Buddhist Logic (Two Volumes)

The two volumes of Buddhist Logic present a systematic investigation of the development, structure, and philosophical significance of Buddhist logic in India. Volume I opens with an extensive introduction on what Buddhist logic is, its historical position within Buddhism, and its relationship to wider Indian philosophical systems such as Materialism, Jainism, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Vedānta, Mīmāṃsā, and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. It then develops the core philosophical architecture of Buddhist epistemology through discussions of reality and knowledge, the sensible world, sense-perception, ultimate reality, conceptual construction, judgment, inference, syllogism, fallacies, negation, contradiction, universals, dialectic, and the external world. Volume II provides the textual and analytical continuation of this framework through Dharmakīrti’s Nyāyabindu and Dharmottara’s commentary, presenting Buddhist logic through its own technical sources and terminology. Taken together, the two volumes show how Buddhist thinkers constructed a rigorous theory of valid cognition, perception, inference, conceptualization, and logical debate, while also addressing larger metaphysical questions concerning momentariness, causality, external reality, and the distinction between direct perception and conceptual thought.