Madhyamaka Wiki

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Master catalogue of all wiki pages, organised by type.

New here? Start with the overview for an introduction to Madhyamaka and what this wiki offers.

Primary Texts (15 total)

  • Mūlamadhyamakakārikā — Nāgārjuna’s root verses
  • Catuḥśataka — Āryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses; the founding-generation treatise organised in two halves (eight chapters on conventional truth and the path, eight on ultimate truth and the analysis of emptiness); commentary-and-supplement to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; the wiki’s key witness that the Two Truths is architectural in the founding generation
  • Vigrahavyāvartanī — Nāgārjuna’s Dispeller of Disputes; companion to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; locus classicus of the No-thesis view (v. 29) and the earliest Madhyamaka critique of Nyāya Pramāṇa theory
  • Śūnyatāsaptati — Nāgārjuna’s Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness; fourth member of the Yukti-corpus; its v. 44 is the most explicit Two Truths hermeneutical statement in Nāgārjuna’s surviving corpus
  • Vaidalyaprakaraṇa — Nāgārjuna’s Crushing the Categories; a chapter-length critique of the sixteen Naiyāyika categories; the probans-refuting partner of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Madhyamakāvatāra — Candrakīrti’s Entering the Middle Way
  • Prasannapadā — Candrakīrti’s Lucid Words commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Prajñāpradīpa — Bhāviveka’s Lamp of Wisdom commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Madhyamakālaṅkāra — Śāntarakṣita’s Adornment of the Middle Way; section-by-section summary per Mipham’s commentary (two ultimates, two-step method, S–P as pedagogy)
  • Satyadvayāvatāra — Atiśa’s Entry to the Two Realities
  • Madhyama-upadeśa — Atiśa’s Key Instructions of the Middle Way; a short contemplative man ngag text
  • Lta ba’i shan ‘byed — Gorampa’s Distinguishing the Views; the principal fifteenth-century Sakya Madhyamaka polemical treatise
  • Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan — Gendün Chöpel’s Adornment for Nāgārjuna’s Thought (1953); the major twentieth-century Tibetan Madhyamaka treatise, critiquing Geluk Pramāṇa doctrine from within
  • Bodhicaryāvatāra — Śāntideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva (c. 8th century); the Ch 8 (meditation) / Ch 9 (wisdom) interlock central to the framework-as-pedagogy reading
  • Kaccāyanagotta Sutta — Pāli sutta (SN 12.15); the Buddha’s middle way between “all exists” and “all does not exist”; the sole sutta named by Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (15:7)

Scholars (37 total)

