Kalupahana

Position summary

Kalupahana’s mature position (1986) reads Nāgārjuna as a conservative restorer of the Buddha’s original empiricist philosophy against the substantialist distortions of the Sarvāstivādins and Sautrāntikas. For Kalupahana, the entire later Madhyamaka tradition — Candrakīrti’s commentarial framework, the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction, the hierarchical Two Truths, the reading of emptiness as a linguistically transcendent truth — represents a progressive departure from Nāgārjuna’s intent. The “real” Nāgārjuna is a pragmatic empiricist comparable to Hume and William James, whose sole concern was to eliminate metaphysical notions of substance (svabhāva) and restore the Buddha’s middle path of dependent arising.

1976 → 1986 trajectory. This position evolved sharply over Kalupahana’s career — and the trajectory is itself diagnostically important for this wiki, not a footnote. In Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (Hawaii, 1976), Ch. 11 “Madhyamika Transcendentalism” (kalupahana-buddhist-philosophy-1976), Kalupahana criticised Madhyamaka itself — Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti together — as a “revolution” (viparyāsa) away from the empirical standpoint of early Buddhism, with Bhāviveka sympathetically rehabilitated as the one Madhyamika who tried to keep pratītyasamutpāda an empirical thesis. The 1986 MMK volume reverses course: now Nāgārjuna is defended and Candrakīrti alone bears the corruption-charge (“led Nāgārjuna’s philosophy toward Vedantic interpretation”). The same etymological tool (sammuti → saṃvṛti) is deployed in 1976 to indict both figures and in 1986 to defend Nāgārjuna against Candrakīrti. The reversal is achieved without explicit retraction and depends on incompatible datings of Mahāyāna sūtra availability: in 1976 the Prajñāpāramitā is treated as already-established absolutism by the time MMK is composed; in 1986 “no sophisticated Mahāyāna sūtras were available to Nāgārjuna.” Same scholar, same etymology, opposite verdicts on Nāgārjuna within ten years — a kind of instability the framework-respecting Tibetan readings (Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Karmapa, Mipham) do not exhibit within any single author across decades.

Hermeneutical approach

Kalupahana explicitly rejects the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework. He does not read MMK through the Two Truths as a hierarchical structure, does not accept the provisional/definitive distinction as relevant to MMK’s interpretation, and does not situate MMK within the Three Turnings schema. Instead, he reads MMK through the early Buddhist discourses (Pāli Nikāyas, Chinese Āgamas) and the early Abhidharma, comparing the Sanskrit text with Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation as a check on Candrakīrti’s commentary.

Key hermeneutical moves:

• The Kaccāyanagotta Sutta as the interpretive key to the entire MMK
• Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation (Chung-lun) as more faithful than Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā
• Paramārtha as “ultimate fruit/consequence” rather than “ultimate reality”
• Saṃvṛti as “convention” (broadly) rather than “mere language”
• Nirvikalpa as “non-polarised discrimination” rather than “non-conceptual”
• Moggalīputta-tissa as the first Buddhist reformer; Nāgārjuna as the second

Key claims

1986 position (MMK volume):

• MMK is a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, not a standalone philosophical treatise
• Nāgārjuna was an empiricist; na vidyate (“not evident”) is an appeal to experience
• The Two Truths are non-hierarchical; paramārtha does not sublate saṃvṛti
• Nirvāṇa is transformation, not transcendence — the elimination of greed, hatred, and confusion
• Candrakīrti’s interpretation moved Buddhist philosophy toward Vedāntic absolutism
• Chapters XXVI–XXVII are integral to the Kārikā, not Hīnayānistic appendices
• The Theravāda/Mahāyāna distinction is an “exaggeration” that should be eliminated

1976 position (Buddhist Philosophy Ch. 11), substantially different:

• Madhyamaka itself (Nāgārjuna + Candrakīrti together) is a “revolution” (viparyāsa) away from early Buddhism into transcendentalism
• The Prajñāpāramitā literature is already absolutism by the time MMK is written; MMK systematises this absolutism through dialectic
• Prasaṅga is not an apagogic proof but “disproof simply”; this disables Madhyamaka from formulating an empirical counter-thesis and is the cause of the slide into absolutism (following Murti’s structural diagnosis, reversing Murti’s positive evaluation)
• Bhāviveka is sympathetically rehabilitated as the Madhyamika who tried to preserve pratītyasamutpāda as an empirical thesis against the absolutist tide (Bhāviveka)
• The Tibetan Prāsaṅgika-over-Svātantrika hierarchy is not given in the Indian record: “this position [Prāsaṅgika] was not accepted wholeheartedly by some of the other Madhyamika teachers, especially Bhāvaviveka”
• The same sammuti → saṃvṛti etymological move that 1986 deploys against Candrakīrti is deployed against Nāgārjuna in 1976
• The Kaccāyanagotta connection is absent — MMK is not yet being defended via that sutta
• Madhyamaka raised pratītyasamutpāda “to the level of the transcendental,” citing the MMK dedicatory verse

Related scholars

• Karunadasa — near-contemporary from the same Sri-Lankan (University of Ceylon / Kelaniya) Theravāda-academic milieu. In karunadasa-theravada-abhidhamma-2010 he makes the same sammuti (Pāli, convention) vs saṃvṛti (Sanskrit, concealment) etymological argument and the same non-hierarchical, “two-truths-as-presentational-device” reading — but from the Theravāda Abhidhamma side rather than the MMK side. Karunadasa is the strongest evidence that Kalupahana’s deflationary, anti-hierarchical two-truths reading is a tradition-located Sri-Lankan-Theravāda reading, not an idiosyncratic move — which both raises its respectability and marks it as non-neutral.
• Murti — Kalupahana explicitly rejects Murti’s dialectical, Kantian reading of Nāgārjuna
• Warder — first raised the question whether Nāgārjuna was a Mahāyānist; Kalupahana builds on this
• Inada — Kalupahana engages sympathetically but disagrees on the Mahāyāna framing
• Stcherbatsky — criticised for equating Sarvāstivāda with early Buddhism
• Candrakīrti — treated as the primary distorter of Nāgārjuna’s original intent