Is Buddhism’s attitude towards accepted forms of knowledge sceptical? Are Pyrrhonian scepticism and classical Buddhist scholasticism related in their respective applications and expressions of doubt? In what way and to what degree is Critical Buddhism an offshoot of modern scepticism? Questions such as these as well as related issues are explored in the present collection, which brings together examinations of systematic doubt in the traditions of Buddhism from a variety of perspectives. What results from the perceptive observations and profound analytical (...) insights of the seven essays is a rich and multi-faceted picture of two families of philosophical systems—scepticism and Buddhism—that seem both akin and at odds, both related and distant at the same time. (shrink)

The doctrine of emptiness (śūnyavāda) is of significant soteriological importance for the Madhyamaka Buddhism. Therefore it is a reasonable prima facie demand that interpretations of emptiness must accord with this fact. This hermeneutic consideration has been taken to present particular problems for Mark Siderits' semantic interpretation of śūnyavāda. This paper examines Siderits' attempted reconciliation of his semantic interpretation of śūnyavāda with its purported soteriological aspects. I question whether Siderits can successfully respond to these problems in order to adequately incorporate the (...) hermeneutic requirement. I argue that the semantic view is not immune to the problems that it was formulated to avoid. It too can be asserted. What is more, the semantic view can generate its own particular forms of attachment which can obscure soteriological goals. These conclusions lead me to question the general project of trying to develop a soteriologically efficacious interpretation of śūnyavāda in the first place. (shrink)

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains logically; (...) the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored. (shrink)

Original in content and approach, Philosophy in Classical India focuses on the rational principles of Indian philosophical theory, rather than the mysticism usually associated with it. Ganeri explores the philosophical projects of a number of major Indian philosophers and looks into the methods of rational inquiry deployed within these projects. In so doing, he illuminates a network of mutual reference and criticism, influence and response, in which reason is simultaneously used constructively and to call itself into question.

The Idea of a unified foundation of all reality has long been core to many attempts at a fundamental ontology, as well as many arguments for the divine. In medieval India a cluster of arguments for metaphysical inheritance, causal entanglement, the impossibility of fundamental relations and more, were advanced together to show there must be an ultimate and unified ground. But foundationalism has been under attack in both recent metaphysics, and Buddhist philosophy. This article unpacks Vedānta’s defense of divine foundationalism (...) against Madhyamaka Buddhism’s metaphysical nihilism. Firstly, we look at how inheritance arguments for ultimate ground aimed to circumvent the possibility of infinite regress. Secondly, we assess three arguments that this ground is a unified modal anchor, with entangled causal power, providing a connective medium for all phenomena. We address some caveats and limitations, but go on to argue that if they are right, they circumvent the Buddhists’ ‘dualistic’ assumption that if the empirical world is mere imagined convention, it needs no explanation. Monists and nihilists are allies against excessively realist ontologies, but these arguments make a compelling case for some unified fundamental nature from which, as the Upaniṣads put it, all things emerge like sparks from a fire. (shrink)

According to Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers, everything depends for its existence on something else. But what would a world devoid of fundamentalia look like? In this paper, I argue that the anti-foundationalist “neither-one-nor-many argument” of the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta commits him to a position I call “metaphysical indefinitism.” I demonstrate how this view follows from Śrīgupta’s rejection of mereological simples and ontologically independent being, when understood in light of his account of conventional reality. Contra recent claims in the secondary literature, I (...) clarify how the Madhyamaka metaphysical dependence structure is not a straightforward infinitism since it does not honor strict asymmetry or transitivity. Instead, its dependence relations are irreflexive and extendable, admitting of dependence chains of indefinite (though not actually infinite) length and dependence loops of non-zero length. Yet, the flexible ontology of Śrīgupta's Madhyamaka can accommodate a contextualist account of asymmetry and support a revisable theory of conventional truth, delivering significant payoffs for the view, including the capacity to accommodate developments in scientific explanation. (shrink)

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the category of svabhāva. The early sections of the article show to what extent the various current interpretations of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of (...) the dve satye—despite their sometimes even macroscopic differences—have a common tendency to consider the notion of śūnyatā as a teaching not based on, but equivalent to supreme truth. This equivalence—philologically questionable—leads to interpretative paths that prove inevitably aporetic: indeed, according to whether the interpretation of śūnyatā is ‘metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’, it gives rise to readings of Nāgārjuna’s thought incompatible, respectively, with anti-metaphysical and realistic types of verses traceable in the works of the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK). On the contrary, by giving more emphasis to the expression samupāśritya (“based on”), which recurs in MMK.24.8, and therefore, by epistemologically separating the notion of śūnyatā from the notion of paramārtha-satya (and of some of its conceptual equivalents such as nirvāṇa, tattva and dharmatā), we may obtain an interpretation—at once realistic and anti-metaphysical—of the theory of the two truths compatible with the vast majority (or even totality) of Nāgārjuna’s verses. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to make a case for Buddhist phenomenology. By Buddhist phenomenology, I mean a phenomenological interpretation of Yogācāra’s doctrine of consciousness. Yet, this interpretation will be vulnerable if I do not justify the way in which the anti-essentialistic Buddhist philosophy can countenance the Husserlian essence. I dub this problem of compatibility between Buddhist and phenomenology the ‘problem of essence’. Nevertheless, I argue that this problem will not jeopardize Buddhist phenomenology because: 1) Yogācārins, especially late Yogācārins represented (...) by Xuanzang do not articulate emptiness as a negation but as an affirmation of the existent; 2) Husserl’s phenomenological essence is not a substance that Yogācārins reject but the ideal sense that Yogācārins also stress. After resolving the problem of essence, I formulate Buddhist phenomenology as follows: on the epistemological level, it describes intentional acts of consciousness; on the meta-epistemological level, it entails transcendental idealism. (shrink)