  • Nāgārjuna — Indian (c. 2nd century CE), founder of Madhyamaka; the Two Truths as hermeneutical key, emptiness as dependent origination, rejection of Svabhāva and of the Nyāya Pramāṇa enterprise, the No-thesis stance
  • Āryadeva — Indian (c. 2nd–3rd century CE), Nāgārjuna’s direct disciple and entrusted successor; “model” (gzhung phyi mo) Mādhyamika accepted by all sub-schools; his Catuḥśataka organises a treatise by the Two Truths (eight conventional, eight ultimate) and supplements the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā with the conventional path and the critique of non-Buddhist systems
  • Walser — Joseph Walser, contemporary social-historian (Tufts); reads Nāgārjuna’s writings as strategies to secure institutional resources for early Mahāyāna; the strongest external-causal counterweight to framework-necessity
  • Buddhapālita — Indian (c. 470–540), earliest extant Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentator; prasaṅga-only method; retrospectively named founder of “Prāsaṅgika”
  • Bhāviveka — Indian (c. 500–578), Prajñāpradīpa and Madhyamakahṛdaya; autonomous-syllogism method; retrospectively named founder of “Svātantrika”
  • Candrakīrti — Indian (c. 600–650), Prasannapadā and Madhyamakāvatāra; defender of Buddhapālita against Bhāviveka; principal articulator of “no thesis of one’s own”
  • Westerhoff — Oxford, analytic + commentarial method, equilibrium principle
  • Garfield — American, analytic + cross-cultural; translator of Tsongkhapa; framework-internal Prāsaṅgika-Geluk reading of the MMK (grounded on his full commentary, garfield-fundamental-wisdom-1995, and dated back to the 1990 therapeutic statement, garfield-epoche-sunyata-1990); Madhyamaka as therapy; two-truths-as-greatest-contribution; emptiness-of-emptiness as architectural key
  • Gorampa — Sakya, freedom from extremes, fourfold negation, two-level ultimate truth; the principal critic of Tsongkhapa
  • Tsongkhapa — Geluk, systematic Prāsaṅgika; sixfold negation of intrinsic existence; phenomena posited through mere conceptualisation; the lone object-side Two Truths voice in the wiki
  • Dolpopa — Jonang, zhentong, ultimate as truly existent tathāgatagarbha
  • Tāranātha — Jonang, concise zhentong synthesis, Great Middle Way
  • Karunadasa — Y. Karunadasa, senior Sri-Lankan Theravāda Abhidhamma scholar; argues the sammuti/paramattha Two Truths and nītattha/neyyattha device are Abhidhammic innovations drawn out of the suttas; the convergent-evolution witness for framework-has-pali-canonical-antecedents
  • Kalupahana — Sri Lankan, anti-systematic; 1976 indicts Madhyamaka as a “transcendentalist revolution” away from early Buddhism, 1986 reverses to read the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā as a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta
  • Śāntarakṣita — Indian Yogācāra-Madhyamaka, “neither one nor many” argument, two-step method
  • Mipham — Nyingma; Svātantrika–Prāsaṅgika as pedagogical convergence; indivisibility of the Two Truths; the Norbu Ketaka reading of Bodhicaryāvatāra Ch 9
  • Khenpo Kunzang Pelden — Khenpo Kunpal (1862–1943), Nyingma/Rimé; compiler-transmitter of Patrul Rinpoche’s and Mipham’s commentaries; author of The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech on the Bodhicaryāvatāra
  • Ninth Karmapa — Kagyü, Prāsaṅgika, three stages of analysis, “partial emptiness” critique of Tsongkhapa, no thesis of one’s own
  • Eighth Karmapa — Kagyü, principal Kagyü Madhyamaka commentator, Chariot of the Takpo Kagyü Siddhas
  • Ruegg — European academic, Indo-Tibetan philology and philosophy, multi-criterial analysis of the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction
  • Burton — Western analytic / Buddhist practitioner; Nāgārjuna’s emptiness entails nihilism; prajñaptimātra requires an unconstructed basis
  • Shakya Chokden — Sakya (heterodox), grand unity of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, Alīkākāravāda = Madhyamaka, self-emptiness AND other-emptiness
  • Komarovski — Academic, foremost modern scholar of Shakya Chokden
  • Atiśa — Indian, “pure” undifferentiated Madhyamaka (“Great Madhyamaka”), Candrakīrti lineage, contemplative over scholastic
  • Mabja — Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü (?–1185), earliest extant Tibetan Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentator (Ornament of Reason); Candrakīrti-following but pre-Prāsaṅgika/Svātantrika; frames the text by the Three Turnings and Two Truths from the outset
  • Apple — Academic (Calgary), recovery of Kadampa manuscripts, Atiśa’s Madhyamaka
  • Jinpa — Geluk-trained academic (Cambridge), translator of Tsongkhapa, sympathetic historical reconstruction
  • Thuken — Mongolian-Geluk Amdo doxographer (1737–1802); author of the synoptic Crystal Mirror, the most comprehensive late-Geluk doxography; silently erases Gorampa (see geluk-erasure-of-gorampa)
  • Sprung — Canadian comparative philosopher (1916–2002); Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian deflationary reading; translator of seventeen chapters of the Prasannapadā; predecessor to the Kalupahana/Burton deflationary line
  • Dzongsar Khyentse — contemporary Khyentse-lineage master (b. 1961); transmits Gorampa’s reading to a Western audience; strongest articulation of subjective-side Two Truths; “Buddha-nature must be beyond the four extremes”
  • Chowdhury — Sanjoy Barua Chowdhury, Theravāda-academic (Bangladeshi-Thai); survey-level four-schools doxography with śūnyatā anchored in Pāli precedent; a low-tier exhibit of contemporary Theravāda survey work
  • Siderits — Mark Siderits, American analytic philosopher; programme of Buddhist Reductionism with Madhyamaka as the self-applied step that empties the dharmas; “semantic non-dualism” reading; defends Madhyamaka coherence without the Mahāyāna framework
  • Williams — Paul Williams, British Buddhologist (Bristol); Altruism and Reality (1998) presses that universal niḥsvabhāva is “equivalent to metaphysical nihilism”; the partial-framework defection case; doctoral supervisor of Burton
  • Della Santina — Peter Della Santina, Indo-Tibetan-trained scholar; 1986 critique of Murti’s Kantian “absolutism” reading; emptiness as soteriological therapy, the Two Truths as pedagogical device; the framework-overlay interpretive pitfall
  • Gendün Chöpel — Tibetan (1903–1951), Geluk-trained; the only modern Tibetan to produce a sustained Madhyamaka treatise from inside the Geluk apparatus and turn it against the Geluk; anti-Pramāṇa polemic, yogin-in-equipoise reading of VV 29, chasm-reading of the Two Truths
  • Oetke — Claus Oetke, German Indologist; central tenet “on the level of highest truth there is nothing of any kind”; structurally convergent with Burton; the half-framework-half-formalism interpretive pitfall
  • Wood — Thomas E. Wood, American academic philosopher; the most sustained 1990s defence of the nihilist interpretation; prasajya-consistent catuṣkoṭi terminates in “sheer, unqualified, absolute nothingness”; argumentatively rejects the Two Truths as a literal distinction and the pragmatic catuṣkoṭi

