Author Description

The proceedings volume of the Fifth International Dharmakirti Conference (Heidelberg, August 2014) is concerned with the logico-epistemological school of Buddhism - a long-lasting tradition that pursued the analysis of knowledge, inference and proof within a Buddhist soteriological framework, based on the works of the Indian epistemologist and logician Dharmakirti (6th-7th c. CE). Having been shaped in the environment of medieval India, with its multiple mutually interacting and partly competing religio-philosophical schools, the methods and approaches of Buddhist logic and epistemology had lasting impact on the intellectual history of Tibetan Buddhism and were also received in China and Japan. The 30 papers in this volume offer a snapshot of an international research landscape with centers in Vienna and Japan. They address historical and philological problems raised by important recent manuscript discoveries, pursue specific research questions in the history of philosophy, and undertake philosophical reconstructions and critical examinations relating to individual theories and arguments. By focusing on currents in Asia that developed and applied rigorous philosophical methods, the volume aims to contribute to the formation of a better-founded global historical awareness in the field of philosophy.