Monima Chadha, "Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating, and today we'll be talking to Manima Chada, author of Selfless Minds, a Contemporary Perspective on Vasubundhu's Metaphysics, published in twenty twenty three by Oxford University Press. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, Manima. Thank you, Marco. Well, let's dive right in. Your book is defending a Buddhist thesis, that there are no selves, and you're drawing on the work uh of the philosopher Vasubandhu, as the the title says. So let's just start with the big picture for our listeners who is Vasubandhu and why do you think it's important to in engage with his ideas when you're defending the claim that there are no selves?
So Vasubandhu is one of the most important philosophers, I think, in the Abhidharma tradition. He was uh You know, his book Abhidharma Kosh Pasha, which is also the focus of my book on him, um, is one of the main texts in the Abhidharma tradition. It has the Abhidharma thesis from the Sothantraka school, that's uh the school that Vasubandhu founded, but more than that, it is also a conversation. with the earlier um school in the Abhidharma tradition. So it is, you know, not only giving us Abhid uh Basu Bandu's own view, it is also laying out the Abhidharma thesis for the first time in a systematic way. So it's a very important book, I think, in the Abhidharma tradition.
Great. And we'll talk a bit about w who the Abhidharmikas are and things like that as we we work through the book, but let's let's back up a little. Who why did you get interested in this book's topic and in Vasubandhu and Abhidharmikas?
So I was um interested in doing Indian philosophy after I finished my PhD. I trained in the West. I come from Um, India, but I was trained. I did my PhD in the West. I did my first two degrees in Delhi. Um and then my thought was to use this training to apply to Indian philosophy because I thought Indian philosophy is something that would benefit because of my cultural background and because of my training in the West. So it was bringing these two things together. And I started um looking at the nyaya. My f early work was in the air philosophy. And I was interested in the topic of self and so of course I look at the Nyaya proof of the self and then I start reading the commentaries in Nyaya. And what happens is the commentaries are talking about the Buddhist view.
They talk about, you know, the objection. to their view, the Nya commentaries, and the objection, it seemed to me, uh are coming from the buddhist view. And naturally I was kind of, are they being fair to their objectors here? So my um, you know, my thought was, I'll go and read the Buddhist text.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–8:40
2
What is Vasubandhu’s role in Buddhist metaphysics and why is he important for the book?
8:40–12:16
3
Why did Monima Chadha become interested in the no‑self debate and the Abhidharma tradition?
12:16–33:09
4
How does the book combine ancient Sanskrit texts with contemporary philosophy and cognitive science?
33:09–47:23
5
What is the difference between ‘self’ and ‘person’ in Buddhist thought and why does the author reject both?
47:23–1:03:36
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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