I discuss two critiques of Dignāga’s epistemology, one from Candrakīrti and another from Jayarāśi. I argue that they are two versions of what I call the core problem: if the content of Dignāga’s epistemology were correct, two fundamental beliefs within this epistemological theory could not be established or known to be true, as Dignāga claims they are. In response to objections found within the classical Indian tradition as well as several plausible contemporary objections, I then argue that the core problem (...) remains a serious issue with which those sympathetic to Dignāga ought to contend. (shrink)

This paper engages with Johaness Bronkhorst’s recognition of a “correspondence principle” as an underlying assumption of Nāgārjuna’s thought. Bronkhorst believes that this assumption was shared by most Indian thinkers of Nāgārjuna’s day, and that it stimulated a broad and fascinating attempt to cope with Nāgārjuna’s arguments so that the principle of correspondence may be maintained in light of his forceful critique of reality. For Bronkhorst, the principle refers to the relation between the words of a sentence and the realities they (...) are meant to convey. While I accept this basic intuition of correspondence, this paper argues that a finer understanding of the principle can be offered. In light of a set of verses from Nāgārjuna’s Śūnyatāsaptati (45–57), it is maintained that for Nāgārjuna, the deeper level of correspondence involves a structural identity he envisions between understanding and reality. Here Nāgārjuna claims that in order for things to exist, a conceptual definition of their nature must be available; in order for there to be a real world and reliable knowledge, a svabhāva of things must be perceived and accounted for. Svabhāva is thus reflected as a knowable essence. Thus, Nāgārjuna’s arguments attacks the accountability of both concepts and things, a position which leaves us with nothing more than mistaken forms of understanding as the reality of the empty. This markedly metaphysical approach is next analyzed in light of the debate Nāgārjuna conducts with a Nyāya interlocutor in his Vigrahavyāvartanī. The correspondence principle is here used to highlight the metaphysical aspect of the debate and to point out the ontological vision of Nāgārjuna’s theory of emptiness. In the analysis of the Vigrahavyāvartanī it becomes clear that the discussion revolves around a foundational metaphysical deliberation regarding the reality or unreality of svabhāva. In this dispute, Nāgārjuna fails to answer the most crucial point raised by his opponent—what is that he defines as empty? (shrink)

Through a philosophical analysis of realist interpretations of Madhyamaka Buddhism, I will argue that the Madhyamaka is not well represented when it is represented as nihilism, absolutism or as some non-metaphysical alternative. Indeed, I will argue that the Madhyamaka is misrepresented when it is represented as anything; its radical context sensitivity entails that it cannot be autonomously volunteered. The Madhyamaka analysis disrupts the ontic and epistemic presuppositions that consider inherent existence and absolute truth to be possible and necessary, and so (...) the ultimate truth, śūnyatā, is not an absolute truth or ultimate reality. However, I will argue that śūnyatā does qualify as a universal truth and should be understood as a context-insensitive, non-propositional truth in a non-dual dependent relationship with the multitudinous context-sensitive, propositional truths. This analysis will prove helpful in an investigation of those tensions, discernible within Buddhist modernism and the discourse of scientific Buddhism, that arise when Buddhist apologists claim a timeless modernity and a non-hostility with respect to contemporary worldviews. I will argue that apologists can resolve these tensions and satisfy their intuitions of timelessness, but only if they are willing to foreground the crucial distinction between their Buddhist worldview (their context-sensitive propositional truths) and their Madhyamaka attitude towards that worldview (the context-insensitive truth of śūnyatā). I will go on to generalise this result, showing that this Madhyamaka analysis opens up the possibility for frictionless co-operation between any and all worldviews, and that we therefore have a philosophical basis for a workable and sensitive theory of worldview pluralism. I will find it necessary to defend this position by demonstrating that, despite its context-insensitivity, the ultimate truth’s non-dual relationship with conventional truth mitigates against moral and epistemic relativism. I will further substantiate my claim as to the universal truth of śūnyatā by showing that, in Karan Barad’s ‘agential realism’, we find a revealing example of śūnyatā being articulated from within a non-Buddhist context. Thus, I hope to demonstrate some of the good effects of the Madhyamaka message, and show that this message can only be communicated clearly when it is distinguished from the discourses of Buddhism. In this manner, not by giving it a voice but through finding its voiceless authority, I hope to enable the Madhyamaka speak to the West. (shrink)