Expertise

Buddhist Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophies of India, Tibetan Buddhism

Biography

Duckworth is interested in a broad set of questions that orbit around the boundaries between philosophy and religion. His research has focused on questions of Buddhist philosophy and the attempt to bring those ideas into a cross-cultural philosophical conversation.  

Duckworth began his research with an exploration of the meaning of “emptiness” in Buddhist thought, and in particular, the relationship between “emptiness” and another key topic: “buddha-nature.” His first book, Mipam on Buddha-Nature, focused on the relationship between buddha-nature, as a positive divine ground or metaphysical foundation of reality, and emptiness, as a negative dialectic or deconstructive discourse undoing all foundations. He then translated a text, Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies, that displayed the wide-ranging diversity within Buddhist philosophical traditions within Tibet, which became a model for his later thinking about religious pluralism and his contributions to his co-edited volume, Buddhist Responses to Religious Diversity.

He also collaborated on a study and translation of a seminal fifth-century Indian text that probes the content of perception and the relation between phenomenology and idealism, Dignāga's Investigation of the Percept. In his next book, he articulated the entanglement of phenomenology and ontology - and the intertwined nature of mind, language, and world - in Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature. In another collaboration with an international team of scholars, collectively known as "the Yakherds," the Yakherds exposed a Tibetan debate around the epistemological question of the possibility of knowledge without foundations, published in a two-volume study, Knowing Illusion. Duckworth later came to explore the role of ethics, and the possibility of a metaphysical basis of altruistic ethics, in his study and translations of Śāntideva. 

Selected Publications

• Bötrül. Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies: Illuminating Emptiness in a Twentieth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Classic. Translated, annotated, and introduced by Douglas S. Duckworth. Albany: SUNY Press, 2011.
• Duckworth, Douglas S. Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. 
• Duckworth, Douglas S. Jamgön Mipam: His Life and Teachings. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2011.
• Duckworth, Douglas. Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Duckworth, D., D. Eckel, J. Garfield, J. Powers, Y. Thabkhas, S. Thakchoe. Dignāga’s Investigation of the Percept: A Philosophical Legacy in India and Tibet. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 
• Duckworth, D., E. Harris, and A. Vélez, eds. Buddhist Reponses to Religious Diversity: Theravāda and Tibetan Perspectives. Sheffield, U.K.: Equinox, 2020.
• Gold, J. and Duckworth, D., eds. Readings of Śāntideva’s Guide to Bodhisattva Practice. NY: Columbia University Press, 2019.
• Künzang Sönam. The Profound Reality of Interdependence: An Overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva. Translated and introduced by Douglas S. Duckworth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Minyak Kunzang Sönam. The Great Hūṃ: A Commentary on Śāntideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva. Translated by Douglas S. Duckworth. New York: Wisdom Publications, 2025. 
• The Yakherds. Knowing Illusion, vols. 1-2. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Courses Taught

• Philosophy of Religion
• Buddhist Philosophy
• Philosophies and Religions of India
• Yoga and Tantric Mysticism