Please join us for this week's History of Philosophy Works-in-Progress Luncheon! This week's presenter is Prof. Trent Pomplun (Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame), who will present on "Traversing the Infinite: The Arguments of Ippolito Desideri against Buddhism."
Each meeting consists of a presentation by a graduate student or faculty member on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from other participants. The workshop is designed to give contributors the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
Lunch is provided for registered attendees.
Abstract: Arguably, the most profound Thomist philosopher of the Catholic missions in Asia was the Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733). In Tibet, Desideri encountered a robust scholastic culture that had long been occupied with refuting various Hindu arguments for the existence of God. My work-in-progress talk will show how Desideri entered these longstanding debates as a Thomist, focusing especially on how he reshaped Aquinas’s argument for the indemonstrability of the eternity of the world to counter Buddhist arguments for karma and rebirth.