Revisiting the author’s characteristic line of interpretation of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti, this essay responds to critiques thereof by arguing for the sense Madhyamaka makes, on the author’s interpretation, as a Buddhist position. For purposes of the argument, it is allowed that especially on the author’s characteristic interpretation, Madhyamaka appears to have affinities with the “personalist” doctrine long regarded by Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions as unorthodox. In particular, it is accepted that on this interpretation, Mādhyamika arguments (...) to the effect that conventional truth cannot be explained away by any “ultimate” truth are tantamount to the view that a personal level of description cannot coherently be thought superseded by the kind of impersonal analysis typical of Abhidharma literature. The main burden of the essay is to explain the sense it makes to think this supposedly unorthodox embrace of the category person counts, in fact, as elaborating the tradition’s orienting no-self doctrine. (shrink)

Canonical defenders of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), such as Leibniz and Spinoza, are metaphysical foundationalists of one stripe or another. This is curious since the PSR—which says that everything has a ground, cause, or explanation—in effect, denies fundamental entities. In this paper, I explore the apparent inconsistency between metaphysical foundationalism and approaches to metaphysical system building that are driven by a commitment to the PSR. I do so by analyzing how Indian Buddhist philosophers arrive at foundationalist and anti-foundationalist (...) positions motivated by implicit commitments to different versions of the PSR. I begin by introducing the Buddhist principle of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) as a proto-PSR that is restricted to causal explanation. Next, I show how Vasubandhu’s Sautrāntika Abhidharma metaphysics is shaped by a qualified commitment to both causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. I then reveal how Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka metaphysics is driven by an unrestricted and exceptionless commitment to causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. Finally, I consider how Nāgārjuna’s account may put him in a unique position to respond to a common contemporary objection to the PSR from necessitarianism. I conclude by addressing a competing interpretation on which Nāgārjuna is best understood as an anti-rationalist rather than an uber-rationalist, as I characterize him. (shrink)

In the following, it will be argued that Nāgārjuna adopts a Buddhist nominalism that encompasses not only a position towards abstract entities, but resonates with a nominalist perspective on the “social reality” of persons. Early Buddhist texts, such as the Suttanipāta, argue that human persons defy a classification in hierarchic “classes”, because there is no moral substance, e.g. of Brahmins. Differences between individuals do not exist by nature, since it is the individual that realizes difference according to the specific personal (...) realization of action and moral cultivation. Buddhist “nominalism,” therefore, has at least one of its central roots in a rejection of a socially privileged “selves,” a stratified social hegemony, and religious truth claims. Nāgārjuna, on his part, radicalizes nominalism as a threefold correlation of the “non-articulated self,” a “non-articulated” reality, and finally, a “non-articulated” dimension even within all concepts, names, and designations. In this vein, Nāgārjuna’s śūnyavāda can be seen as a consequent attempt to neutralize unwanted social and psychological consequences of ontological language-use. Nāgārjuna even self-critically questions the position that the workings of a Buddhist path of liberation can be articulated, which seems to be a remarkable parallel to certain roots of Western nominalism. (shrink)

Mādhyamikas argue that ultimate reality, which is without any delimitation and hence cannot be verbalized in itself, can be expressed in words on the basis of the attribution or superimposition of the basis for the application of the word. The denotation theory of ultimate reality Bhartṛhari advances in the Dravyasamuddeśa of his Vākyapadīya convincingly explains that, insofar as ultimate reality is spoken of, we must say that it is denoted by the word; ultimate reality is said to be ineffable only (...) in the sense that it is far from what is conveyed as something by the word; language is a pointer to the ultimate reality. The point that the application of a word to ultimate reality depends on the attribution of the basis for the application of the word to it naturally leads to an idea that one should not hypostatize the basis, although without resorting to it any word cannot be used to convey the ultimate reality; otherwise, it would have to be said that the ultimate reality to which the word is applied has in essence the property which serves as the basis. Such a property is precisely what the Mādhyamikas consider to be the svabhāva ‘intrinsic nature’. What they understand by the term śūnyatā is precisely that everything has no real basis for the application of the word to it. (shrink)

Graham Priest in collaboration with J. Garfield and Y. Deguchi (henceforth: DGP) wrote several articles and responses arguing that the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna was a dialetheist thinker, i.e. that he not just identified and exposed certain contradictions but that he embraced it. These contradictions, according to DGP, always occur ``at the limits of thought'' i.e. when a certain view at the same time transcends the limit (``transcendence'') and is within that limit (``closure''). In Nagarjuna's case, these limital contradictions arise at (...) the boundary between ``conventional reality/truth'' (samvrti-sat/satya) and ``ultimate reality/truth'' (paramartha-sat/satya). Ultimate truth is that things lack intrinsic nature (svabhava}), i.e. that they are empty (sunya) of intrinsic nature. This emptiness is universal and it includes emptiness itself (emptiness of emptiness). But that means that being empty is intrinsic property of all things so it comes out that things both have (conventional truth) and lack (ultimate truth) intrinsic nature. This is ontological paradox. DGP identify also semantic and expressibility paradoxes in Nagarjuna. Although logically coherent and philosophically intriguing, I think that DGP's interpretation nevertheless overlooks a special kind of semantics that, presumably, works behind Nagarjuna's reasoning and that would be best described in terms of difference between first and second order statements, i.e. between terms referring to the world (primary system) and terms referring to the primary system (meta-system, comprising the ``meta'' concept of emptiness). Working in these two semantic levels N\={a}g\={a}rjuna, I believe, escapes contradictions --- and Nagarjuna is aware of them --- that arise ``at the limits of thought''. (shrink)