What this matrix compares
This matrix lays out, side by side, the principal interpreters who have read Nāgārjuna’s MMK as collapsing into nihilism — or, in a narrower band of cases, into absolutism, positivism, or deflationary pragmatism. It compares them along five axes: the verdict reached, the specific inferential move that yields that verdict, the framework status of the interpreter relative to the Mahāyāna hermeneutical apparatus (Two Truths as pedagogy, Provisional and Definitive, Three Turnings), the methodological mode of the engagement, and the primary text in which the position is set out.
The matrix is constructive and descriptive. Its adjudicative companion is framework-absence-yields-nihilism — that argument page proposes that the convergent pattern this matrix exhibits is not coincidental: framework-removal predictably produces nihilism (most commonly), with absolutism and positivism as the secondary failure modes of partial removal under Western overlay. This page presents the data; that page interprets it.
The principal source for the survey is westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016, whose JIP article surveys all three historical constituencies (non-Buddhist Indian critics, Buddhist critics, modern Buddhologists). The matrix extends Westerhoff’s catalogue with two additional bodies of material: (i) the Della Santina diagnosis (della-santina-madhyamaka-western-1986) of Kantian and Wittgensteinian overlay distortions (Murti, Streng, Gudmunsen), which produce non-nihilist failure modes (absolutism, positivism) but instantiate the same underlying pattern of partial-framework engagement; and (ii) kalupahana-mmk-1986, whose deflationary-pragmatic reading reaches a different verdict (not nihilism but Early-Buddhist empiricism) by the same framework-removal move. Where the matrix and Westerhoff diverge on the assessment of a given interpreter, Westerhoff’s reading is followed and the divergence is flagged.
The matrix
| Interpreter (period / school) | Verdict reached | Inferential move / reason | Framework status (re framework-absence-yields-nihilism) | Methodological mode | Primary text |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uddyotakara (6th–7th c., Nyāya) | Nihilism (sarvābhāvavāda) | Four epistemic-instrument arguments: (a) pramāṇas must exist to assert nihilism; (b) the sentence “all is non-existent” must itself exist with its referent; (c) speaker and listener must exist; (d) if “exists” and “does not exist” differ in meaning, some fact must ground the difference, which the nihilist also wants to deny | External — no access to framework; treats niḥsvabhāva = sarvābhāva | Polemical sūtra commentary | Nyāyavārttika on Nyāyasūtra 4.1.37 (per westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 pp. 340–342) |
| Kumārila (c. 7th c., Mīmāṃsā) | Nihilism via universal extension of emptiness | Mādhyamikas go beyond Yogācāra by denying both knowable objects (jñeya) and cognition (jñāna) — the verb “to know” grammatically requires an object, so if the representata are empty so must be the representations | External — no access; bāhyārtha-śūnyatva read straightforwardly as non-existence | Mīmāṃsā exegesis; grammatical-semantic argument | Mīmāṃsāślokavārttika 5.3.14–16 with Sucaritamiśra’s ṭīkā |
| Śaṅkara (8th c., Advaita Vedānta) | Nihilism via denial of both conventional and ultimate | Mādhyamikas deny lokavyavahāra on top of paramārtha — together = denial of everything. Even if there is no pot, the cognition of a pot is supported by every pramāṇa and cannot be denied; emptiness of everything would have to deny this too | External — no access; vyavahāra treated as a foundationalist commitment Madhyamaka would have to share to avoid collapse | Vedānta bhāṣya-exegesis | Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya 2.2.31; Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya 4.3.7 |
| Rāmānuja (11th–12th c., Viśiṣṭādvaita) | Nihilism (tucchatva, “nothingness”) | (i) Ordinary talk of bhāva / abhāva concerns local states (a pot exists in the house, not the kitchen); universal non-existence is unintelligible in this grammar. (ii) The pramāṇa by which emptiness is established must itself be real — if not, “everything would be real” (recapitulating Uddyotakara) | External — no access | Vedānta bhāṣya-exegesis | Śrībhāṣya on Brahmasūtra 2.2.30 |
| Madhva (13th c., Dvaita Vedānta) | Nihilism | Causality from a non-existent (asat) thing is unobserved; asat lacks all viśeṣa like a sky-flower; Madhyamaka’s claim that empty causes produce effects contradicts everyday experience | External — no access; reads śūnya as asat | Vedānta bhāṣya-exegesis | Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya 2.2.26 with Jayatīrtha’s Nyāyasudhā |
