Platonic and Indian Buddhist ethics are distinctive in centring the ethical project on acquiring knowledge of impersonal reality. In this talk, I aim to show that both Plato and the Indian Buddhist philosophers Vasubandhu, Dignāga and Dharmakīrti engage in projects of ideal epistemology, even if their conceptions of the cognitive ideal differ. And even if their conceptions of the reality to be known also differ significantly, I will argue that there is a meaningful sense in which both parties agree this reality is impersonal, and that this is relevant for the ethical transformation knowing reality works upon us. Their epistemological ethics does not enjoin us to cognise some special ‘moral reality’, but some ‘real’ reality, or ‘ultimate’ reality, quite in contrast to the mistaken or apparent reality we ordinarily deal in, so that coming to know is not a matter of improving our common sense notions into something more philosophically sound, but rather of engaging in epistemic practices which effect a wholesale exchange of categories and conceptions, along with the attitudes, values and subsequent actions that go with them. Preparatory Reading: Amber Carpenter: “Ideals and Ethical Formation: Confessions of a Buddhist-Platonist” Background Reading: “I’ll be looking primarily at Plato’s Philebus 55-59; Plato’s Republic c. 500-535; Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (selections from I, VI and VII) and Twenty Verses; Dignāga’s Pramāṇa-samuccaya I; and selections from Dharmakīrti”
