This book describes the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy in the first millennium CE. The discussion begins from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the common era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka's theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual and cultural context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahayana sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main focus is the period up to the sixth century CE, the book also discusses some important thinkers who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The book's aim is that the historical presentation will also allow the reader to get a better systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.

A set of five lectures on key parts of the book is available here.

Reviews:

Olena Kalantarova in Sententiae 41:1, 2022, 83-110 [link]

Birgit Kellner in Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, 2020, 74:2, 445-452  [link]

Graham Priest in Religious Studies 56: 1, 2020, 131-135 [link]

Ethan Mills in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 9th January 2019 [link]

Rafal Stepien in Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 16, 2019, 171-187 [pdf]

​Douglas Berger in Journal of Buddhist Ethics 26, 2019, 140-149 [pdf]

Dhīvan Thomas Jones in Western Buddhist Review 15 Oct 2018 [link]




 

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