Madhyamaka Buddhism
from 150
Nothing has a nature of its own. Everything is what it is only in relation to other things, and emptiness is that fact rather than a void behind it.
- Active
- from 150
- Where
- Southern India, then Tibet and East Asia
- Also
- माध्यमक Mādhyamaka
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- Indian
The claim
Emptiness means dependent origination. To be empty is to lack intrinsic nature — to be what you are only in dependence on causes, parts and concepts — and that is true of everything, emptiness included.
What it held
Nagarjuna's method is entirely negative and this is deliberate. He advances no thesis of his own; he takes each position anyone might hold and shows it generates contradiction. Motion, causation, time, the self, the Buddha, nirvana — each is examined and each is found to require intrinsic nature it cannot have.
The most-quoted example is causation. If an effect already exists in its cause, nothing is produced. If it does not, something comes from nothing. Both, and neither, fail as well. Causation therefore has no intrinsic nature — which is not to say nothing happens, but that what happens is dependent all the way down.
The crucial move is the two truths. Conventionally, chariots and persons and causes work perfectly well and you should not stop using them. Ultimately, none has intrinsic nature. These are not two realities but two ways of speaking about one, and confusing them is where nihilism comes from.
Nagarjuna is emphatic that emptiness is not a thing. Anyone who takes emptiness as a view, he says, is incurable — the medicine misused becomes the disease.
How it argued
Prasanga — reductio. Take the opponent's position, derive its consequences, show they are unacceptable, and advance nothing positive of your own.
What it was arguing against
The Abhidhamma claim that dhammas have their own nature; Nyaya and Vaisheshika realism; and any view that assigns intrinsic existence to anything.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether the Madhyamika may hold any position at all — the Svatantrika and Prasangika branches split over exactly this, and Tibetan scholasticism has argued it for eight hundred years.
Common misconceptions
That emptiness means nothingness. Nagarjuna repeatedly says the opposite: because everything is empty, everything works. If things had fixed natures, nothing could change or arise at all.
How it began
Nagarjuna, of whom little is known beyond the works, writing in the second century and taking the Perfection of Wisdom literature as his starting point.
What became of it
Living, and the philosophical foundation of Tibetan Buddhism and of Chan and Zen through Chinese transmission.
Lasting influence
All Mahayana Buddhism. Chinese Sanlun, Tiantai and Huayan. Twentieth-century comparisons with Wittgenstein, Derrida and Sextus Empiricus are numerous and not all of them are careless.
Why it still matters
The claim that nothing has intrinsic properties, only relational ones, is a live position in metaphysics under the name of structural realism.
Put another way
A reflection in a mirror: perfectly there, and with nothing behind it.
Where to start
Garfield's translation of the Karika with commentary. The verses alone will defeat anyone.
The surprising bit
He wrote that emptiness is itself empty, so it cannot be the ultimate reality behind appearances. The doctrine explicitly forbids being made into a metaphysics.
In their own words
Whatever is dependently arisen, that is explained to be emptiness.
Those for whom emptiness is a view are called incurable.
Connections
- Answers
- Early Theravada Buddhism
- Opposed by
- Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Advaita Vedanta
The verdict
The most rigorous negative philosophy anyone has written, and the one most often mistaken for despair.