What is really the philosophy of Buddhism? One often tends to categorize and treat different traditions of philosophy as homogeneous entities quite easily assessible, overlooking the fact that the great philosophical and religious traditions — be they Greek, Indian, Christian, Chinese, Jewish, Japanese, European, or whatever — may change much more through history than they are different from each other.² For the present, however, we will make an attempt to treat at least some of the elements which make the Buddhist philosophical tradition a continuous historical entity, and as such defining its viewpoints as different from those of other traditions. It seems that a few basic assumptions constute the crux of a philosophical tradition, the agreed starting point from which thinking develops and is bound to relate to — if it is to keep itself within the tradition. For historians of philosophy it is essential to detect such central themes, as they generate the framework within which a tradition of thinking allows itself to move. Thus Judeo-Christian philosophy, and also the Muslim tradition, always had to relate to the idea of God as a basic truth. A tradition seldom criticizes it basic assumptions — even though they may be paradoxical or logically unfounded — this is usually hindered by authoritative doctrines and traditional creeds. So only quite rarely are the praemissae propositiones of a tradition seriously criticized — when it happens, the critics are usually persecuted and fall into oblivion, if they are not the founders of a new tradition of thinking, based upon a new set of basic assumptions.