Between the Horns of Idealism and Realism: The Middle Way of Madhyamaka

Graham Priest (University of Melbourne)

*** Please note that the room for this seminar is our regular room C2.05 ***

The debate between realism and idealism is well known in both Eastern and Western philosophy. In Indian Buddhism, there were both realists and idealists; but there was one school of thought, Madhyamaka, which went between the horns of these two positions. In this talk I will explain how.

Bio: Graham Priest is Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne (Australia), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (USA), and Arché Professorial Fellow at the University of St Andrews (UK). He works in many areas, including metaphysics, the history of philosophy, and Asian philosophy, but is best known for his work on philosophical logic – especially paraconsistent logic. He is the author of over 200 papers, and books including In Contradiction, Beyond the Limits of Thought, Towards Non-Being, Doubt Truth to be a Liar, and Introduction to Non-Classical Logic. His new book, One, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.