Abstract

The topic of this dissertation is one that has been in the forefront of contemporary metaphysics in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, namely, the problem of personal identity through time. Although we generally believe that we remain the same persons throughout our lives, the answers to questions concerning just what it is that remains the same about us prove to be elusive. Contemporary debate on the subject has its roots in the challenges posed by Locke and Hume to theories which assert that persisting and substantial selves, or souls, constitute the ground for personal identity, and their efforts to suggest alternative theories based on such concepts as memory and causality. It is remarkable that a similar debate, aroused by the "non-self" doctrine of the Buddha, occupied a central position in Indian philosophical discourse during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first millennium C.E. While much historical and philological research has been devoted to Buddhist approaches to this problem, the task of interpreting these materials in the light of recent refinements of philosophical method has not yet been undertaken. It is this task to which the present thesis is devoted, drawing on the works of such Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu and Santaraksita, and their Brahmanical opponents such as Uddyotakara, as well as recent contributions to the debate on personal identity by Chisholm, Parfit and others. The dissertation is divided into three main sections: Part One, in six chapters, traces out the history of the problem of personal identity in Indian philosophy, and is especially concerned with the role played by refinements of Indian philosophical method in the developments discussed; Part Two presents a selection of the most important Buddhist and Brahmanical contributions to the problem, newly translated from the Sanskrit for the present dissertation; and Part Three includes three supplementary essays on personal identity in the work of Derek Parfit and Steven Colline, Buddhist idealism, and Buddhist hermeneutics.