Abstract
This article seeks to introduce a greater degree of precision into our understanding of Madhyamaka Buddhist ontological non-foundationalism, focussing specifically on the Madhyamaka founder Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE). It distinguishes four senses of what the ‘foundation’ whose existence Mādhyamikas deny means; that is, (1) as ‘something that stands under or grounds things’ (a position known as generic substantialism); (2) as ‘a particular kind of basic entity’ (specific substantialism); (3) as ‘an individual essence (a haecceity or thisness of that object) by means of which it is identical to that very object, to itself’ (modal essentialism); and (4) as ‘an essence in the absence of which an object could be of a radically different kind or sort of object than it in fact is’ (sortal essentialism). It then proceeds to delineate the Madhyamaka refutation of the specific substantialist position in terms of its argued denial of dharma as basic entity; of generic substantialism and modal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of svabhāva as both foundation for and essence of putative entities; and of sortal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of essentialist conceptions of conceptual thought (vikalpa), mental construction (prapañca), and in short the entire domain of ratiocination (kalpanā), by means of its notion of conceptual imputation (prajñaptir upādāya)—a denial strictly speaking ontological, but of what are putative epistemic entities. The final portion of the article explains the relationship of ontological to other forms of non-foundationalism according to Madhyamaka.
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Notes
I thus consider this article as complementary to Jan Westerhoff’s study of what he terms Nāgārjuna’s ‘ontological non-foundationalism’, ‘epistemological non-foundationalism’, ‘linguistic non-foundationalism’, and ‘non-foundationalism about truth’ (Westerhoff 2017). While I limit myself to the first of these, the discussion below will show that I parse the distinctions he elaborates in slightly different manner, such that a form of what Westerhoff calls ‘epistemological non-foundationalism’ also falls within the purview of my discussion here.
Thus, Westerhoff notes that “This term can be rendered into English in different ways: ‘inherent existence,’ ‘intrinsic nature,’ ‘own-being,’ and ‘substance’ are some of the alternatives that have been suggested in contemporary literature” (Westerhoff 2017). I return to discussion of such terms in §3.3 below.
For a sustained defense of this interpretation of Nāgārjuna, see Stepien (2019).
I thus differentiate the position taken here from what Westerhoff terms ‘epistemological non-foundationalism’, which he defines as “the view that epistemic instruments and objects do not have their nature intrinsically” (Westerhoff 2017).
The Sanskrit text of the MK I source primarily from Siderits and Katsura (2013), which itself follows the edition by de La Vallée Poussin (1970) [1913] as modified by Ye (2011), though I have also referred to De Jong and Lindtner (1977), as also to Pandeya and Manju (1991) and McCagney (1997). Translations are my own, though I have benefited most from reference to those by Siderits and Katsura (2013) from the Sanskrit and that by Garfield (1995) from the Tibetan.
For the Vaidalyaprakaraṇa, see the translation and commentary in Westerhoff (2018).
For the Ratnāvalī, see the extant portions of the original Sanskrit, as well as the canonical Tibetan translation and the Taisho edition of the Chinese version of the text translated by Paramārtha (真諦, 499–569; that is, the寶行王正論: T 1656), in Hahn (1982), and for translations and commentaries see Dunne and McClintock (1997), Hopkins (1998), and Jampa Tegchok (2017).
Thus, Robinson’s specification that “This conception of substance derives from the intuitive notion of individual thing or object, which contrast mainly with properties and events” (Robinson 2020, emphases original) is indeed valid on an “intuitive” level, but not necessarily if we are concerned to define this sense of ‘substance’, and thus the specific substantialism that ensues from it, in a more precise manner.
Regarding the widespread nature of the conceptions I discuss, see e.g. Robertson Ishii and Atkins 2020: “A modal characterization of the distinction between essential and accidental properties is taken for granted in nearly all work in analytic metaphysics in the latter half of the 20th century.”
For a discussion of Locke on substance relevant but tangential to my own, see Robinson 2020: §2.5.
