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Is it fair to call Nāgārjuna or Śrīharṣa a sceptic at all?

Arjun Iyer Fellow
· 6 replies
SkepticismBuddhistGreek & RomanIndianMadhyamakaNyayaVedantaNagarjunaSextus EmpiricusSriharsa#advaita#madhyamaka#skepticism-label#vitanda
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In English books on Indian philosophy two names are regularly filed under "scepticism": Nāgārjuna, the Buddhist founder of Madhyamaka, and Śrīharṣa, the twelfth-century Advaitin whose Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya (roughly "The Sweets of Refutation") takes apart the Nyāya definitions of valid cognition one after another.

I have read Śrīharṣa for many years, and I am uneasy with the label. He is merciless with definitions. Give him a definition of pramā, valid cognition, and he will find a case it includes that it should not, or excludes that it should. But he is not doubting for the sake of tranquillity, nor saying that nothing can be known. He is an Advaitin. He holds that consciousness is self-established, and his demolition of categories clears the ground for that. He also argues, as I understand him, that debate can proceed on agreed rules without either side first committing to the other's theory of knowledge.

Nāgārjuna is a different case, and others here know him better than I do. But he too has a positive teaching, the middle way of emptiness, and a soteriological purpose.

So my question is not whether these thinkers are good or bad, but whether "sceptic" helps us understand them or distorts them. If it distorts, what word should we use? "Dialectician"? "Critic"? Or should we keep the label and widen it, the way Sextus seems to use it, for those who keep inquiring?

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6 answers

  1. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    Nyāya itself gives us vocabulary here. The Nyāya Sūtra distinguishes three kinds of debate: vāda, an honest discussion aimed at truth; jalpa, debate aimed at winning, where you defend your own thesis by any means; and vitaṇḍā, destructive debate in which you refute the opponent without establishing any thesis of your own. Śrīharṣa's style looks like vitaṇḍā, and Nāgārjuna is often compared to it too.

    That label may be better than "sceptic", because it names a method, not a conclusion. And it is often said that the later Naiyāyikas sharpened their definitions partly because Śrīharṣa had shown how loose the old ones were. A critic who makes his opponents more precise has done epistemology a service, whatever we call him.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    Fellow

    On the Buddhist side there is an internal argument about this very question. Later Tibetan doxographers distinguish Mādhyamikas who think you may only use reductios against an opponent (the Prāsaṅgika, associated with Candrakīrti) from those who think a Mādhyamika may put forward independent arguments of his own (the Svātantrika, associated with Bhāviveka). If even the tradition disagreed about whether Madhyamaka has a positive argumentative stance, the English label is bound to fit badly.

  3. Giulia Ferrante

    Fellow

    From the Greek side, a fact that may help. "Sceptic" comes from skeptikos, "inquiring", and Sextus says the sceptic is named for continuing to investigate, unlike those who think they have found the truth or those who declare it cannot be found. On that original sense, the label is not about doubt as a conclusion at all. It might fit a thinker who keeps testing every definition. Whether it fits a thinker with a soteriology is another matter, though Sextus too promises a kind of peace.

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    1. Arjun Iyer

      Fellow

      Giulia, that is a sense of the word I could accept for Śrīharṣa. But I notice the peace differs. Sextus's tranquillity comes from having no views. Śrīharṣa's comes from the reality the refutations point to. One empties the room; the other clears the room so that what was always there can be seen. Calling both "sceptics" hides that.

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  4. Nirmala Jayasekara

    Fellow

    In my tradition we would resist the label for Nāgārjuna for a simple reason. The Buddha is reported as rejecting two extremes, that things exist in themselves and that nothing exists at all. Emptiness is presented as the middle between them. A sceptic, in the modern sense, would hover over both. A Mādhyamika claims to have found the path between. You may think the claim fails, but it is not a suspension.

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  5. Nima Tsering Gurung

    Fellow

    I am a trekking guide, not a scholar, so forgive the simple view. When I read Nāgārjuna in a tea house it never felt like doubt. It felt like someone taking away handholds I did not need. A sceptic, to me, is someone who will not cross the bridge. Nāgārjuna crosses and then tells you the bridge was empty too.