Dharmakīrti

Dharmakīrti (fl. c. 600–660 CE) was the greatest logician and epistemologist of Indian Buddhism, and one of the most influential philosophers of India. Developing the work of Dignāga, he produced a comprehensive theory of knowledge, inference, perception and language that dominated Buddhist philosophy in India and Tibet, and against which the Hindu schools — Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta — sharpened their own doctrines for five centuries. His main works are the Pramāṇavārttika (“Commentary on the Means of Knowledge”), a vast verse treatise in four chapters, the Pramāṇaviniścaya, the Nyāyabindu (“Drop of Logic”), a short manual, the Hetubindu, the Sambandhaparīkṣā (on relations) and the Santānāntarasiddhi (proving the existence of other minds).

Life

Tibetan tradition makes him a Brahmin from South India, a student at Nālandā of Dharmapāla’s school, and a pupil of Īśvarasena, a student of Dignāga. Legend says he disguised himself as a servant to learn Mīmāṃsā secretly from Kumārila. He is said to have debated and defeated many opponents and to have died in Kaliṅga.

Thought

Knowledge

Dharmakīrti defined a means of knowledge (pramāṇa) as a cognition that is non-deceptive (avisaṃvādin): one that leads to successful action regarding its object — the perception of water leads one to water that quenches thirst. Knowledge is thus tied to causal efficacy (arthakriyā), and only what is causally efficient is ultimately real. Like Dignāga, he accepted only perception, which grasps unique particulars free of concepts, and inference, which grasps universals (which are mental constructions).

Inference

Dharmakīrti held that a valid inference rests on a necessary connection (svabhāva-pratibandha) between the reason and what is proved, and that there are only two such connections: identity of nature (“this is a tree, because it is a śiṃśapā” — being a śiṃśapā is a way of being a tree) and causation (“there is fire, because there is smoke” — smoke is the effect of fire). A third kind of reason, non-perception, proves absence. This gave Buddhist logic a principled answer to the problem of induction that the Cārvākas had pressed.

Momentariness

His most famous argument is for momentariness (kṣaṇikatva): whatever exists is causally efficient; a permanent thing could not be causally efficient, since it would have to produce all its effects at once (it has the same nature at every moment) or none at all; therefore whatever exists is momentary, perishing as soon as it arises. Destruction needs no cause; it is the nature of things. This argument was the target of countless Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Jain refutations, notably Udayana‘s.

Against God and the Veda

Dharmakīrti attacked the existence of a creator God (Īśvara): a permanent being cannot be a cause; the world’s order does not prove a single intelligent maker; and no one can know an omniscient being. He attacked the authority of the Veda: there is no such thing as an authorless text, and claims about the supersensible cannot be verified. A famous verse sums up his scorn for Brahminical orthodoxy:

The authority of the Veda, belief in a creator, the hope of purification by bathing, pride in caste, and the practice of austerities to remove sin — these five are the marks of stupidity in one whose intelligence is destroyed.

Influence

Dharmakīrti’s work set the agenda for later Indian epistemology. His commentators — Devendrabuddhi, Śākyabuddhi, Dharmottara, Prajñākaragupta, Ratnakīrti — continued the debate; the Naiyāyikas Vācaspati Miśra, Jayanta and Udayana spent much of their careers answering him. In Tibet, the Pramāṇavārttika became the foundation of monastic education in logic and debate; Sakya Paṇḍita and Tsongkhapa wrote major commentaries. Modern scholars — Theodore Stcherbatsky (Buddhist Logic, 1930), John Dunne, Tom Tillemans — have presented him as one of the great philosophers of knowledge.