In a non-sortal context, Quine appears to have entertained (though not supported) a view analogous to this regarding the attributes of an individual object in characterizing what he calls ‘Aristotelian essentialism’ as “the doctrine that some of the attributes of a thing (quite independently of the language in which the thing is referred to, if at all) may be essential to the thing, and others accidental” (Quine 1966: 173–174, cited as pp. 175–176 of the 1976 edition in Robertson Ishii and Atkins 2020: §3). That Quine was not enamoured of this view is clear, inter alia, from his affirmation that “necessity resides in the way in which we say things, and not in the things we talk about,” not to mention his more general dread at the prospect of being led “back into the metaphysical jungle of Aristotelian essentialism” (Quine 1966: 174).
See also Westerhoff 2017: 97, where the absence of any “‘master argument’ for universal emptiness” is explicated with recourse to “Madhyamaka’s view of its own function”; that is, to act “not as a final philosophical theory to replace all others, but as a medicine administered to those who are suffering from the illusion of substantial existence” – a medicine tailored to the individual illness (i.e. form of foundationalism) under treatment. Whether or not one agrees with this understanding of the function of Madhyamaka arguments (or of Mādhyamikas’ view of that function), it is worthwhile noting what is surely a conceptually and methodologically valuable concomitant feature of the dependent nature of Madhyamaka arguments, which is that, insofar as dependent in this manner, they discursively embody a highly significant aspect of the substantive content they convey, and moreover thereby obviate a potential charge of inconsistency.
As noted above, among various other alternatives extant in the scholarly literature, Westerhoff also proposes ‘substance’ (Westerhoff 2017: 94).
MK:15:1: na saṃbhavaḥ svabhāvasya yuktaḥ pratyayahetubhiḥ / hetupratyayasaṃbhūtaḥ svabhāvaḥ kṛtako bhavet. Since various senses of the polysemic term ‘svabhāva’ are at play here and in subsequent passages cited, I have preferred to leave this untranslated and to explicate it as per the particular context in the surrounding text. Garfield (1995: 39, 220) renders this occurrence as ‘essence’, while Siderits and Katsura (2013: 154) prefer ‘intrinsic nature’.
The issue of the nihilist interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka leads to paths too tortuous to tackle here, all the more so since they are (thankfully) tangential to the topic at hand. Allow me thus to merely state in passing that I consider a reading of Nāgārjuna that takes him to be a nihilist to be spurious on the grounds that it runs directly counter to Nāgārjuna’s understanding of both of the two extreme views (antagrahadṛṣṭi) of eternalism (śāśvatavāda) and annihilationism/nihilism (ucchedavāda) as counter to the ‘middle way’ (madhyamā pratipad) of the Madhyamaka; I cite MK:15:10 as textual support:
“It exists” is grasping for eternalism
“It does not exist” is the viewpoint of nihilism
Therefore the wise should not depend
On either existence nor non-existence
Sk. astīti śāśvatagrāho nāstīty ucchedadarśanaṃ / tasmād astitvanāstitve nāśrīyeta vicakṣaṇaḥ.
MK:24:18ab: yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe.
MK:24:19: apratītya samutpanno dharmaḥ kaścin na vidyate / yasmāt tasmād aśūnyo hi dharmaḥ kaścin na vidyate.
VV:1: sarveṣāṃ bhāvānāṃ sarvatra na vidyate svabhāvaś cet / tvadvacanam asvabhāvaṃ na nivartayituṃ svabhāvam alam.
VV:70: prabhavati ca śūnyateyaṃ yasya prabhavanti tasya sarvārthāḥ / prabhavati na tasya kiṃ cin na prabhavati śūnyatā yasya.
MK:24:14: sarvaṃ ca yujyate tasya śūnyatā yasya yujyate / sarvaṃ na yujyate tasya śūnyaṃ yasya na yujyate.
MK:24:16–17: svabhāvād yadi bhāvānāṃ sadbhāvam anupaśyasi / ahetupratyayān bhāvāṃs tvam evaṃ sati paśyasi // kāryaṃ ca kāraṇaṃ caiva kartāraṃ karaṇaṃ kriyām / utpādaṃ ca nirodhaṃ ca phalaṃ ca pratibādhase.
MK:24:33: na ca dharmam adharmaṃ vā kaście jātu kariṣyati / kim aśūnyasya kartavyaṃ svabhāvaḥ kriyate na hi.
MK:24:38: ajātam aniruddhaṃ ca kūṭasthaṃ ca bhaviṣyati / vicitrābhir avasthābhiḥ svabhāve rahitaṃ jagat.
