[5] Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika, his largest and most important work, was very influential in India and Tibet as a central text on pramana ('valid knowledge instruments') and was widely commented on by various Indian and Tibetan scholars.

Yijing also mentioned that a Chinese traveller called Wuxing, was studying Dharmakirti's teachings at the Telhara monastery which is just a short distance away from Nalanda which indicates that Dharmakīrti had attained fame as a logician in Magadha around 650–660 CE.

[5] Around the middle of the 6th century, possibly to address the polemics of non-Buddhist traditions with their pramana foundations, the Buddhist scholar Dignāga shifted the emphasis from dialectics to more systematic epistemology and logic, retaining the heresiological and apologetic focus.

[5] Dharmakīrti followed in Dignāga footsteps, and is credited with systematic philosophical doctrines on Buddhist epistemology, which Vincent Eltschinger states, has "a full-fledged positive/direct apologetic commitment".

The role of Buddhist logic was seen as an intellectual defense against Hindu philosophical arguments formulated by epistemically sophisticated traditions like the Nyaya school.

Following Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya, Dharmakīrti also holds that there are only two instruments of knowledge or 'valid cognition' (pramāṇa); "perception" (pratyaksa) and "inference" (anumāṇa).

Following commentators like Dharmottara, who define it as meaning that cognition can lead to the obtaining of one's desired object, some modern scholars such as Jose I. Cabezon have interpreted Dharmakīrti as defending a form of Pragmatism.

[2] Dharmakīrti made significant contributions to Buddhist epistemology by refining the theory of inference, which addresses a central problem left unresolved by his predecessor, Dignāga.

[2] Svalakṣaṇa are said to be part-less, undivided, and property-less, and yet they impart a causal force which give rise to perceptual cognitions, which are direct reflections of the particulars.

The conventionally real for him are based on linguistic categories, intellectual constructs, and erroneous superimpositions on the flow of reality, such as the idea that universals exist.

These latent dispositions come together into constructed representations of the previously experienced object at the moment of perception, and hence it is an imposed error on the real, a pseudo-perception (pratyakṣābhāsa) which conceals (saṃvṛti) reality while at the same time being practically useful for navigating it.

[2] Due to this theory, the main issue for Dharmakirti becomes how to explain that it is possible for our arbitrary and conventional linguistic schemas to refer to perceptual particulars that are ineffable and non-conceptual.

"[2] Dharmakīrti's unique take on this nominalist theory, which underlies his entire system, is to reinterpret it in terms of causal efficacy—arthakriyā (which can also be translated as 'telic function', 'functionality', and 'fulfillment of purpose').

[5] Dharmakīrti also defended the Buddhist theory of momentariness (kṣaṇikatva), which held that dharmas spontaneously perish the moment they arise.

"[19] Likewise, Dan Arnold argues that Dharmakīrti's alternating philosophical perspectives of Sautrāntika and Yogācāra views are ultimately compatible and are applied at different levels of his 'sliding scale of analysis.

'[20] There is also a tendency to see Dignāga and Dharmakīrti as founding a new type of Buddhist school or tradition, which is known in Tibetan as "those who follow reasoning" (rigs pa rjes su 'brang ba) and sometimes is known in modern literature as pramāṇavāda.

[23] He was extremely influential in Tibet, where Phya pa Chos kyi Seng ge (1182-1251) wrote the first summary of his works, called "Clearing of Mental Obscuration with Respect to the Seven Treatises on Valid Cognition" (tshad ma sde bdun yid gi mun sel).

Sakya Pandita wrote the "Treasure on the Science of Valid Cognition" (tshad ma rigs gter) and interpreted Dharmakirti as an anti-realist against Phya pa's realism.