Dignaga Quotes
Dignaga was an Indian Buddhist logician and epistemologist and the founder of the Buddhist tradition of logic and philosophy of knowledge. His Pramana-samuccaya, the Compendium of Valid Cognition, established the framework in which Buddhist epistemology would be debated for the next thousand years, including the doctrine that there are exactly two valid means of knowledge, perception and inference, with distinct objects. The quotes below are attributed to Dignaga, organized by topic.
Browse Dignaga by topic
Dignaga on Freedom
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“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”
§ 2
Dignaga on God
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“All men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it.”
1.2 -
“It is one of the major tenets of Catholic doctrine that man’s response to God in faith must be free: no one therefore is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will.”
§ 10
Dignaga on Knowledge
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Attributed to Dignaga:
“There are two valid means of knowledge: perception and inference.”
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Attributed to Dignaga:
“Perception is free from conceptual construction.”
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Attributed to Dignaga:
“The two means of knowledge correspond to the two kinds of objects.”
Dignaga on Truth
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Attributed to Dignaga:
“What is real is the unique particular.”
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Attributed to Dignaga:
“A word picks out its object by excluding what it is not.”