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This introductory chapter introduces Nāgārjuna as a philosophical thinker and gives a brief discussion of the difficulties faced when trying to establish his exact dates and location. This chapter justifies the choice of the six texts comprising the so-called ‘Yukti-corpus’ as the basis for the discussion in the book and adds some remarks on methodology. The chapter also provides a brief outline of the philosophical study of Nāgārjuna in the West. This is followed by a synopsis of the arguments presented in the following chapters.

This introductory chapter begins with a description of the history of the Vigrahavyāvartanī. It then considers arguments regarding the authenticity of the Vigrahavyāvartanī and discusses the structure of the Vigrahavyāvartanī.

This chapter discusses the theory of selfhood developed by the Mādhyamika philosophers, especially Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti, according to which becoming a self is an activity or performance. Various readings of the no-self thesis are distinguished. The problem of the individuation of minds is discussed.

The idea of interdependence has assumed a central role in contemporary Buddhism, especially in the West. This chapter traces the way by which dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada) in early Buddhism was transmuted from a causal chain binding beings to samsara—something to get free from—into contemporary interpretations of interdependence as a web of interconnected beings and events to celebrate, embrace, and become one with. The early conception of dependent origination is first reframed in the Mahayana, through ideas such as interpenetration in the Avatamsaka Sutra and the reverence for the natural world in East Asia. The concept then picks up western influences from Romanticism, Transcendentalism, systems theory, deep ecology, and popular accounts of quantum physics. The recent synthesis of these elements is a hybrid concept of interdependence unique to contemporary Buddhism that combines cosmology and world-affirming wonder with ethical, political, and ecological imperatives.

If Buddhists really hold consequentialism and hard determinism, we would expect them to endorse utilitarian views of punishment and reject retributivism. We find this kind of view on the justification of punishment in Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland. Nagarjuna sees punishment as sometimes necessary, thereby rejecting a pacifist form of unqualified nonviolence. But he advocates compassionate and merciful punishment in terms incompatible with any form of retributivism. From a Buddhist perspective, the American criminal justice system creates needless suffering on a massive scale. Punishment is necessary to protect society, but should be practiced only to the extent required by deterrence and rehabilitation; our present system can be justified only by appeal to irrational and vindictive retributivist views. Buddhists should advocate the abolition of the death penalty and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, especially for nonviolent offenders.

This chapter deals with the theory of negation described in the non-Buddhist Nāgārjuna school of thought. Since many of Nāgārjuna’s arguments are formulated against the background of this theory and set out to refute it it is important to gain a clear understanding of the Nāgārjuna account in order to grasp the point of Nāgārjuna’s arguments. The chapter deals in particular with the problem of negating non-denoting terms (such as ‘unicorn’) and the problem of the temporal relation between the negation and the negated object.

This chapter attempts to analyze Nāgārjuna’s conception of language. Particular emphasis is placed on an investigation of Nāgārjuna’s famous statement that he does not have any philosophical thesis. The chapter considers several interpretations of this statement and a suggest a semantic one which entails that Nāgārjuna does not accept theses interpreted on the basis of a particular realist semantics. The chapter also considers the question what a ‘Madhyamakaa-compatible’ semantics would look like.

This chapter addresses a more specific and more pointed instance of paradox at the bounds of expression, considering Nāgārjuna's remarks in the Vigrahavyāvartanī and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā to the effect that neither he nor the Buddha asserts any thesis, has any view, takes any philosophical position. This, of course, sounds suspiciously like a thesis. Hence the paradox. It is argued that the resolution to the apparent paradox is achieved by the Mādhyamika through adopting a semantic distinction between assertions made with or without ontological import. Nāgārjuna and his Mādhyamika followers, on this account, endorse a theory of linguistic meaning according to which their assertions do not implicate the reality of referents of apparently referring expressions. Nāgārjuna denies making assertions with ontological import, having views about entities that exist on their own, etc., but is able to say these things without being self-refuting because of a view about language not shared by his non-Buddhist opponents.

The previous chapter raised questions about the two truths and their relation to one another, and uses arguments, devices, and the rhetoric of contemporary Western debates about reductionism to address problems about Buddhism's two truths. This chapter addresses problems connected to the two truths as well, and considers one standard Buddhist approach to resolving these problems, the use of the catuskoti, or four-cornered logic. It also adopts the techniques of contemporary logical theory to achieve greater clarity about ideas explored by Nāgārjuna and Zen thinkers such as Hakuin and Dōgen.

This chapter explores Jay Garfield and Graham Priest's willingness to read Nāgārjuna and other Mādhyamikas as deliberately, though cogently, inconsistent. While it rejects their view that Mādhyamika logic is paraconsistent in the strong sense that contradictions are literally acceptable, it endorses the view that at least early Mādhyamikas, and perhaps some of their commentators, accept a nonadjunctive logic in which assertions and their denials are each acceptable, but in which they do not conjoin. The chapter shows both nuanced textual scholarship and the judicious application of the techniques of modern logic in the reconstruction of a Buddhist philosophical position regarding the apparently inconsistent, but nonetheless true, conventional and ultimate truths.

This chapter focuses not on the exegetical accuracy of Jay Garfield and Graham Priest's reconstruction of Nāgārjuna, but on the implication that Garfield and Priest draw from this reconstruction. They argue that Western philosophers haven't seen an ontological paradox of the sort that Nāgārjuna is interpreted as presenting and, thus, that Western philosophers can learn an important lesson from Nāgārjuna. Their claim that Nāgārjuna can provide us with something new indicates the problematic nature of their overall project.

This chapter examines the possible relevance of philosopher Nāgārjuna's work on contradictions arising at the limits of thought. It states that Nāgārjuna has endorsed the possibility of true contradictions which confirms that he is indeed a rational thinker. It provides an interpretation of how Nāgārjuna may view logic or the limits of thought. This chapter demonstrates that Nāgārjuna's two linked limit paradoxes satisfy a schema common to a number of well-known paradoxes in Western philosophy.

The Buddha's teaching of no-self, impermanence, and especially of the extinction of the self (nirvana) have historically been all too susceptible of construal as nihilism. Modern scholarship, however, has done much to restore a positive sense to them: the Buddha insisted that his work was to teach liberation, and his negations are not metaphysical but psychological, an alarm-call to ethical and meditative action to free oneself from greed, hatred, and delusion. Insofar as the Sinitization of Buddhism affected the apophatic elements of the tradition, three major trends may be noted: the influence of Taoist apophasis, and greater stresses on kataphasis and on phenomena. This chapter turns to the Mahayana and especially to the work of Nagarjuna. But first, since it has been already noted that the Buddha's concern was soteriological and therefore practical and not primarily philosophical, this chapter pays more attention to the meditative tradition that lies at the heart of Buddhist practice.

Chapter 4 focuses on Chinese sources that depicted Nāgārjuna as a dhāraṇī master, alchemist, and Pure Land denizen, who personally appeared in Chinese oratories to provide his unique blend of ritual repertoires that reportedly derived from ancient India but were fully congruent with time-honored Chinese ritual traditions. These sources potentially engaged a broad range of medieval Chinese audiences and thus insinuated Nāgārjuna into the religious practice of Chinese devotees across social and sectarian divisions. In this context Nāgārjuna was deployed not as a model of emulation, but as an object of veneration for Chinese adepts with a taste for ostensibly Indian thaumaturgic and alchemical rituals. Though recognizably accordant with the liturgical conventions of local Chinese religions, Nāgārjuna’s ritual programs were expressly labeled Indian Buddhist and thus rendered the preserve of Chinese Buddhists.