| FT-56238-08 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Kevin Alan Vose | The Logic of Emptiness and the Emptiness of Logic: The Creation of Tibetan Scholasticism | 6/1/2008 - 8/31/2008 | $6,000.00 | Kevin | Alan | Vose | | | | College of William and Mary | Williamsburg | VA | 23186-0002 | USA | 2008 | History of Religion | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 |
This book project examines the generative philosophical issues that informed Tibetan scholasticism in the twelfth century. Scholasticism came to dominate philosophical inquiry and monastic education, forming one of the characteristic features of Buddhism in Tibet. Tibetan scholastics, like their medieval European counterparts, remain fundamentally committed to a knowable, rational universe yet insist that emptiness characterizes human beings and the world in which we live. This study utilizes several volumes from a recent textual find, the Collected Works of the Kadampa, previously believed lost in the Cultural Revolution. These volumes allow us to investigate Tibetan scholasticism's formation in the Kadampa Order, which became a model for all further Tibetan schools. This study of early Kadampa scholasticism will reshape our understanding of Tibet's development of Buddhist philosophical traditions and in turn pave the way for a broad narrative of Tibetan intellectual history. |