Arguments (16 total)

Concepts (13 total)

  • Emptiness — śūnyatā, the central Madhyamaka doctrine
  • Svabhāva — intrinsic nature, the object of Madhyamaka negation
  • Two Truths — satyadvaya, the pedagogical and ontological structure
  • Provisional and Definitive — neyārtha / nītārtha; the Mahāyāna device for classifying teachings by interpretive status; nine-thinker comparison matrix; the Jonang inversion as the principal axis of Tibetan disagreement
  • Three Turnings — tri-dharmacakra; the Mahāyāna framework organising the Buddha’s teaching into three turnings; ten-thinker comparison matrix
  • Non-affirming Negation — prasajyapratiṣedha / med dgag, the form of Madhyamaka negation
  • Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika — the two sub-schools of Indian/Tibetan Madhyamaka
  • Tathāgatagarbha — Buddha-nature, the matrix-of-One-Gone-Thus
  • Five Great Reasonings — gtan tshigs chen po lnga, the Tibetan scholastic toolkit of Madhyamaka analytic arguments
  • Pramāṇa — valid cognition (Diṅnāga–Dharmakīrti); the epistemology Tsongkhapa integrates and Atiśa, Gorampa, Mipham, and the Ninth Karmapa reject for realising the ultimate
  • Rangtong-Zhentong — self-emptiness vs other-emptiness; the Tibetan schism on whether the ultimate is itself empty; comparison matrix across nine thinkers
  • No-thesis — na me ‘sti pratijñā; the Prāsaṅgika denial of an autonomous thesis; locus classicus at Vigrahavyāvartanī v. 29; four readings (Tsongkhapa / Gorampa / Westerhoff / Oetke)
  • Yogācāra-Madhyamaka-boundary — the doctrinal line between Mahāyāna’s two principal schools; load-bearing for Candrakīrti’s critique of vijñaptimātratā and the reduction of zhentong to “refined Cittamātra”; four Tibetan positions catalogued

Comparisons (4 total)

