Madhyamaka Wiki

Burton

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Position summary

Burton argues that Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of emptiness, when read in its Abhidharma context, entails nihilism contrary to Nāgārjuna’s own intentions. Universal absence of svabhāva means all entities are entirely conceptually constructed (prajñaptimātra). Since conceptual construction requires both an unconstructed material basis and an unconstructed constructing agent, and since Nāgārjuna denies any unconstructed existent, nothing can exist. Nāgārjuna is an unwitting nihilist. Burton rejects the sceptical interpretation (Nāgārjuna does claim knowledge) and the mystical interpretation (Nāgārjuna’s knowledge is not trans-rational gnosis). He favours the view that Nāgārjuna intended an ontological critique of svabhāva — but argues this critique, taken to its logical conclusion, destroys the entities it was meant to preserve.

Hermeneutical approach

Deliberately disengages from the later commentarial tradition. Reads Nāgārjuna as a second-century Indian Buddhist operating in an Abhidharma context, and is “careful not to import what are actually later Mādhyamika concepts, terminology, and arguments, attributing them naively to Nāgārjuna.” While he references Candrakīrti, Tsongkhapa, mKhas grub rje, Gorampa, and the Eighth Karmapa, he treats them as later interpreters whose readings may diverge from Nāgārjuna’s own positions. Applies analytic philosophical categories (scepticism, nihilism, the given, solipsism) and assumes a trans-historical rationality. Written as a doctoral thesis under Paul Williams at Bristol.

Key claims

On the two truths and non-conceptuality (Emptiness Appraised Ch 3)

Burton’s fullest engagement with the two-truths problem runs through what he calls reality₁ / reality₂. He confronts an apparent contradiction in Nāgārjuna — reality is the absence of svabhāva (conceptual, expressible) yet reality is niṣprapañca / nirvikalpa (non-conceptual, inexpressible) — and weighs two incompatible resolutions:

  • Interpretation (1): equivocate on “reality” — reality₁ = the conceptualisable absence of svabhāva (Bhāvaviveka’s specifiable paryāya ultimate); reality₂ = an unconceptualisable ultimate apprehended only by non-conceptual gnosis (Bhāvaviveka’s unspecifiable aparyāya ultimate). He names Jizang, the Tibetan yod min med min position, and — following Williams — Mipham as proponents. He rejects it: it is self-refuting (conceptualising the unconceptualisable); it turns the two truths into an unbridgeable chasm and so into relativism; it is Hegel’s “night in which all cows are black” (a contentless reality known by a knowledge that discriminates nothing — Dummett, Katz, Bagger); and it risks “despotism” (an unaccountable teacher).
  • Interpretation (2): there is no reality₂; the non-conceptuality language describes the character of the meditative experience of knowing the absence of svabhāva, “non-conceptual” in three benign senses — knowledge by acquaintance (the taimirika eye-disease analogy; dṛṣṭi → darśana), lack of explicit conceptualisation (Heidegger, the pianist), and focussed samādhi. This is his preferred reading, though he then charges it too (emptiness as a “mere absence” may collapse into the cessation; and his Ch 4 nihilism would leave no entities to bear emptiness).

Two features matter for how the wiki uses him. First, on the emptiness of emptiness he is not silent: at MA VI.186 (p. 68) he reads śūnyatāśūnyatā as denying that emptiness is a dngos po / bhāva (mind-independent existent) — the non-foundationalist gloss — even though his Ch 4 regress depends on a foundationalist demand. Second, his critique of interpretation (1) is a modern analytic attack on the apophatic / gnosis wing of the framework (Gorampa and Mipham), distinct from the Abhidharma regress, and one he mounts while agreeing with this wiki that no separate reality₂ Absolute exists.

  • Westerhoff — directly responds to Burton’s nihilism charge in On the Nihilist Interpretation of Madhyamaka
  • Walser — explicitly endorses Burton’s reading of MMK 24:18 (dependent origination ≡ prajñaptisat) but reframes the move as a strategic alliance with the Prajñaptivādins / Saṃmitīyas rather than as a regress-generating category mistake. Walser’s institutional reading of MMK (walser-nagarjuna-2005 Ch. 7 pp. 234–235) complicates the framework-removal-yields-nihilism diagnosis: if Walser is right, Burton has recovered something Nāgārjuna actually built, not a category mistake
  • Paul Williams — Burton’s doctoral supervisor, shares the nihilism concern; Burton acknowledges substantial debt to Williams’ interpretation
  • Kalupahana — Burton explicitly rejects Kalupahana’s reading but both remove the Mahāyāna framework
  • Tsongkhapa — Burton acknowledges the dGe lugs pa “emptiness of emptiness” solution as “the most ingenious attempted solution” to the nihilism paradox
  • Gorampa — mentioned as holding the “trans-rational gnosis” interpretation; the target (with Mipham) of Burton’s Ch 3 critique of interpretation (1)
  • Mipham — named (via Williams) as a proponent of interpretation (1); Burton’s night-of-black-cows / relativism critique is aimed at Mipham’s gnosis-reading. The wiki’s rebuttal: Mipham’s zung ‘jug ultimate ≠ Burton’s separate reality₂ (see Mipham and burton-emptiness-appraised-1999 note 9)
  • Bhāviveka — Burton frames reality₁/reality₂ on Bhāviveka’s specifiable/unspecifiable two-ultimates structure (paryāya / aparyāya-paramārtha)
  • Eighth Karmapa — mentioned as holding the nature of things to be “quite ‘other’ than the conceptualisable world”

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