Opening Speech 4th International Dharmakirti Conference Vienna 20050823

SR No.: 269538
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ernst Steinkellner
Publisher: Ernst Steinkellner
Total Pages: 7
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 591 KB

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News From the Manuscript Department
(Opening Speech, 4th International Dharmakirti Conference, Vienna August 23-27, 2005)
by Ernst Steinkellner, Vienna
First of all I would like to thank all of you for participating in this conference and thereby demonstrating the continuing vigour and interest in the study of Dharmakirti's works and thought. I feel quite safe to state that these Dharmakirti conferences that have taken place in Japan and Austria since 1982 have indeed furthered our understanding of his philosophical and religious motives and achievements as well as those of his tradition, but also of his predecessors. Then, I would also like to thank my four colleagues who decided to convene this fourth Dharmakirti meeting with the inestimable help of Mrs. Peck-Kubaczek. I am particularly grateful to all of them, first for the personal reason of being able this time to escape the additional stress connected with such an enterprise, and then for the transpersonal reason of being able to observe the promising continuation of these specific efforts in preserving and understanding the work and context of this most remarkable Indian philosopher. The presence of so many young scholars at this second meeting in Vienna I consider not without emotion to be a clear proof to the success of our previous efforts.
As a rule and in time-honoured tradition, scholars on the brink of retirement fascinate or bore their colleagues with summaries, either of the progress in their favourite field of study or with their own studies therein. I will do neither. The recent developments are too exciting to talk of anything but the future and the work which waits to be done. It is true, in my preface to the proceedings of the 2nd Dharmakirti conference in 1989 I wrote of a "fascinating phase of Dharmakirti studies". "On the one hand", I said, "some of Dharmakirti's works are still not available in critical editions nor completely interpreted". And "on the other hand, the penetration of Dharmakirti's thought is deep enough by now for us to realize that we have relinquished the doxographic attitude which has governed most of our work so far" and that "we are finally starting to follow the path of Dharmakirti's thought as it developed and moved from problems to solutions and then on to new problems. Work towards providing critical editions and authoritative, careful and clear translations will be one of the tasks of our
CADOKUMENTE UND EINSTELLUNGEN ERNST DESKTOPESTE_DATEN TEXTEVGRÖBERES VORTRÄGEM. DH-CONF. NEWS FROM THE MANUSCRIPT DEPARTMENT DOC (30-Dec-05)
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