Reason's Traces

"Only Matthew Kapstein could present such a collection of essays. He brings to his exploration of Buddhist philosophy and hermeneutics an unmatched range of scholarly skills. He is an insightful and acutely analytic philosopher with a sure command of the Western philosophical canon and method; he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Indian and Tibetan philosophical literature; his Sanskrit and Tibetan philology is superb; he is a lucid translator; he is completely at home in the living tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and has close working relationships with many eminent Tibetan scholars and access to a wealth of oral textual material and rarely-studied texts. He has also thought deeply about the enterprise of Buddhist Studies and cross-cultural scholarship. Kapstein brings his unique set of abilities to bear in this set of linked essays that together explore with great precision, insight and masterful scholarship a range of important issues in Indian and Tibetan philosophy, drawing on Western philosophical ideas, texts and techniques where appropriate, and shedding light not only on these philosophical traditions and the problems they address, but also on the study of Buddhist philosophy itself, and the place of this project philosophy as a whole."--Jay L Garfield, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College, Director, Five Colleges Tibetan Studies in India Program
"The range of essays in this collection is extraordinary. There is something for everyone, from translations of important Buddhist philosophical texts to learned speculation on Tantric rituals. Matthew Kapstein has that rare gift of being able to make even the most arcane philosophical arguments seem both easily understandable and startlingly relevant."--Phyllis Granoff, Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University and editor of the Journal of Indian Philosophy