| Mādhava (14th c., doxographer) | Nihilism (sarvasya asattvam) | (i) Madhyamaka reasoning is fully general — applies indifferently to superimposed object, basis, relation, seer, seen; (ii) since these pairs are mutually existentially dependent, establishing non-existence of one entails non-existence of all → universal emptiness as universal non-existence | External — doxographic survey | Doxography | Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha §“Mādhyamika-darśana” |
| Asaṅga (4th c., Yogācāra) | pradhāna nāstika (“the most extreme kind of nihilist”) | “All is mere designation” (prajñaptimātram eva sarvam) requires a non-designated vastumātra basis on which the designation is made. Without basis (āśraya), neither tattva nor prajñapti is reasonable. This is durgṛhīta-śūnyatā (“wrongly grasped emptiness”). Direct ancestor of the modern Williams–Burton argument | Pre-Prāsaṅgika — Yogācāra-internal framework; pre-Candrakīrti’s hermeneutical apparatus | Yogācāra exegesis | Bodhisattvabhūmi, Tattvārtha chapter |
| Vasubandhu (4th–5th c., Yogācāra → Sautrāntika) | sarvanāstitā (universal non-existence) | Mādhyamikas “deny the existence of all the dharmas” and therefore prevent liberation. Reasoning not spelled out but inherited from Asaṅga (sole reference to Madhyamaka in entire corpus; Yaśomitra’s Sphuṭārthā-vyākhyā confirms the identification) | Pre-Prāsaṅgika; shares Asaṅga’s no-foundation worry | Abhidharma exegesis | Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya ad 5.19 |
| de la Vallée Poussin (1908–1926) | Dharmas “do not exist at all, either in reality or apparently” | Like the beauty of the daughter of a barren woman: “the object described, the description and the person describing are all similarly nonexistent.” Paramārthasatya = unqualified negation of appearances. (Later reversed his view, per de Jong 1972.) | Full methodological removal (initially); represents the high-water mark of early Western Buddhology’s consensus reading (Burnouf 1844, Kern 1896, Walleser 1911, Keith 1923, Wach 1924, Stcherbatsky 1927 all converge here) | Encyclopaedia / historical-philological survey | ”Nihilism (Buddhist)” in Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics |
| Murti (1955) | Absolutism (not nihilism) — distinct distortion | Reads Two Truths through Kant’s noumenal / phenomenal split: paramārtha as a transcendent absolute analogous to the Kantian noumenon. The pedagogical framework is retained in name but its content is replaced by Kantian ontology | Partial retention + Western (Kantian) ontological overlay; the Della Santina diagnosis of della-santina-madhyamaka-western-1986 | Cross-tradition philosophical comparison | Central Philosophy of Buddhism |
| Streng (1967) | Pragmatic positivism (not nihilism) — distinct distortion | Reads Two Truths through later-Wittgensteinian ordinary-language theory: emptiness as a therapeutic dissolution of metaphysics; “leave everything as it is” | Partial retention + Western (Wittgensteinian) semantic overlay | Comparative philosophy | Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning |
| Gudmunsen (1977) | Positivism (ordinary language as paradigm of truth) | Same Wittgensteinian overlay as Streng, pressed further: conventional truth elevated to the paradigm of truth simpliciter | Partial retention + Wittgensteinian overlay | Comparative philosophy | Wittgenstein and Buddhism |
| Kalupahana (1976 / 1986) | Deflationary pragmatic empiricism (not nihilism) | Reads MMK as a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, returning Nāgārjuna to “Early Buddhism.” Emptiness becomes “absence of metaphysics, not special insight”; the Two Truths become flat and non-hierarchical | Methodological removal of the Mahāyāna framework via return to Early Buddhism; self-undermining (apophatic about MMK while hyperkataphatic about “what Nāgārjuna really meant”) | Sri Lankan academic, Theravāda-leaning | kalupahana-mmk-1986 (Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way) |
| Wood (1994) | Nihilism: “sheer, unqualified, absolute nothingness” (sarvam sarvena nāsti) | Consistent prasajya reading of the Catuṣkoṭi: relevant-logic (Routley–Meyer), speech-act (Matilal), Buridan–Prior, and Ruegg’s FPC readings all dismissed; the only consistent reading terminates in absolute nothingness. Even appearances (vijñapti) do not exist | Argumentative rejection of the framework, not methodological removal: engages Two Truths and rejects them as “a literal or philosophical distinction”; engages and rejects Jayatilleke’s pragmatic avyākata reading as a category mistake. Cleanest exhibit of framework rejection on its own terms | Formal logic + Indology | wood-nagarjunian-disputations-1994 (Chs II §–4; IV n. 11; V §, , ) |
