The First Person in Buddhism with Nilanjan Das

In classical South Asian philosophy, as in common sense, most thought that the first-person pronoun “I” stands for the self, something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the “no-self” thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that “I” stands for, what are we talking about when we speak of ourselves? Nilanjan Das presents one Buddhist answer to this question, an answer that emerges from the work of the 4th-5th century CE Abhidharma thinker, Vasubandhu.

Nilanjan Das is a lecturer philosophy at University College London. He works on the connections between self-knowledge and irrationality and also debates between buddhist and brahmanical thinkers about the nature of the self, knowledge and self-knowledge. He's also currently writing a book on the 12th century Indian philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa.