School
Madhyamaka
Madhyamaka, the Middle Way school, is the Buddhist philosophy that all things are empty of intrinsic nature because they arise dependently.
It was founded by Nagarjuna in India around the second century CE, whose Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way argue that every attempt to give things a fixed essence leads to contradiction. It distinguishes conventional from ultimate truth. Later Indian commentators developed it, Jizang systematised it in China as the Three Treatises (Sanlun) school, and it became central to Tibetan Buddhism. On this site it answers questions on skepticism (2.4.1), causation, the structure of justification, parts and wholes, and meta-metaphysics.
Thinkers of this school
Guide: Schools of Philosophy: The Main -isms and the Questions They Answer
-
What does dependent origination actually claim? My daughter asked and I had no answer
My daughter is fourteen. Last week, stuck in traffic near Borella, she asked me what paṭicca samuppāda means. I have heard the word at the temple my whole life. I said "it means everything is connected", and she said that sounds like…
Started by Nuwan Perera4 replies -
Is Nāgārjuna’s conventional truth a kind of instrumentalism about science?
In the tea houses on the Annapurna circuit I have been reading Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way with a commentary a monk in Manang gave me. Last season a client of mine, a physicist, explained over dal bhat that some…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung5 replies -
Nāgārjuna asked what proves the means of knowledge. Is that Agrippa’s trilemma in Sanskrit?
I have been translating parts of Nāgārjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī (often rendered "The Dispeller of Disputes"), and one argument keeps reminding me of the Agrippan problem people discuss under foundationalism and coherentism. The opponent is a realist of the Nyāya type who says objects…
Started by Meera Kulkarni6 replies -
Is it fair to call Nāgārjuna or Śrīharṣa a sceptic at all?
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.…
Started by Arjun Iyer6 replies -
Nāgārjuna and the Vienna Circle both attacked metaphysics. Were they doing the same thing?
Recently a trekking client who studied philosophy in Vienna told me Nāgārjuna sounded like a logical positivist: someone who shows that metaphysical claims collapse under analysis. I can see the resemblance. Nāgārjuna takes every position, that things exist intrinsically, that they don't,…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung5 replies -
If everything is empty, is emptiness itself empty too? Or does that make the idea collapse?
I have been reading about Buddhist theories of mind. A friend who meditates explained that, according to Madhyamaka, everything is "empty". I understood (I think) that this does not mean things don't exist, only that they don't exist independently, on their own.…
Started by Elif Yıldız4 replies -
Śrīharṣa against the Naiyāyikas: can every definition be refuted, and how did Nyāya answer him?
Definitions are my bread and butter. A good definition in geometry settles what you are talking about, and then the proofs can begin. I recently came across Śrīharṣa, the twelfth-century Advaitin, whose great work has a title usually translated as something like…
Started by Vikram Sethi5 replies