| Oetke (1991) | “On the level of the highest truth there is nothing of any kind” | Treats the paramārtha-level by analogy with the theoretical level in physical science (lightning “really is” an electric discharge). The MMK 24:18 / upādāya prajñapti derivation runs the same regress-from-universal-prajñaptimātra inference as Burton, in a different idiom | Framework-as-formalism without framework-as-pedagogy — retains the Two Truths as a sentential-operator scaffolding but empties it of pedagogical content (no neyārtha / nītārtha, no Three Turnings, no soteriological function). Distinctive sub-pattern | Analytic philosophy + German Indology | oetke-remarks-interpretation-1991 |
| Williams (1998 ff.) | Partial nihilism: pain has svabhāva; universal niḥsvabhāva judged “incoherent … equivalent to metaphysical nihilism” | Williams–Burton regress: all things being prajñaptisat would mean conceptual constructs without an unconstructed basis or unconstructed constructor → ontological nihilism. Williams holds with Abhidharma that pains have svabhāva (“found under analysis”; “it hurts; its existence is its hurting”) | Partial removal — accepts Two Truths as a level-distinction and engages the Indo-Tibetan commentators by name, but defects on the universal-emptiness extension. Localised collapse on the specific item (pain), per siderits-reality-altruism-2000 fn. 10 | Analytic philosophy + Buddhological scholarship | ”Altruism and Reality” (1998); Buddhist Thought (2000) |
| Burton (1999, 2001) | Full ontological nihilism | Williams–Burton regress, full strength: “conceptually constructed things need an unconstructed basis out of which they are constructed [and] an agent of the construction which is not himself a conceptual construction.” Same point Asaṅga makes in the Bodhisattvabhūmi | Full methodological removal — explicitly disengages from commentarial tradition (“careful not to import what are actually later Mādhyamika concepts”); acknowledges the dGe lugs pa solution as “the most ingenious attempted solution” but excludes it by methodological choice (Ch. 4 n. 23) | Analytic philosophy | burton-emptiness-appraised-1999; “Is Madhyamaka Buddhism Really the Middle Way?” (2001) |
| Westerhoff (2009, 2016) | Sophisticated nihilism defended as compatible with Madhyamaka — emptiness as conventional corrective, truth as warranted assertibility | Constructs a consistent nihilism from eliminativism about the dependent + non-foundationalism; argues this is distinct from the five forms of nihilism Madhyamaka explicitly rejects. The “equilibrium principle”: opponent-relative interpretation, with the nihilist reading sharpest against today’s naturalistic realists | Framework-engaged — extensive engagement with Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā, Asaṅga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi, Yaśomitra; the limit case for the framework-absence-yields-nihilism argument. Nihilism need not be incoherent, and framework-engaged interpretation can itself arrive at nihilist-adjacent conclusions | Analytic + textual; opponent-relative | westerhoff-madhyamaka-2009; westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 |
What the matrix shows
Three constituencies, one structural pattern
The non-Buddhist Indian critics (Uddyotakara through Mādhava) all share what Tsongkhapa six centuries later would diagnose as the svabhāva-equation: existence = svabhāva-existence, therefore niḥsvabhāva = non-existence. None of them had access to the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework that breaks this equation by making dependent origination the positive content of emptiness (jinpa-tsongkhapa-qualms-1999 is the locus classicus of the diagnosis; see framework-absence-yields-nihilism for the full argument). Their convergence on the nihilism verdict is therefore not coincidental but structural.
The Buddhist critics (Asaṅga, Vasubandhu) operate before — or outside — the Prāsaṅgika apparatus that Candrakīrti would later develop. Asaṅga’s no-basis-for-prajñapti worry is the direct ancestor of the modern Williams–Burton argument, and Westerhoff makes this lineage explicit (westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 p. 354). The internal Buddhist nihilism charge has the same structural shape as the modern academic charge — confirming that the type of move drives the conclusion, not which side of the Buddhist boundary one stands on.
