Nāgārjuna's Appeal

“Nāgārjuna’s Appeal” — Hayes, Richard P. Journal of Indian Philosophy 22:4 (December 1994), pp. 299–378. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

added because gokhale-ways-of-argumentation-2008 treats the equivocation charge made here as one of the four logical problems Nāgārjuna’s argumentation raises, and answers it with the open-concept reading. It is also the sharpest modern analytic attack on the MMK that the wiki did not previously hold in full.

Extraction caveat. The JSTOR scan is two-column and the right edge of the running prose is clipped on many pages, so continuous body text is often incomplete (indented block quotations, verse translations and footnotes came through intact). Every claim below has been taken from a passage legible end to end. Long quotations from the body prose cannot be reproduced reliably from this file; check the PDF before any body-prose quotation goes into this wiki.

Thesis / main argument

Two observations open this wiki and set its shape. Nāgārjuna fascinates modern scholars of Buddhism out of all proportion to his influence on Indian Buddhists, who carried on with abhidharma and then with Diṅnāga–Dharmakīrti epistemology “almost as if Nāgārjuna had never existed” (p. 299). Hayes proposes one explanation for both facts: the arguments, examined closely, are fallacious, which is why classical Buddhists trained in sound argumentation ignored them and why twentieth-century readers, receptive to conclusions at odds with classical assumptions, are drawn to them.

The paper then does three things. reconstructs Nāgārjuna’s philosophical goal from the dedicatory verses, MMK 27 and MMK 24:18, and reaches a broadly therapeutic account: the target is dṛṣṭi, the opinions that presuppose a stable personal identity, and the method is to starve them by showing their subject matters insubstantial. examines the arguments of MMK 1 and MMK 15 in detail and finds them driven by the informal fallacy of equivocation on svabhāva, parabhāva, bhāva and prakṛti. surveys the modern interpreters — Absolutist, Positivist, Deconstructionist — and criticises each as reading its own century into the text. compares three explanations of the Buddha’s silence on the fourteen undetermined questions and prefers the Buddha’s own. The verdict is that Nāgārjuna had definite doctrines and was trying to systematise them; that he failed does not diminish his place in the history of Buddhist philosophy but does mean he was an imperfect thinker.

