🔎Dharmakīrti

c. 600-660 · Indo-Tibetan Buddhism · Little-known

Dharmakirti was a seventh-century South Indian Buddhist who took the logic and theory of knowledge of Dignaga and made his version the standard one. The word cow works by ruling out everything that is not a cow. He allowed two routes to knowledge, seeing and inferring, and held that things perish the instant they arise. From that he argued against a lasting self and against a creator god.

Signature

The position Dharmakirti is most identified with in the Profiler:

Natural Processes

leans Mechanistic

Knowledge

Sense Experience / Pure Reason

Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer

Natural Processes

leans Mechanistic (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)

19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Dharmakirti refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.

Foundational questions

Theology

Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods?

Good and Evil

Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil?

Perception

Idealism
What do we directly perceive?

Knowledge

Sense Experience / Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge?

Language

Social Construction
What is the fundamental nature of language?

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