NĀGĀRJUNA
(c. 150–250 CE)

Nāgārjuna is the first and most important philosopher of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. His work is fundamental to all Mahāyāna philosophy and is widely discussed in the subsequent Buddhist literature of India, Tibet, and East Asia. His work has also attracted considerable attention in Europe and North America.

Life and Context

Canonical hagiographies of Nāgārjuna report that he was born a Brahman in South India, became a Buddhist monk, and later adviser to a king of the Sātavāhana dynasty. He is credited with retrieving the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras from the undersea world of the nāgās to whom, according to legend, the Buddha had entrusted them for safekeeping. Given that Nāgārjuna probably lived at about the time that some of these texts were composed, it is possible that he was associated with their composition or dissemination. Nāgārjuna's philosophical work is grounded in the views articulated in these sūtras, and he develops a thorough exposition and defense of the central doctrine they articulate—that all phenomena are empty of essence. While Nāgārjuna's philosophical program, including his interpretation of emptiness and his doctrine of the two truths, is in many respects highly original, it is also in other respects continuous with early Buddhist accounts of the impermanence, interdependence, and selflessness of the person and of phenomena (Vélez 2005).

While there is disagreement regarding Nāgārjuna's dates and regarding the area of India in which he lived, a confluence of evidence, including Kumārajīva's biography and Joseph Walser's [(2004)] (2005) analysis of the context of the composition of Ratnāvalī (Jeweled Garland of Advice to the King)indicates that Nāgārjuna probably lived in the late second and early third centuries in the lower Krishna River Valley. If this is correct, Nāgārjuna was writing at a time when the Mahāyāna was a nascent movement, and his texts provide both the philosophical foundations for that movement and polemical defense of its doctrinal probity.

Major Works

A large number of works are attributed to Nāgārjuna, including not only the philosophical works noted here, but also hymns, devotional poetry, and letters to royal patrons, as well as tantric and alchemical texts. It is likely that these latter were composed by another figure of the same name, and that at least some of the devotional material ascribed to Nāgārjuna was not composed by the author of the philosophical texts that constitute the core of his corpus. The core texts, which are almost certainly composed by the same author, are Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way ), Íunyatāsaptati (Seventy Verses on Emptiness ), Yukti∑a∑†ika (Sixty Verses of Reasoning ), Vigrahavyāvartanī (Replies to Objections ), Ratnāvalī (Jeweled Garland of Advice to the King ), and Vaidalyasūtra (Devastating Discourse ).

Of these, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is the most important. The text comprises four hundred forty verses organized by Candrakīrti (c. 600–650 CE), in his commentary Prasannapadā (Lucid Exposition ) into twenty-seven chapters. Nāgārjuna addresses a wide range of fundamental Buddhist categories and phenomena, arguing that each of them lacks essence. The text is terse and is difficult to interpret without a commentary, often considering opposing positions from non-Mahāyāna Buddhist schools and refuting them. Nāgārjuna relies almost exclusively on reductio ad absurdum arguments, arguing that any account of the essence of a phenomenon, or any account according to which something exists permanently, substantially, or independently, collapses into absurdity. As a consequence, he argues, all phenomena exist only interdependently, impermanently, and conventionally. Most importantly, the text identifies two truths: an ultimate truth—the emptiness of phenomena of any essence or substance; and a conventional truth—the empirical reality and interdependence of things, and argues that these two truths are mutually implicative.

Vigrahavyāvartanī is a reply to objections to Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, principally those of Nyāya philosophers. The first half of the text develops a series of objections, each to the effect that the doctrine that all phenomena are empty is self-refuting, on epistemological, logical or metaphysical grounds. In the second half, Nāgārjuna confronts each of these objections, demonstrating that each rests on a misunderstanding of emptiness—taking emptiness to be not essencelessness, but nonexistence. When emptiness is understood as interdependence, he argues, not only are none of these objections sound, but the alternative each proposes collapses into absurdity. This text is accompanied by a detailed and closely argued autocommentary.