Key claims

• Two theorems, unambiguously asserted (p. 305). Theorem 1: no beings at all exist anywhere (na … vidyante bhāvāḥ kvacana kecana, MMK 1:3). Theorem 2: nothing can undergo the process of change (na … anyathātvam bhaviṣyati, MMK 15:10). Hayes takes both as flat commitments, not as reductios or as level-relative claims, and this is the interpretive decision on which the rest depends.
• The equivocation on svabhāva (pp. 311–313). svabhāva can be read as identity (svabhāva₁ — the nature belonging to the thing itself, the differentiating characteristic the ābhidharmikas actually meant) or as causal independence (svabhāva₂ — the fact of coming into being from itself); correspondingly parabhāva is either difference (parabhāva₁) or dependence (parabhāva₂). MMK 1:5ab is true when read with svabhāva₂ (“beings have no causal independence when they have causal conditions”); 1:5cd is true when read with svabhāva₁ (“if there is no identity, there is no difference”); but the second does not follow from the first, and only looks as though it does because one word carries both senses. Hayes adds that Nāgārjuna works with svabhāva₂, the sense none of his opponents used, which is Robinson’s 1972 point about the “trick” restated.
• The equivocation, worked through MMK 15 (pp. 316–322). A Pāṇinian table of the verbal noun in GHaÑ generates three readings for each term — the performance of the act, the instrument, the location — and Hayes sets out bhāva(P)/(L), abhāva(P)/(L), svabhāva₁ and ₂ in each. The chapter then reads as a slide: 15:1–2 use svabhāva₂ (“an independent thing born of causes would be a fabrication”, indisputably true by the definition of independence); 15:3 shifts to svabhāva₁ and parabhāva₁; 15:4 shifts back; and the conclusion at 15:5 that there is no bhāva and therefore no abhāva does not follow from the premises offered.
• A second equivocation, on “exists” (p. 315). The argument from the interdependence of cause and effect runs: a condition is not a condition unless its effect arises; to exist is to be identical with oneself; therefore a condition does not exist; therefore it cannot produce an effect. Hayes separates “an acorn exists” from “an acorn exists as the cause of an oak”. Nāgārjuna establishes only the second kind of failure and concludes to the first.
• Nāgārjuna’s logic is standard, not deviant (pp. 322–325, 350–351). Following Robinson 1957, Hayes holds it “unquestionable that Nāgārjuna’s logic was quite standard”: he states the law of contradiction (MMK 8:7cd) and the excluded middle. The apparent transgressions are mistakes within standard logic, not a rival logic. Hayes adds the general principle that in standard logic it is legitimate to predicate contradictory predicates of a subject provided the subject names nothing that exists — and that this is what Nāgārjuna is doing throughout. Without the two laws his enterprise would be ineffective, since he depends on deriving contradictions.
• The therapeutic reading of the goal (pp. 302–308, 353–356). The dedicatory verses give prapañcopaśama and MMK 27:30 gives sarvadṛṣṭiprahāṇa; the final chapter shows the opinions in question are those presupposing a definite personal identity; and MMK 24:18 makes emptiness a derivative designation. So the strategy is to “starve opinions” by showing that they have no substantial subject matters, in the way the sensual appetites are starved by withdrawing attention from sensible objects. adds a grammarians’ route to the same place, via Bhattacharya and Ingalls: for the Sanskrit grammarians speech is an act of will rather than a depiction of how things are, so one free of desire has nothing to say, and the analysis of speech categories reinforces the Buddhist teaching about desire. pratītya-samutpāda is glossed as coming into being after acquiring — becoming an object of attention in dependence on attachment.
• The three modern schools, and Tuck’s isogesis (pp. 325–363). Absolutism (Stcherbatsky’s neo-Kantian reading, Schayer, de Jong’s critique, Murti’s advaita Mahāyāna) reads Nāgārjuna as clearing the ground for a non-discursive intuition of a transcendent Absolute; Hayes notes that Murti’s Absolute ends as Advaita Vedānta with the śruti-authority and the caste structure removed. Positivism (Warder’s empiricist Buddha, Kalupahana’s Vienna-circle Buddha) makes Nāgārjuna an empiricist; Hayes objects that he rarely appeals to observation, that his criterion is freedom from contradiction rather than sensory warrant, and that empiricists do not conclude that nothing exists and nothing changes. Deconstructionism (Magliola, Dilworth on Nishida, Huntington) requires the deviant logic has already denied. Against all three he sets the exegetical scholars — Schayer, Robinson, Ruegg, Bhattacharya, Lindtner, Williams — as counter-evidence to Tuck’s claim that all interpretation is isogesis.
• Three interpretations of the Buddha’s silence, and the Buddha’s own (pp. 356–361). Murti explains the avyākṛta by the antinomies of reason and the Absolute; Kalupahana by the limits of sense experience. Hayes prefers what the Poṭṭhapādasutta, the Cūḷamālunkyasutta and Saṃyuttanikāya 4.391 actually say: the questions are not connected to the purpose, and, in the Saṃyutta passage, all fourteen presuppose an enduring self, so that with the self denied no predicate applies. His conclusion is irenic in an unexpected direction: on this reading the Buddha, the ābhidharmikas and Nāgārjuna “appear to be following almost exactly the same philosophical trajectory”, and Nāgārjuna need not be seen as a radical break from either.
• The Kātyāyanāvavāda (pp. 320–321, nn. 9–10). Hayes accepts that it is the only text Nāgārjuna cites by name, calls Kalupahana’s “superb commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta” claim an overstatement of its importance to the MMK as a whole, and notes that the sūtra does not itself use svabhāva or parabhāva — adding them to the list of obstructive perceptions is Nāgārjuna’s innovation. He quotes Candrakīrti’s remark that the sūtra “is recited in all sects”, which is Candrakīrti’s warrant for its authority.
• The scholasticism question is open (n. 15, p. 374). Hayes flags that the consensus assumption that Nāgārjuna’s target was the ābhidharmikas is not something that can be taken for granted, and that in the absence of solid evidence there is no reason to assume an antagonistic attitude.

