Engaging with Buddhism

In his new book, Jay Garfield invites philosophers of all persuasions to engage with Buddhist philosophy. In part I of this paper, I raise some questions on behalf of the philosopher working in the analytic tradition about the way in which Buddhist philosophy understands itself. I then turn, in part II, to look at what Orthodox Buddhism has to say about the self. I examine the debate between the Buddhist position discussed and endorsed by Garfield and that of a lesser-known school that he mentions only briefly, the Pudgalavāda (“Personalists”). I suggest that the views of the Pudgalavādins are strikingly similar to a position held, in the twentieth century analytic philosophy, by Peter Strawson.