Prof. Dr. Vincent Eltschinger (École Pratique des Hautes Études)Towards a Typology of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Arguments for Rebirth

20 December 2023

16:00, 20 December 2023. ESA-Ost, Raum 120 & Zoom

Buddhists and Jains were likely the first to attempt to refute “proto-materialist” positions denying the reality of the “other world” (paraloka), i.e., rebirth and karmic retribution in the afterlife. However, the āstika arguments in favor of rebirth received several decisive impulses from Brahmanic circles during the first centuries of the common era. The Carakasaṃhitā and the Nyāyasūtra seek less to exhibit the plausibility of the afterlife than to demonstrate it positively by resorting to the empirical observation of otherwise inexplicable phenomena. At first, these demonstrations of the paraloka differ little depending on whether or not one admits the existence of a transmigrating entity such as the ātman. But in the line defined by Āryaśūra (4th century), and based on a more specifically Buddhist psychology of cognition, the Buddhists’ arguments take a partly new direction with Dharmakīrti (around 600 CE) and his successors Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla and Dharmottara (8th century). This paper will attempt to identify a number of argumentative types and order them over time according to milieu, polemical target and rhetoric, logical and epistemological resources.

The lecture will be held at ESA-Ost, Raum 120, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Hamburg, and via Zoom. For those who wish to participate via Zoom and are not students/members of Universität Hamburg, please write a short email to Prof. Dr. Wangchuk one day before the event: dorji.wangchuk@uni-hamburg.de.

Click to download the invitation as a PDF

Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk (Director)
Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS)
Abteilung für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets
Asien-Afrika-Institut
Universität Hamburg
Alsterterrasse 1
D-20354 Hamburg