Foundations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy (review)

The diverse traditions of Buddhist thought in South Asia shared a belief that the Buddha's enlightenment was constituted by insight into the nature of reality. In addition to moral training and mental stability, "seeing things the way they really are" (yathābhūtadarśana) was considered necessary to achieve liberation from suffering. For this reason, Buddhist traditions in South Asia devoted much energy to philosophical analysis, contesting each other's claims concerning what exactly constituted the "right view" (samyagdṛṣhṭi). Because non-Buddhist philosophical traditions also regarded knowledge as necessary for liberation, intellectual debates occurred across the boundaries of traditions. DharmakīKrti (c. 600–660) is the most significant Buddhist figure in the vibrant, inter-traditional discourse on the philosophy of language, logic, and epistemology in South Asian thoughṭ

DharmakīKrti's account of the valid sources of cognition and the types of cognition and knowledge exerted an enormous influence on Indian Buddhist philosophy, and on Tibetan intellectual history. But while DharmakīKrti's influence is unquestioned, the content of his philosophy is much debated. His language is terse and indirect, and despite a highly developed technical vocabulary, his texts can be cryptic and quite obscure. As with many South Asian philosophers, this makes his works difficult to interpret without the aid of commentaries. But commentary is notoriously problematic. Commentators present themselves as disclosing hidden meanings and clarifying the words of the master, but typically they interpret the root text in a way that conforms to their own particular philosophical agenda. Thus, despite many interpreters both traditional and modern, there is little consensus on the basic tenets of DharmakīKrti's philosophy. In this excellent book, John Dunne seeks to redress this situation, by providing a systematic interpretation of DharmakīKrti's account of ontology, inference, and sources of justification and authority, which, he argues, constitute the foundations of DharmakīKrti's philosophy.

Dunne's project requires disentangling DharmakīKrti's philosophy from the many contested interpretations of later commentators and returning to Dharmakirti's own texts—particularly the Pramāṇavārttika ("Commentary on the Instruments of Knowledge") and Svopajñavṛtti (or Svavṛtti, "Autocommentary")—and those of his first two commentators, Devendrabuddhi (c. 675) and śakyabuddhi (c. 700). Dunne characterizes this project as "a kind of textual archaeology" (10) that remains attentive to the various commentarial strata. By returning to the earliest commentarial stratum, Dunne does not understand himself to be giving an ahistorical interpretation. Rather, his interpretation is guided by the style of the early commentaries, and many of his philosophical contributions stem from aporiae the early commentators left unresolved.

Dunne begins with an introductory chapter on DharmakīKrti's South Asian philosophical context: the inter-traditional project of investigating valid means, or instruments (pramāṇa), for obtaining knowledge. This project—what Bimal Matilal terms 'Pramāṇa Theory'—led to common standards of evaluating epistemic claims arising from a shared commitment to the idea that all knowledge claims must be grounded in knowledge that is justified, such as perception or inference. Through the valorization of analysis and investigation of inferences employed to justify knowledge claims, Pramāṇa Theory became a neutral site for philosophers from a variety of traditions to contest each other's arguments. This chapter is an introduction to the technical vocabulary, strategies, and style of reasoning that provides the framework for DharmakīKrti's philosophy. For students and serious philosophers unfamiliar with South Asian Pramāṇa Theory, it serves as an excellent primer, though scholars in the field may wish to skip right to chapter 2.

The main philosophical contributions are made in the remaining three chapters: on method and ontology, the basis of inference, and the justification of knowledge. While some of the details of Dunne's presentation will likely be challenged—for example, his account of representations as cognitive images as opposed to cognitive events, or his constructive account of the distinction between property-svabhāva and nature-svabhāva—the systematicity of the...