Methodology

Analytic philosophy and Sanskrit philology in combination, with the grammarians doing the technical work: the ambiguities are derived from Pāṇini 3.1.16 and 3.2.121 via the Kāśikā-vṛtti, not asserted. Hayes works from Vaidya’s and Pāṇḍeya’s editions and compares the translations of Streng, Inada, Sprung and Kalupahana verse by verse in Appendix A, using the divergences as evidence that the key terms are being handled by different strategies rather than translated.

The Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework is entirely absent. The paper contains no discussion of the Two Truths — saṃvṛti and paramārtha do not appear — no neyārtha / nītārtha, no Three Turnings, no Prajñāpāramitā, and no Tibetan material. MMK 24:8–10 is never treated; 24:18 is used, but as a definition of emptiness as derivative designation rather than as the conclusion of the two-truths chapter. Candrakīrti appears twice, once glossed as “left without a strong argument … all he can do is to assert it strongly and hope that no one will question him too forcefully” (p. 314) and once as a witness to the sūtra’s canonicity. This is the purest specimen of full methodological removal in the wiki: not a rejection of the framework, which would require noticing it, but its complete absence from the field of view.

Notable quotes

• “It is only by playing on the ambiguity of such terms as ‘existence’ that Nāgārjuna can create the illusion of a valid argument.” (p. 315)

Connections

• Gokhale / gokhale-ways-of-argumentation-2008 — the reason for the addition. Gokhale takes the equivocation charge as one of his four logical issues and answers it with the open-concept reading, converting an alleged fallacy into the argument’s content.
• Siderits / siderits-causation-emptiness-2004 — the rival answer, via Principle P and the conceptual construction of the causal relation. Siderits also appears in Hayes: the Siderits–O’Brien 1976 Zeno comparison at pp. 351–352, and Kalupahana’s footnote attack on Siderits quoted at p. 342.
• Galloway / galloway-logical-issues-1989 — the immediate predecessor in the same journal on the same question, cited by Hayes at n. 13 among the tetralemma studies. Galloway clears the two standing fallacy charges (excluded middle, contraposition); Hayes grants that the logic is standard and adds a third charge Galloway had not considered.
• Kalupahana / kalupahana-mmk-1986 / kalupahana-buddhist-philosophy-1976 — the principal target of . Hayes’s objections to the empiricist reading (Nāgārjuna rarely appeals to observation; the criterion is freedom from contradiction; empiricists do not conclude that nothing exists) are independent of the wiki’s existing objections and reach the same verdict.
• Murti — .2 is the fullest treatment of Murti in the wiki’s sources, and the reduction of Murti’s Madhyamaka to a de-scripturalised Advaita is sharper than Della Santina’s version of the same charge.
• Wood / wood-nagarjunian-disputations-1994 — same year, same problem, opposite conclusion about what follows. Wood holds the arguments valid and the conclusion nihilism; Hayes holds the arguments invalid and the conclusion unsupported. Neither cites the other.
• Ruegg — Hayes endorses Ruegg’s ethnocentrism warning (1977, p. 52) and uses it against the comparativist readings; Ruegg is filed among the exegetes rather than the isogetes.
• Sprung / sprung-lucid-exposition-1979 — Sprung’s “self-existence / other-existence” rendering of MMK 1:5 is criticised at p. 313 as a neologism preserving plausibility at the cost of meaning.
• framework-absence-yields-nihilism, framework-absence-readings — the fifth verdict type.
• Robinson, Warder, Magliola, Bhattacharya, Tuck, Huntington, Stcherbatsky, Schayer, de Jong (no wiki pages) — the cohort canvasses. Robinson, “Did Nāgārjuna Really Refute All Philosophical Views?”, PEW 22:3 (1972); Tuck, Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship (OUP 1990); Magliola, Derrida on the Mend (1984); Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness (1989); Bhattacharya, “Nāgārjuna’s Arguments against Motion”, JIABS 8:1 (1985).