The modern Buddhologists exhibit the same pattern in three distinguishable sub-modes:
- Full methodological removal (de la Vallée Poussin and the early Western consensus; Burton; in a different way, Kalupahana) — bracket the framework entirely. Verdicts: nihilism or deflationary pragmatism.
- Framework-as-formalism without pedagogy (Oetke) — retain the Two Truths as a formal sentential-operator scaffolding but empty it of soteriological content. Verdict: nihilism on the analogy with theoretical-level physics.
- Partial removal with overlay (Murti / Kantian, Streng / Gudmunsen / Wittgensteinian) — retain the framework’s name but replace its content with a Western ontology or semantics. Verdicts: absolutism (Kantian overlay) or positivism (Wittgensteinian overlay).
- Argumentative rejection (Wood) — engage the framework on its own terms and reject it: the Two Truths are not “a literal or philosophical distinction”; pragmatic catuṣkoṭi readings are category mistakes. Verdict: nihilism via a consistent prasajya reading of the four extremes. This is the cleanest exhibit because the rejection is philosophical, not methodological.
Williams as the structural hinge
Williams occupies a distinctive position: he accepts the Two Truths as a level-distinction and engages the Indo-Tibetan commentators by name, but defects on the universal-emptiness extension by holding (with Abhidharma) that pains have svabhāva. His localised collapse on a specific item — pain — illustrates the matrix’s underlying claim: framework-as-formal-scaffolding without framework-as-ontological-content yields a localised, not global, collapse. He is the intermediate case between full retention (the commentarial tradition) and full removal (Burton, his doctoral student, who pressed the move to its limit).
Westerhoff as the limit case
Westerhoff is the framework-engaged interpreter who nonetheless arrives at a nihilist-compatible conclusion. He partially concedes the critics’ diagnosis while reframing nihilism as defensible: a sophisticated nihilism distinct from the five forms Madhyamaka explicitly rejects. This is the limit case the matrix’s underlying argument has to handle. He shows that the framework alone does not settle the question; what it does is supply the resources (dependence-circles, infinite descent, the Catuṣkoṭi’s pedagogical role, neyārtha / nītārtha) that prevent the naive nihilist inference Burton presses. Whether a sophisticated nihilism that uses those very resources differently is itself the right reading is a separate question — the equilibrium principle pushes it to the opponent: against naturalistic realists, the nihilist reading sharpens; against anything-goes relativists, the conventional-truth stability does.
The convergence at a glance
- Verdict = nihilism: 6 non-Buddhist Indian + 2 Buddhist + 7 modern (de la Vallée Poussin, Wood, Oetke, Williams, Burton, plus Burnouf / Kern / Keith / Walleser cluster represented by de la Vallée Poussin) = 15 of 18.
- Verdict = absolutism: 1 (Murti).
- Verdict = positivism: 2 (Streng, Gudmunsen).
- Verdict = deflationary pragmatism: 1 (Kalupahana).
- Verdict = sophisticated nihilism, framework-engaged: 1 (Westerhoff).
- Framework status = no access: 8 (the 6 non-Buddhist Indians + 2 pre-Prāsaṅgika Buddhists).
- Framework status = full methodological removal: 4 (de la Vallée Poussin et al., Kalupahana, Burton; Wood is argumentative rejection rather than methodological removal).
- Framework status = framework-as-formalism without pedagogy: 1 (Oetke).
- Framework status = partial retention with Western overlay: 3 (Murti, Streng, Gudmunsen).
- Framework status = partial removal with localised collapse: 1 (Williams).
- Framework status = argumentative rejection from within: 1 (Wood).
- Framework status = framework-engaged: 1 (Westerhoff).
The 15-of-18 nihilism count is the convergence Westerhoff himself uses (p. 358) to argue against the “two millennia of misreaders simply failed to understand” dismissal. The framework-absence-yields-nihilism argument explains the convergence differently — not by conceding nihilism but by identifying the methodological move that produces it.
Linked pages
- Arguments: framework-absence-yields-nihilism (the adjudicative companion); framework-necessity (the positive version of the thesis); zhentong-is-refined-cittamatra-not-madhyamaka (the off-axis case, where framework-removal yields a positive substantialism rather than nihilism)
- Concepts: Emptiness, Svabhāva, Two Truths, Provisional and Definitive, Three Turnings, Pratītyasamutpāda, Catuṣkoṭi
- Sources: all interpreters with named source pages are linked in the matrix’s “Primary text” column; the central survey source is westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016