Íunyatāsaptati and Yukti∑a∑†ika are each detailed verse explorations of specific themes raised in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Íunyatāsaptati addresses the relationship between the ultimate emptiness of phenomena and their conventional existence, arguing that the emptiness of phenomena does not undermine, but instead underwrites, their empirical reality. Yukti∑a∑†ika explores the sense in which Nāgārjuna's position constitutes a middle path, and characterizes the extremes between which it is a midpoint. One extreme is that of reification—the view that anything that exists does so in virtue of having some essence, that things remain in existence over time, and that anything that exists can in principle exist independently; the other is the extreme of nihilism—the view that because there is no essence, because all phenomena are impermanent and independent, nothing really exists at all. These extremes, Nāgārjuna argues, share the erroneous view that to exist is to exist substantially, independently and continuously, and that once this view is rejected the moderate view that things exist conventionally, dependently and impermanently is the only coherent metaphysical position. Vaidalyasūtra is a refutation of the foundationalist Nyāya epistemology, arguing that none of the kinds of foundations that school proposes for knowledge is in fact appropriately self-justifying and that none of their ontological categories is in fact basic.

Each of these texts is written in a technical vocabulary, in an academic style and involves arguments intended to be read by scholars. Each focuses on issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Ratnāvalī, while a closely argued philosophical text, is different. It is aimed at a lay audience, and is addressed to a royal patron. While it surveys Madhyamaka metaphysics, it also addresses topics in ethics, political philosophy and statecraft. Indeed, it is probably the first scholarly text on Mahāyāna ethics and the only Mahāyāna text on political philosophy. In Ratnāvalī Nāgārjuna explicitly grounds the Mahāyāna ethic that takes compassion as its foundation in the doctrine of emptiness, and defends a theory of statecraft according to which the ruler's obligations include a wide range of social welfare programs. The text is also sectarian, arguing in favor of the legitimacy of the Mahāyāna at a time when this movement and its texts would have been marginal and controversial, and appealing to the king for support for the monasteries.

Philosophical Contributions

Nāgārjuna extends certain fundamental Buddhist doctrines to develop the metaphysics and epistemology distinctive of Madhyamaka. Five ideas deserve special attention: (1) the doctrine that all phenomena, including emptiness, are empty; (2) the doctrine of the two truths and the account of their relation to one another; (3) the deployment of both positive and negative tetralemmas; (4) the claim that madhyamaka is not a philosophical position on a par with others, in that it is not an account of the nature of reality, but a refusal of all such accounts; and (5) the attack on epistemological foundationalism.

Nāgārjuna argues that all phenomena are empty of essence, of independence, of substance, in virtue of the fact that essence, independent existence and substance are incoherent. He argues that emptiness is not another essence, but rather is the complete absence of anything that could be an essence. Emptiness itself is just as empty, in just the same sense, as anything else. The emptiness of phenomena is, for Nāgārjuna, the ultimate truth about things—the truth found when the analysis of a thing is complete; this amounts to the fact that things are impermanent, interdependent, and have merely conventional, nominal identity conditions, but no basic nature. The conventional truth about things is the truth about them delivered by our ordinary faculties when used appropriately. But this is just the fact that things are impermanent, interdependent, and have conventional identity conditions. Hence the two truths, according to Nāgārjuna, are, from an ontological point of view, identical. Ultimate truth is therefore not a separate reality; conventional truth is not a veil of illusion. Rather, they are two aspects of one reality.

Nāgārjuna makes extensive use of the Buddhist tetralemma—the partition of logical space into affirmation, negation, both affirmation and negation and neither affirmation nor negation. His deployment is distinctive in that he presents both positive and negative forms of the tetralemma. From the perspective of conventional truth he argues, on the one hand, that we can say that there is a self (conventionally); that there is no self (ultimately); that there both is (conventionally) and is not (ultimately) a self; and that there neither is (ultimately) nor is not (conventionally) a self. On the other hand, from the ultimate point of view none of these can be asserted, as from that point of view there is only emptiness, which cannot be grasped discursively as it is, because discursive thought always involves reification and the mediation by universals. Hence, from the ultimate view there is neither a self, nor not a self, nor both nor neither.

