Room 101, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
The speaker will introduce the first millennium debate between Nyāya and Śaivism about the existence of selves, explaining their opposed positions and identifying what was at stake. We will then look at a Nyāya argument for the existence of the self, which, I will suggest, is quite easy for the Buddhist to answer. We will finish with three Śaiva arguments for the self, which, I will suggest, require more thought from the Buddhist.
Alex Watson is Professor of Indian Philosophy at Ashoka University, prior to which he was Preceptor in Sanskrit at Harvard University. He is author of The Self’s Awareness of Itself (2006), and, with Dominic Goodall and Anjaneya Sarma, An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation (2013). He has published a number of articles on the philosophies of Buddhism, Śaivism, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā in, for example, the Journal of Indian Philosophy and Philosophy East and West. His DPhil was from the University of Oxford, and his research is currently focused on Bhaṭṭa Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī.