  • object-of-negation — Matrix A; dgag bya across Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, the Ninth Karmapa, Mipham, Shakya Chokden, and Gendün Chöpel, with Dolpopa added as an off-axis zhentong voice (affirming-negative ultimate, exempted from the negandum); five diagnostic axes; Tsongkhapa the outlier on the qualifier and four-koṭis columns
  • conventional-truth — Matrix B; saṃvṛtisatya across Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, the Ninth Karmapa, and Dolpopa; five diagnostic axes; the conventional-side question is more divergent than the dgag bya one
  • tathagatagarbha — Matrix C; tathāgatagarbha status across seven thinkers; three-position structure (truly-existent-zhentong / beyond-four-extremes / deflationary-med dgag)
  • framework-absence-readings - Matrix D; comparing the principal interpreters who have read Nāgārjuna’s MMK as collapsing into nihilism, absolutism, positivism, or deflationary pragmatism

Sources (51 total)

  • aryadeva-four-hundred-sonam-2008 — Āryadeva’s Catuḥśataka (Four Hundred Verses) with Gyel-tsap’s Geluk commentary (trans. Ruth Sonam & Geshe Sonam Rinchen); the bipartite 8 + 8 Two-Truths architecture of the founding generation; commentary-and-supplement to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; primary support for , ,
  • mabja-ornament-of-reason — rMa bya byang chub brtson ‘grus (?–1185), Ornament of Reason (Snow Lion 2011); the earliest extant Tibetan chapter-by-chapter Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentary; pre-Tsongkhapa witness for the framework-as-hermeneutic-from-the-outset claim
  • tsongkhapa-ocean-of-reasoning-1408 — Tsongkhapa’s Ocean of Reasoning (1407–08, trans. Samten & Garfield 2006), his direct Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentary; object-side two-truths reading and the prasajya/paryudāsa doctrine
  • lopez-madmans-middle-way-2006 — Donald Lopez, The Madman’s Middle Way (2006); the English translation of and commentary on Gendün Chöpel’s Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan; reads GC as traditional, not a Buddhist modernist
  • kalupahana-buddhist-philosophy-1976 — David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (1976), Ch. 11; pre-reversal Kalupahana reading Madhyamaka itself as a “revolution” away from early Buddhism, with Bhāviveka rehabilitated
  • komito-seventy-stanzas-1987 — David Komito’s translation of Nāgārjuna’s Śūnyatāsaptati with Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s Geluk commentary (Snow Lion 1987); v. 44 as the strongest Indian declaration of the Two Truths as hermeneutical key
  • walser-nagarjuna-2005 — Joseph Walser, Nāgārjuna in Context (Columbia 2005); social-historical reading of Nāgārjuna’s writings as resource-securing strategies; the strongest external-causal alternative to this wiki’s doctrinal reading
  • westerhoff-madhyamaka-2009 — Westerhoff’s systematic philosophical introduction to Nāgārjuna; threefold svabhāva analysis, anti-realism, cognitive dimension
  • westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 — Westerhoff’s defence of a sophisticated nihilist reading of Madhyamaka
  • gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469 — Gorampa’s threefold taxonomy and critique of Tsongkhapa and Dolpopa (Lta ba’i shan ‘byed)
  • gorampa-removal-wrong-views — Gorampa’s verse-by-verse spyi don on the Madhyamakāvatāra (Lta ngan sel, c. 1470s); sixty moot-points against the Tsongkhapa tradition; positive Sakya tathāgatagarbha at MA 11.34
  • taranatha-essence-other-emptiness-2007 — Tāranātha’s concise Jonang presentation of zhentong, with extensive Dolpopa citations
  • dolpopa-mountain-doctrine-1333 — Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s Mountain Doctrine (c. 1333; trans. Hopkins 2006); the foundational zhentong treatise — now grounds the wiki’s Dolpopa material directly rather than via Tāranātha; the ultimate as truly existent tathāgatagarbha and an affirming negative (ma yin dgag), the Jonang Three-Wheels inversion, and a zhentong reading of MMK itself (MMK 25 as two nirvāṇas)
  • tsongkhapa-illuminating-intent-1418 — Tsongkhapa’s mature commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra; object of negation, two truths, Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika
  • kalupahana-mmk-1986 — Kalupahana’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā translation and commentary; Nāgārjuna as empiricist pragmatist, MMK as commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta
  • shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara — Śāntarakṣita’s Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis with Mipham’s commentary; “neither one nor many” argument, two-step method
  • karmapa-feast-fortunate-1578 — the Ninth Karmapa’s abridgement of the Eighth Karmapa’s Madhyamakāvatāra commentary; Kagyü Prāsaṅgika, “partial emptiness” critique of Tsongkhapa
  • mipham-introduction-middle-way-2002 — Mipham’s Word of Chandra on the Madhyamakāvatāra (c. 1900); MA 6.23 as “epistemic, not ontological”; refutes Tsongkhapa’s bden grub qualifier; tathāgatagarbha as the ultimate-in-itself
  • kunzang-pelden-nectar-manjushri-2007 — Khenpo Kunzang Pelden, The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech on the Bodhicaryāvatāra (Padmakara 2007), Ch 9 following Mipham’s Norbu Ketaka; the framework-as-pedagogy keystone (BCA 9.106)
  • ruegg-svat-pras-2006 — Ruegg’s historical-critical analysis of the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction; six interrelated criteria; the distinction as dynamic, not a frozen dichotomy
  • burton-emptiness-appraised-1999 — Burton’s analytic appraisal of Nāgārjuna; universal niḥsvabhāva = prajñaptimātra entails nihilism; the paradigm case for framework-removal
  • komarovski-visions-unity-2011 — Komarovski’s study of Shakya Chokden’s grand unity of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka
  • apple-jewels-middle-way-2018 — Apple’s recovery of Atiśa’s “pure” Madhyamaka from Kadampa manuscripts; contemplative Candrakīrti lineage, rejection of pramāṇa
  • jinpa-tsongkhapa-qualms-1999 — Jinpa’s reconstruction of Tsongkhapa’s three qualms (nihilism, absolutism, quietism); dependent origination as the content of emptiness
  • candrakirti-prasannapada-mmk1-excerpt — Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā on MMK 1.1 (Appendix I of Dewar); the locus classicus of the Buddhapālita–Bhāviveka–Candrakīrti exchange
  • atisha-key-instructions — Atiśa’s Madhyama-upadeśa (Appendix II of Dewar); a short contemplative manual of his Madhyamaka practice
  • tenpa-personal-notes-2025 — the wiki author’s working notes on MMK interpretations across 2025; framework-defending against modern academic readings; Thai Forest convergent-evolution material; companion to tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes
  • tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes — the wiki author’s working synthesis of MA 1.8 and 3.11 polemics (Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Eighth Karmapa, Mipham) and Dolpopa’s zhentong reading; quotations pending verification
  • ames-prajnapradipa-ch2-1995 — Ames’s translation of Bhāviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa Ch 2 (on motion); syllogistic method with the paramārthatas qualifier; Bhāviveka’s inconsistency with prasaṅga
  • coghlan-buddhapalita-2021 — Coghlan’s translation of Buddhapālita’s Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti (Wisdom 2021); the “Great Vehicle Abhidharma” self-description; Tsongkhapa’s direct-insight locus at BP Ch 18
  • thuken-crystal-mirror-1802 — Thuken’s Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems (1802); synoptic late-Geluk doxography; Hindu-comparison reduction of gzhan stong; doxographical erasure of Gorampa
  • dzongsar-khyentse-madhyamakavatara-2003 — Dzongsar Khyentse’s oral commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra (2003), arranged by Gorampa’s sa bcad; subjective-side Two Truths; tathāgatagarbha beyond the four extremes
  • westerhoff-candrakirti-2024 — Westerhoff’s Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide (OUP 2024); first sustained analytic commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra; “semantic insulation” between the truths
  • sprung-lucid-exposition-1979 — Sprung’s translation of seventeen chapters of the Prasannapadā (1979) with a Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian introduction; early Western predecessor of the deflationary line