Nāgārjuna asserts that he rejects all views, and that Madhyamaka is not a view. This assertion is variously interpreted by subsequent commentators. Candrakīrti's reading is the most straightforward: Many metaphysical positions are views about the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical disagreements are predicated on the view that there is a fundamental nature of reality, and reflect divergent views of what that nature is. Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna argues, is the rejection of the coherence of the idea of a fundamental nature of reality. Hence it is not a metaphysical view in the sense that its rivals are.

According to many Indian philosophers, there are foundations of knowledge. Some argue that these are objects of knowledge; others that they are our means of gaining knowledge, such as perception or inference. Nāgārjuna argues that neither of these positions can be maintained: that objects of knowledge are only known in virtue of the employment of warranted means of obtaining knowledge, and that in turn these warranted means are only validated by the objects they deliver. Knowledge, such as the reality toward which it is directed, is hence groundless, interdependent, and conventionally constituted.

Canonical Commentaries

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is the subject of many commentaries in India, China and Tibet. The earliest is the Akutobhayā, whose authorship is not known. Some traditions regard it as Nāgārjuna's autocommentary, but because it cites the work of his immediate disciple óryadeva casts doubt on this attribution. Pingala's commentary (c. fourth century) exists only in a Chinese translation. Buddhapālita (fifth to sixth centuries) composed an important commentary, the Buddhapālita. Bhāvaviveka (sixth century) composed an extensive commentary Prajñāpradipa (Lamp of Wisdom ) and subcommentary Tarkajvāla (Blaze of Argument ). Bhāvaviveka offers extensive reconstructions of Nāgārjuna's arguments in line with the developments in Nyāya and Buddhist logic and takes issue with Buddhapālita's interpretation of the role of reductio argument in Madhyamaka methodology. Candrakīrtii (seventh century) in Prasannapadā defends Buddhapālita's reading against Bhāvaviveka's critique. His distinction between their respective understandings of Nāgārjuna's methodology and his account of the metaphysical implications of those understandings form the basis for the Tibetan distinction between the svātantrika (Tib: rang rgyud pa ) and prāsaṅgika (Tib: thal ʿgyur ba ) schools of Indian madhyamaka that has come subsequently to systematize much understanding of the diverse developments of Nāgārjuna's philosophy in India and Tibet. Candrakīrti also composed an extensive commentary on Yukti∑a∑†ika. Many commentaries on Mūlamadhyamakakārikā were composed in Tibet. The most extensive and influential is Tsong khapa's rTsa she tik chen rigs p'ai rgya mtsho (Ocean of Reasoning: An Extensive Commentary on Mūlamadhyamakakārikā ) which compares the Indian commentaries, defending Candrakīrti's reading.

Twentieth-Century Scholarship

The diversity of Western readings of Nāgārjuna's philosophical program is even greater than the diversity of Asian readings. Andrew Tuck (1994) notes that readings of Nāgārjuna in the West often follow fashions in Western philosophy and religious studies. He has been read as a mystic (Streng 1967), as a nihilist (Wood 1994), as a pragmatist (Kalupahana 1986), as an antirealist (Siderits 1988) and as a skeptic (Garfield 1995). There is also considerable debate concerning the degree to which Nāgārjuna argues cogently, and regarding whether his logic should be understood as akin to a European bivalent classical logic or as akin to a four-valued or paraconsistent logic (Robinson 1957, Hayes 1994, Garfield and Priest 2003).

See also Buddhism; Buddhism Schools: Madhyamika.

Bibliography

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Garfield, J., and G. Priest. "Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought." Philosophy East and West 53 (2003): 1–21.

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Ruegg, D. S. The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1981.

Siderits, M. "Nāgārjuna as an Anti-Realist." Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1988): 311–325.

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Streng, F. Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967.

Tsong khapa. Ocean of Reasoning: A Great Commentary on Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Translated by G. N. Samten and J. L. Garfield. New York: Oxford University Press, [2005] 2006.

Tuck, A. Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nāgārjuna. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Veléz, A. "Emptiness in the Pali Suttas and the Question of Nāgārjuna's Orthdoxy." Philosophy East and West 55 (4) (2005).

Walser, J. Nāgārjuna in Context: Mahāyāna Buddhism and Early Indian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Wood, T. Nāgārjunian Disputations: A Philosophical Journey Through an Indian Looking-Glass. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

Jay L Garfield (2005)