Mbazuigwe, Patrick O. See all items with this value

2012

Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies

Long, J. Bruce

Locke, Kenneth A.

Jueji

The human quest for certainty in knowledge has always challenged us to seek for a basis of true knowledge. The Buddha is one of those thinkers who was confronted with this question. The Buddha's response to the question asked by the Brahmin scholar versed in the Vedas in the Sangarava Sutra forms the backdrop of this project. The Buddha's claim to a form of experiential knowledge, which includes extra-sensory perception, has led some scholars like Wallace, Jayatilleke, Kalupahana, etc. to classify the Buddha as an empiricist in the western sense of the term. To correct this erroneous classification of the Buddha as an empiricist is the primary motivation behind this research. Our focus is on a philosophical exploration of the epistemological views of the Buddha vis-a-vis Western continental epistemological positions. I will attempt to explicate the Buddha's teachings and those of the Western empiricist philosophers like Locke, Berkeley and Hume, in order to draw out the wealth of meaning entailed by the Buddha's epistemological position which I will interpret as knowledge conceived as insight. Going by the methodic tradition of the Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan, I will attempt to show that the Buddha's notion of experiential knowledge cuts across the western empiricist-rationalist divide. The Buddha is an experientialist whose notion of knowledge is essentially characterized by perception, understanding, judgment and decision. This is what I understand to be what sets it apart from a purely western empiricist notion of knowledge.

Epistemology See all items with this value

Comparative See all items with this value

Absolute and virtual certainty See all items with this value

Buddhism and Christianity See all items with this value

Experiential knowledge in Buddhism See all items with this value

Knowledge in Buddhism See all items with this value

Nature of certainty in knowledge See all items with this value

Quest for certainty See all items with this value

University of the West

9781267371096