Note that ‘the emptiness of emptiness’ (śūnyatāśūnyatā) is not strictly speaking a Nāgārjunian phrase, but is rather to be found in the Madhyamakāvatāra commentary by Candrakīrti no longer extant in Sanskrit (for a translation of the relevant verse, 6.186, see Huntington 1989: 180).
See MK:24:18cd: “This, a relative designation / Is itself the middle way.” Sk. sā prajñaptir upādāya pratipat saiva madhyamā. For further discussion of the points raised in the preceding paragraphs, see (among countless other treatments) Garfield 1995: 304–308, Garfield 2015: 61–71, Siderits and Katsura 2013: 277–278, Arnold 2005: 169ff.
VV:70 auto-commentary:
yasya śūnyateyaṃ prabhavati tasya sarvārtha laukikalokattarāḥ prabhavanti / kiṃ kāraṇam / yasya hi śūnyatā prabhavati tasya pratītyasamutpādaḥ prabhavati / yasya pratītyasamutpādaḥ prabhavati tasya catvāryāryasatyāni prabhavanti / yasya catvāryāryasatyāni prabhavanti tasya śrāmaṇyaphalāni prabhavanti sarvaviśeṣādhigamāḥ prabhavanti / yasya sarvaviśeṣādhigamāḥ prabhavanti tasya trīṇi ratnāni buddhadharmasaṃghāḥ prabhavanti.
The conventionalist reading is most closely associated with Jay Garfield; see Berger (2010) for a critique in light of an alternative reading of the crucial verse MK:24:18, Garfield and Westerhoff (2011) for a response, and Berger (2011) for a rejoinder. For the purposes of the present article, I take the conventionalist interpretation as at the very least justifiable, but see no need to enter into this particular exegetical fray on the grounds that my interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s non-foundationalism in terms of its repudiation of sortal essentialism stands independent of the particular view one takes on conventionalism.
For reference, contrary to the prevailing interpretation according to which “Nāgārjuna’s thought has been seen to embrace an overarching linguistic conventionalism in which words, whether they are used for the purposes of theory or practice, though they serve as commonly accepted currency in the transactions of worldly business (vyavahāra), are in the end only ideas (prajñapti) or metaphysical fabrications (prapaṅca)” (Berger 2010: 40), Berger contends that
Nāgārjuna, rather than advocating the mere nominal or conventional status of terms such as pratītyasamutpāda and śūnyatā, demands that they be accepted as both pedagogically useful and even referentially accurate descriptions of the world as it is… Nāgārjuna then proffers no systematic, all-embracing philosophy of language as falsification in the MMK [MK], but rather warns us only against certain theoretical, desire-driven habits of ‘‘self’’-preservation in its use. (Berger 2010: 41, 58)
For reference, Westerhoff states:
The defender of existence by svabhāva, it may be argued, has to uphold the distinction between ontology (what there is) and epistemology (how we find out about it) as fundamental. But Nāgārjuna’s arguments threaten that distinction. Since we can never know whether something is a reliable epistemic instrument without taking into account the epistemic objects at the same time, ontology and epistemology become inextricably linked. Therefore there cannot be a fundamental distinction between them, and thus we cannot have one side of the divide being characterized by objects existing in the way they do intrinsically, by svabhāva. (Westerhoff 2017: 94)
My point is that this is true, but applies, mutatis mutandis, not only to ontology and epistemology.
The interlocutor has been variously identified; see Garfield 2008: 511, fn. 7 for an enumeration of these; the thrust of Candrakīrti’s response is not significantly altered by identifying his interlocutor as someone other than Bhāvaviveka.
Translation and Sanskrit text (from Vaidya’s edition: Vaidya 1960) in Huntington 2007: 124:
[Bhāvaviveka:] kiṃ khalu āryāṇām upapattir nāsti? [Candrakīrti:] kenaitad uktam asti vā nāsti veti / paramārtho hyāryāṇāṃ tūṣṇiṃbhāvaḥ / tataḥ kutas tatra prapañcasaṃbhavo yadupapattir anupapattir vā syāt?
Garfield (2008: 512, fn. 8) and Arnold (2005: 146) provide alternative translations of this passage.
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Stepien, R.K. Substantialism, Essentialism, Emptiness: Buddhist Critiques of Ontology. J Indian Philos 49, 871–893 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-021-09483-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-021-09483-0