Summary:

Contra the consensus that the Mādhyamika is a
skeptical-mystical school which reflects the supposed “Hindu
corruption of Buddhism,” it appears in this work as a
critical-practical system of epistemological self-correction
(blo-byong, buddhi-viśodhana *) central to the
Mahāyāna move to extend the Buddhist tradition of
universal education in liberative arts and human sciences. This
study's nondualistic approach to Mādhyamika thought is based on
comparative reading of YS/YSV with the writings of Wittgenstein and
extended by comparing Candrakīrti's centrist solution to the
objectivist-constructivist (
sautrāntika-vijñānavāda) debate in the
classical Buddhist academy with Thomas Nagel's centrist approach to
the objectivist-constructivist debate dividing the postmodern Western
academy.

First, this study reviews how the complementarity of the critical and
practical aspects of Mādhyamika thought has eluded
Buddhologists who presuppose the dualistic logic and epistemology of
the modern West, arguing that Western Mādhyamika studies
critically requires a comparative philosophical framework aligning
the nondualism of Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti with
the post-Cartesian, post Kantian epistemology and logic of Western
nondualists. Then, Nālandā is located at the epicenter of
India's Gangetic civilization and linked to the
“axial-age” traditions of rational individualism and
social tolerance the region sustained due to its geopolitical
stability and socioeconomic abundance. Next, Nāgārjuna
and Candrakīrti's contribution to the “golden age of
India” is explored as part of a Mahāyana Buddhist move to
free Indian linguistics (śabdavidyā ) and
self-regulation (yoga) from their religious matrix and revise them
for use as the universal language and empirical method of a
multidisciplinary human science of mind. Finally, this account of
Mādhyamika thought is applied to a textual study of the
Yuktis&dotbelow;as&dotbelow;t&dotbelow;ikāvr&dotbelow;tti
(YSV), Candrakīrti's commentary on the Mādhyamika
epistemology of Nāgārjuna's
Yuktis&dotbelow;ast&dotbelow;ikā (YS), the textual link between
the critical and practical aspects of his thought. An original
translation of these two works is appended.

This study of Candrakīrti uses insights gleaned from Tibetan
scholarship on Indian texts to expose Western misunderstandings of
Mādhyamika philosophy as skeptical or mystical and offers a
corrective account of it as an ordinary language philosophy meant to
refine the therapeutic philosophy of the noble truths and
interdisciplinary method of reeducation basic to all Buddhist thought
and practice. It shows how Western Mādhyamika scholars informed
by modern dualistic theories and methods have persistently misread
skeptical and mystical intent into the theory of voidness, by
isolating the critical concepts and apophatic style of philosophical
works from the practical methods and cataphatic style of ethical
works written by the same authors. To correct such distortions, this
Mādhyamika study offers an account of Candrakīrti's life
and work at Nālandā Mahāvihāra based on
alternative frameworks of comparative history and comparative
philosophy more consistent with the historical record and with the
Tibetan tradition of Indological scholarship, based on classical
Indian nondualism.

Notes:

Adviser: Robert A. F. Thurman.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 62-02, Section:
A, page: 0603.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2001.

Electronic reproduction.Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest Information and
Learning Company,[200-]System requirements: Adobe Acrobat
Reader.Available via World Wide Web.

Book Details:

Language: eng
Physical Description: 849 p.

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