Abstract
To gain a deeper insight into the role that negation played in the Krishnamurti dialogue, I compare it to two well-researched negation-based philosophies. The first is Nāgārjuna’s Buddhist philosophy of the ‘middle way’ (madhyamaka), in particular his most prominent work The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā). The second is the eighth-century Śaṅkara’s Hindu system of Advaita Vedānta, mainly his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and his independent work A Thousand Teachings (Upadeśasāhasrī). I start by introducing the Buddha’s imponderables and the way that Nāgārjuna developed these segments of the Buddha’s Dharma into the system of the middle way (madhyamaka). In this section, I demonstrate the transformative nature of this system, based on the original text as well as scholarly sources. The next section is dedicated to the presentation of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta as a negative philosophy and to the ways in which his method corresponds to and stands in contrast to Nāgārjuna’s negation. Finally, I highlight the uniqueness of Krishnamurti’s dialectical negation: while the two classical paragons of the negative approach practised by Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara are tools for the elimination of metaphysical views and epistemological approaches, Krishnamurti’s is a psychological and post-traditional negation whose aim is to do away with past, knowledge, and authority. More generally, I argue that, as a feature of the transformative dialogue, negation is a spiritual exercise that prepares for a particular experience and facilitates it: the discussant’s ability to perceive reality with naked eyes and a bare mind.
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Notes
- 1.
I shall return to Sañjaya’s form of negation in the following section.
- 2.
It is worth mentioning that the scriptures that inspired Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s practices of negation – the Buddha’s Dharma talks in the Pāli Canon and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, as well as a significant number of other Upaniṣads – had also been largely narrated in the explicit form of a dialogue.
- 3.
- 4.
For a contrary view, see Raju (1954: 703), who perceives Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s negation (particularly, their use of four-cornered negation) as ‘a principle expressive of ultimate reality’.
- 5.
- 6.
In Śaṅkara’s case, as I will show in the second section, all metaphysical claims but one.
- 7.
However, the logical gulf separating Indian thought from Western logical traditions seems to be gradually being bridged as a result of efforts initially made by twentieth-century Western philosophers in response to logical paradoxes. Two important developments have been the emergence of paraconsistent logic, which accommodates inconsistency in a controlled way, viewing inconsistent information as potentially informative, and the subsequent modern form of dialetheism (“two-way truth”), which transcends the law of non-contradiction by maintaining that there are indeed true contradictions (Priest et al. 2022a, b).
- 8.
We know of Sañjaya only through early Buddhist literature which refers to him critically (Jayatilleke 1963: 135).
- 9.
Jayatilleke (ibid., 138) maintains that this formula was not only Sañjaya’s, but was shared by all classical Indian sceptical schools of thought.
- 10.
The Brahmajāla Sutta contains a thorough negation of sixty-two views that prevailed among recluses in the time of the Buddha.
- 11.
Or ‘eel-wrigglers’, a term which should be understood as either denoting verbal jugglery or as an analogy that likens sceptics to eels that constantly squirm about in the water and are difficult to get hold of (Jayatilleke 1963: 122).
- 12.
Jones (2016: 13) convincingly unveils the reasoning behind the Buddha’s strategy of negation in the Vacchagotta dialogue.
- 13.
This brings us back to negation as a practice among mystics who tend to defend their experiences as ‘ineffable’. Blackwood (1963: 202–206) suggests that it is not that mystics argue that all descriptive statements are false, but rather that all descriptive statements are ‘inapplicable or inappropriate’ when it comes to their transcendent realizations. Thus, mystics simply disregard syntactic and logical rules, such as the law of non-contradiction, which are only relevant as long as one wishes to ‘make learning possible’ (ibid., 207–209).
- 14.
See also Ganeri’s (2013a: 51–53) useful point that the Buddha’s negation in the Vacchagotta dialogue was not to keep secret knowledge in his fist but to ensure that he would not impart knowledge that is unnecessary and therefore ultimately harmful. Thus, using negation he could challenge the premise of the question itself (ibid. 53).
- 15.
Nāgārjuna clearly deems the refutation of all views the centrepiece of the Buddha’s Dharma, since he concludes his work by praising Gautama Buddha for teaching the ‘true doctrine which leads to the relinquishing of all views’ (XXVII: 30).
- 16.
In this sense, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is in line with the general tendency of some forms of Indian and Buddhist debate to value reasoning and argumentation not only for their truth-preserving and truth-validating properties, but also for their ability to promote truth (Ganeri 2013a: 125).
- 17.
With the word ‘trans-logical’ I also indicate that contrary to Betty’s qualm (1984: 448), the ladder of logic is not a mere apparatus that one ought to kick out from beneath oneself after climbing up it, but a form of discriminating wisdom on which one builds.
- 18.
This is stated cautiously, since certain forms of South Asian argumentation, including four-cornered negation and Nāgārjuna’s use of it, can help Western thought to accept other forms of logic and thus to arrive at broader logical formulas.
- 19.
In the collective memory of mainstream Hinduism, Śaṅkara is honoured as a philosopher-saint whose efforts to give a coherent structure to disparate Hindu beliefs and practices have safeguarded Hinduism from the challenges posed by the rise of Buddhism (Shearer 2017: xiii). There are also substantial examples of criticism of Buddhist views in Śaṅkara’s works (e.g. Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.2.18–32).
- 20.
Shearer (2017: xxiii) considers Śaṅkara’s employment of relentless reasoning, logic, and dialectic a part of his methodological toolkit (upāya, or useful means), which is only utilized to either defend or advance the radical cognitive insight (jñāna) which lies at the core of the Advaitin perspective of non-dualism. Thus, Shearer concludes, Śaṅkara is not a philosopher since he does not maintain a consistent conceptual position and does not believe that truth can be proven or brought about by any of these methodological tools (ibid.). This brings us back to the concept of transformative philosophers.
- 21.
Raju (1954: 704), who contrasts Śaṅkara’s negation with that of Nāgārjuna, mentions that while śūnya in Sanskrit means both the mathematical and metaphysical zero, another word employed by the Sanskrit writers to describe the mathematical zero is Pūrṇa, which means the full rather than the empty.
- 22.
Raju (1954: 709–710) effectively classifies Nāgārjuna’s conception of fourfold negation as ‘metaphysical relativism’ and Śaṅkara’s negation as ‘metaphysical absolutism and phenomenal relativism’.
- 23.
For a supportive view, see King (1957: 112–113), who concludes that Nāgārjuna’s outer scepticism is intended to serve his inner truth.
- 24.
Since Krishnamurti is not as philosophically coherent as Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara, this should be stated with reservation: while his dialogical negation generally avoids affirmative assertions about the ultimate truth, Krishnamurti’s diaries, biographies, and public discourses include numerous contradictory descriptions of the nature of the already existing reality (see Chap. 8).
- 25.
This distinction will be elaborated on in the concluding chapter.
- 26.
Nevertheless, Krishnamurti mainly abandoned this structure only in his close group discussions and one-on-one conversations. His public discourse generally retained the traditional guru–student dialogue.
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Tubali, S. (2023). Nāgārjuna, Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti: Negation as a Spiritual Exercise. In: The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_11
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