Dharmakirti
He asked what it means to truly know something, and gave a stricter answer than anyone before him.
Dharmakirti studied under Isvarasena, himself a student of Dignaga, and took Dignaga's logic of epistemology to its furthest development. His Pramanavarttika, Commentary on Valid Cognition, is the most rigorous work of epistemology in the Indian tradition. He distinguished two and only two sources of valid knowledge: direct perception and valid inference. Everything else (testimony, analogy, sacred text) must be grounded in one of these or set aside. He developed sophisticated arguments for momentariness (all things exist only for an instant), for the reality of other minds, and for the compatibility of Buddhist philosophy with formal logic. His work influenced every later Tibetan philosophical tradition and, through translations, shaped Islamic and even later European discussions of inference. Yet he was controversial: his account of how the Buddha's teaching could count as authoritative knowledge was seen by some as dangerously naturalistic.
Places
Ideas
Words
“Like a river reaching the ocean, my work will find no one able to grasp its depths, and will age and perish within my own person.”
“Whatever is real is momentary, and does causal work; what does nothing is nothing.”
Works
Life & Moments
Studies at Nalanda
Tradition brings the young southerner to the great monastic university of Nalanda, studying with Dharmapala's circle and mastering Dignaga's logic under Isvarasena, then surpassing the teacher's own understanding of it.
The seven treatises on knowledge
Composed the seven works on valid cognition, with the Pramanavarttika at their center, refounding Buddhist philosophy on perception, inference, and the momentariness of all things.
The measure of later Indian thought
For five centuries after his death, philosophers across India (Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain alike) defined their positions by where they stood on Dharmakirti. In Tibet his system became the standard curriculum in logic, and remains so.
Influence
Influenced by
- Mahavira
The Jain doctrine that reality is many-sided, and that every claim holds only from a standpoint, became a standing target for Buddhist logicians; Dharmakirti argued it collapses into saying nothing definite at all.
- Dignaga
Dharmakirti's commentaries on Dignaga became more authoritative than the originals, tightening the account of inference and perception until his version was simply what Buddhist logic meant.
Influenced
- Adi Shankara
Shankara's arguments against Buddhist idealism are aimed at the position Dharmakirti had made formidable, that awareness is self-illuminating and objects are never given apart from it.
