Birgit Kellner, Visiting Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
| DATE: | Thursday, April 3, 2008 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 5:00 PM |
| PLACE: | IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor |
| FORMAT: | Lecture |
| SPONSORS: | Center for Buddhist Studies |
Various Buddhist thinkers have criticized the notion that our cognitions are of external objects, or that external, material entities which we can cognize actually exist. This talk will discuss several varieties of this criticism that were articulated in the latter half of the first millennium CE in South Asia. In doing so, I am going to especially pursue two aspects: first, the philosophical characteristics of the various arguments that are advanced, and second, the interplay of philosophical argumentation, which looks at whether the existence of external objects is rationally defensible, with soteriological attitudes that might instead focus on whether believing in external reality is spiritually harmful.
Brigit Kellner specializes in the history of Buddhist logic and epistemology in ancient India and Tibet. After completing her M.A. studies under the supervision of Ernst Steinkellner at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 1994, she went to Japan, where a dissertation on the knowledge of absence in Buddhist epistemological thought in India after Dharmakirti, supervised by Shoryu Katsura, earned her a PhD from the University of Hiroshima in 1999. Supported by further research fellowships from the Austrian Science Fund and the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (Germany), she carried out further research on the relationship between realist and idealist epistemologies in Buddhist thought, which is also going to be the topic of her Habilitation monograph that is currently being completed. In addition to her work on the history of Buddhist philosophy, Birgit Kellner developed and implemented several academic database projects, notably the "Indian Logic Knowledge Base", funded by the European Commission. She currently carries out a research project on the theory of reflexive awareness (svasamvedana) in Dharmakirti's Pramāṇavārttika at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies of the University of Vienna. Together with Helmut Tauscher and Helmut Krasser, Birgit Kellner edits the monograph series "Vienna Studies in Tibetology and Buddhism", and together with Helmut Krasser, she acts as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.
