016; Introduction © Jan Westerhoff 2016
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Impression: 1
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Contents
List of Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
Jan Westerhoff
1. Madhyamaka and Anti-realism 13
1.1 Nāgārjuna as Anti-realist 13
1.2 Thinking on Empty: Madhyamaka Anti-realism and Canons of Rationality 24
1.3 On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness 38
1.4 A Note on the Early Buddhist Theory of Truth 52
2. Logical and Metaphysical Problems 62
2.1 Perceiving Particulars: A Buddhist Defence 62
2.2 Do Persons Supervene on Skandhas? 77
2.3 Causation and Emptiness in Early Madhyamaka 92
2.4 Contradiction in Buddhist Argumentation 114
2.5 Deductive, Inductive, Both, or Neither? 120
3. Philosophy of Language 138
3.1 Buddhist Nominalism and Desert Ornithology 138
3.2 Apohavāda, Nominalism, and Resemblance Theories 152
3.3 The Sense–Reference Distinction in Indian Philosophy of Language 160
4. Epistemology 181
4.1 The Madhyamaka Critique of Epistemology I 181
4.2 The Madhyamaka Critique of Epistemology II 204
4.3 Madhyamaka on Naturalized Epistemology 237
5. Ethics 249
5.1 Buddhist Paleocompatibilism 249
5.2 Buddhist Reductionism and the Structure of Buddhist Ethics 263
6. Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Indian Philosophy 277
6.1 Nyāya Realism, Buddhist Critique 277
6.2 Distinguishing the Mādhyamika from the Advaitin: A Field Guide 289
Bibliography 301
Index 309
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List of Abbreviations
A Aṅguttara Nikāya, ed. Richard Morris (1955), London: Pali Text Society.
AK Abhidharmakośa. See AKBh, below.
AKBh Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam of Vasubandhu, ed. Prahlad Pradhan (1975),
Patna: Jayaswal Research Institute.
AP Ālambanaparīkṣā of Diṅnāga: ed. N. Aiyaswami Shastri,
Ālambanaparīkṣā and Vṛtti by Diṅnāga with the Commentary by
Dharmapāla, restored into Sanskrit from the Tibetan and Chinese Versions
and Edited with an English Translation and Notes, Madras: The Adyar
Library, 1942.
BMCS ‘Buddhism, Mind, and Cognitive Science’ Conference, held on 25–26
April 2014 at University of California, Berkeley. Webcast available at:
http://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/webcasts/.
HVP Hastavālaprakaraṇa of Dignāga, ed. Erich Frauwallner (1982), in Kleine
Schriften, Gerhard Oberhammer and Ernst Steinkellner eds, Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner, pp. 828–32.
KV Kathāvatthu: Abhidhammapiṭake Kathāvatthupāli, ed. Bhikkhu
Jagadisakassapo (1961), Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidas.
M Majjhima Nikāya, ed. Vilhelm Trenckner (1948), London: Pali Text
Society.
MMK Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, ed. Raghunath Pandeya (1988) as: The
Madhyamakaśāstram of Nāgārjuna, with the Commentaries Akutobhayā
by Nāgārjuna, Madhyamakavṛtti by Buddha pālita, Prajñāpradīpavṛtti by
Bhāvaviveka, and Prasannapadā by Candra kīrti, Delhi: Moti lal
Banarsidass; alternatively (as specified by chapter)
Mūlamadhyamakakārikās (Mādhyamikasūtras) de Nāgārjuna avec la
Prasannapadā Commentaire de Candrakīrti, ed. Louis de la Vallée Poussin
(1970), Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag.
NB Vinītadeva’s Nyāyabinduṭīkā, reconstructed and translated by Mrinalkanti
Gangopadhyaya (1971), Calcutta: Indian Studies Past and Present.
NS Nyāya Sūtra. See NSB, below.