  • westerhoff-vigrahavyavartani-2010 — Westerhoff’s translation and commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī (OUP 2010); the Indian root for the No-thesis doctrine and the anti-foundationalist alternative to Nyāya Pramāṇa theory
  • chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 — Chowdhury’s 5-page survey (2018); four-schools doxography and a catalogue of early Pāli suññatā loci; a tertiary survey with two factual lapses (see source page)
  • oetke-remarks-interpretation-1991 — Oetke’s programmatic article (1991); the central tenet “on the level of highest truth there is nothing of any kind” as a negative general existential; the half-framework-half-formalism interpretive pitfall
  • westerhoff-golden-age-madhyamaka-2018 — Westerhoff’s historical survey of Indian Madhyamaka (OUP 2018); the Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika split as a “doxographic fiction”; warns against over-application of Tsongkhapa-style interpolation
  • westerhoff-vaidalyaprakarana-2018 — Westerhoff’s translation and commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Vaidalyaprakaraṇa (Wisdom 2018); reads the VP as constructive desubstantialisation; endorses Tsongkhapa’s MMK–VP–VV triad
  • siderits-buddhism-philosophy-2007 — Siderits’s textbook statement of Buddhist Reductionism (2007), Ch 9; three-options taxonomy with “semantic non-dualism” as the only coherent reading; two-senses-of-ultimate-truth disambiguation
  • siderits-causation-emptiness-2004 — Siderits, “Causation and Emptiness in Early Madhyamaka” (2004); technical reconstruction of MMK 1; the cleanest exhibit of defending Madhyamaka coherence without the Mahāyāna framework
  • siderits-reality-altruism-2000 — Siderits’s review of Williams’s Altruism and Reality (2000); exhibits Williams’s reading as the intermediate framework-removal failure; defends Śāntideva via the graded-teaching device (BCA 8/9)
  • della-santina-madhyamaka-western-1986 — Della Santina, “The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy” (1986); critique of Murti’s Kantian “absolutism” reading; emptiness as soteriological therapy; the framework-overlay interpretive pitfall
  • glasenapp-vedanta-buddhism-1950 — Glasenapp’s Vedanta and Buddhism (1950); locates the Vedānta-approaching tendency in Yogācāra, used as a structural counter-witness against Kalupahana’s Candrakīrti-Vedānta charge
  • karunadasa-theravada-abhidhamma-2010 — Y. Karunadasa, The Theravāda Abhidhamma (2010); the cleanest Theravāda-internal witness that the Two Truths and nītattha/neyyattha framework is drawn out of the suttas; sabhāva glossed as emptiness
  • jamyang-khyentse-seed-reasoning-2018 — Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s The Seed of Reasoning (rigs pa’i sa bon; trans. Pearcey, Lotsawa House 2018); a short nineteenth-century Rimé zin bris on the Five Great Reasonings, each as a debate-syllogism; the wiki’s only source about the five-as-a-set (no scholar page per the wiki author’s brief)
  • wood-nagarjunian-disputations-1994 — Thomas E. Wood, Nāgārjunian Disputations (Hawai’i 1994); sustained late-twentieth-century defence of the nihilist interpretation via formal logic; argumentatively rejects the literal Two Truths distinction and the pragmatic catuṣkoṭi; fifth deflationary-nihilist sub-pattern alongside Sprung, Kalupahana, Oetke and Burton
  • garfield-fundamental-wisdom-1995 — Jay Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995); his complete Mūlamadhyamakakārikā translation-plus-commentary and fullest statement
  • garfield-dependent-arising-1994 — Jay Garfield, “Dependent Arising and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why Did Nāgārjuna Start with Causation?” (Philosophy East and West 1994); a dedicated “how to read the MMK”
  • garfield-causality-2001 — Jay Garfield, “Nāgārjuna’s Theory of Causality: Implications Sacred and Profane” (Philosophy East and West 2001); causation deflated to conventionalist regularism (MMK I and VII)
  • garfield-epoche-sunyata-1990 — Jay Garfield, “Epoche and Śūnyatā: Skepticism East and West” (Philosophy East and West 1990); his earliest piece, the seed of the later reading; Madhyamaka (with Sextus/Hume/Wittgenstein) as philosophical therapy, not nihilism

Summaries (4 total)

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