Member-only story
The Two Faces of Buddhist Logic: Building Knowledge and Dismantling Illusion
When people hear the phrase “Buddhist logic,” they often assume it refers to a single, unified system. But in reality, Buddhist thought produced more than one approach to reasoning. To borrow a modern analogy: some thinkers were like engineers, building systems that work reliably in the everyday world, while others were like philosophers, deconstructing those systems to show their limits. Both approaches are valuable — but they serve very different purposes.
The Logic of Knowledge: Dignāga and Dharmakīrti
Dignāga (5th century) and Dharmakīrti (7th century) are widely recognized as the architects of Buddhist epistemology. Their work systematized rules of inference, perception, and valid knowledge (pramāṇa). They sought to explain how we know what we know, and how reasoning can reliably lead to truth in the everyday world. Their framework helped shape the development of Indian philosophy far beyond Buddhism, even influencing later Hindu and Jain thinkers.
But there is a trade-off: their system takes conventional reality largely at face value. It assumes that some objects and relations can be analyzed through perception and inference, without deeply questioning whether such objects have ultimate existence. In this sense, Dignāga and…