NSB Nyāya Sūtra Bhāṣya of Vātsyāyana, in Nyāyadarśanam: with Vātsyāyana’s
Bhāṣya, Uddyotkara’s Vārttika, Vācaspati Miśra’s Tātparyaṭīkā &
Viśvanātha’s Vṛtti, edited with notes by Taranatha Nyaya-Tarkatirtha and
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viii List of Abbreviations
Amarendramohan Tarkatirtha; with an introduction by Narendra
Chandra Vedantatirtha (1985), New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
P Prasannapadā of Candrakīrti, ed. in Vaidya (1960).
PEW Tanaka, Koji (2013) ed., ‘Special Issue: Buddhism and Contradiction’,
Philosophy East and West 63 (3).
PS Pramāṇasamuccaya of Diṅnāga, edited and restored into Sanskrit with
vṛitti, tīka, and notes by H. R. Rangaswamy Iyengar (1930), Mysore: Govt.
branch press.
PV The Pramāṇavārttikam of Dharmakīrti, ed. Ram Chandra Pandeya
(1989), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; alternatively (as specified by chapter)
ed. Raniero Gnoli (1960), Instituto Italiano per il Medio od Estremo
Oriente: Rome.
S Samyutta Nikāya, ed. M. Leon Feer (1960), London: Pali Text Society.
SNS Saṃmitīya Nikāya Śāstra.
TS Tattvasaṅgraha of Śāntaraṣkita, ed. with the Pañjikā by Embar
Krishnamacharya (1984), Baroda: Oriental Institute; alternatively (as
specified by chapter) edited with the Panjikā of Kamalaśīla by Dwarkidas
Sastri (1968), Varanasi: Bauddhabharati.
TSP Tattvasaṅgrahapañjikā of Kamalaśīla, edited with TS.
VM Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosācariya, ed. Henry Clarke Warren, rev. by
Dharmananda Kosambi (1950), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
VV Vigrahavyāvartanī, ed. in Vaidya (1960).
VS The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṇāda, translated by Debasish Chakrabarty
(2003), Delhi: D. K. Printworld.
WZKS Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens.
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Introduction
Jan Westerhoff
Like many Americans of his generation Mark Siderits first became interested in
Buddhist thought through the works of writers like Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki on
Zen. He began reading for an undergraduate degree at Cornell, first in physics, then in
philosophy. At that time he attended a course given by Sydney Shoemaker which listed
Wittgenstein’s Blue Book on its reading list. Siderits thought that the works of the late
Wittgenstein would provide a good framework for spelling out the Buddhist notion of
no-self and decided to pursue Buddhist philosophy further at a place where he could
read both Western and Asian philosophy while working for a single degree. After a
year’s intermission (spent, amongst other things, delivering washing machines in
Germany), he therefore switched to the University of Hawai’i where he also began to
learn Sanskrit. He completed his graduate studies at Yale, where he took up Pāli and
Japanese, and worked on a doctoral thesis investigating the relation between compas-
sion (karuṇa) and emptiness (śūnyatā) in the works of Nāgārjuna and Nishida Kitarō.
His intention was to use Nishida’s notion of absolute nothingness to spell out
Nāgārjuna’s conception of emptiness. Siderits was ultimately not satisfied with the
result, and neither the thesis nor any part of it was ever published (though his work for
this thesis did eventually culminate in the publication of Personal Identity and Buddhist
Philosophy: Empty Persons in 2003). After completing his PhD he dropped the East
Asian angle of his studies and, while teaching in a variety of temporary positions in
California, attended an eight-week NEH summer seminar given by J. N. Mohanty in
1979 on Nyāya and its theory of epistemic instruments (pramāṇa). At that time he
decided to continue the study of Buddhist philosophy with emphasis on Indian
sources. (Essay 4.1 in this collection was written during this time, essay 4.2 was a some-
what later result.) Siderits then joined Illinois State University in 1980 where he taught
for twenty-eight years until his retirement in 2008. He subsequently took up a profes-
sorship in philosophy at Seoul National University where he is currently an emeritus
professor.
Three conceptual strands can be seen to emerge from this very sketchy intellectual
biography. The first is a close interest in the interaction between Buddhist philosophy