“The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Chapter 2: Madhyamaka” — Westerhoff, Jan, 2018.
Thesis / main argument
Chapter 2 (“Madhyamaka,” pp. 84–146) of Westerhoff’s Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (OUP 2018) is a textbook-register historical survey of Indian Madhyamaka from the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras through Atiśa. Unlike Westerhoff’s earlier polemical-systematic 2009 monograph or the 2016 nihilism article, this chapter is a synthetic narrative aimed at situating the school within the broader development of Mahāyāna thought. Its central historiographical claim is that the link between Mahāyāna and Madhyamaka is best located not in any specific doctrine but in the broadly illusionistic worldview of the Perfection of Wisdom literature — a worldview whose roots may lie in early Mahāyāna meditative practice (the Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra). Madhyamaka’s task is to supply philosophical arguments for the Prajñāpāramitā’s previously argument-less assertions of universal emptiness.
The chapter’s other distinctive load-bearing claim — the one most directly relevant to the argument of framework necessity — is that the Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika split is a doxographic fiction retrojected from Tibet. Westerhoff is unusually direct on this point: even the terms are retranslations from later Tibetan doxographers, and Avalokitavrata (c. 700 CE), the major Indian sub-commentator on Bhāviveka, “does not appear to draw a distinction between the understanding of the two truths the two authors held.”
Key claims
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Mahāyāna ↔ Madhyamaka link is illusionism, not doctrine (pp. 87–89). The illusionism of the Prajñāpāramitā may be grounded in meditative experience (the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra teaches direct seeing of Amitāyus “remaining in this very world-system”), and this provides the conceptual point of contact for both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.
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Walser-following thesis on MMK’s Tripiṭaka-only citations (pp. 105–107). The fact that MMK names only the Kātyāyanāvavāda (Sanskrit parallel of the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta) and never quotes Mahāyāna sūtras is strategic, not evidence MMK is non-Mahāyāna. Nāgārjuna writes as a Mahāyāna-minority voice arguing to a Ābhidharmika audience and so restricts himself to commonly-accepted authorities. Westerhoff names Warder, Kalupahana 1991 (pp. 5–8) on the standalone-MMK side, and Ruegg, Lindtner, Bronkhorst 2009 (p. 136) as “remain unconvinced.”
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Defence of traditional biography as internally coherent (pp. 96–97). The fantastic appearance of Nāgārjuna’s biographies (magical powers, 600-year lifespan) only arises “if we consider him to have been an ordinary human being” — but the prophecy of first-bhūmi attainment in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra makes the magical elements exactly what Buddhist hagiography would predict. Westerhoff explicitly recommends “provisionally bracketing our contradicting assumptions, rather than attempting to ‘straighten out’ traditional accounts on the basis of contemporary historiography.”
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The “ontologization of meditative phenomenology” critique (pp. 102–103). The inference from “the world appears X to the trained meditator” to “the world is X” is one Mādhyamikas explicitly reject: there are no epistemic instruments that by their nature lead to ultimate truth, and the soteriological efficacy of a theory does not entail its ultimate truth (“an insubstantial chariot can fulfil its function of carrying wood, so an empty theory can lead to liberation”).
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Three consolidated arguments against svabhāva (pp. 110–115): the causal argument (presentism + momentariness force one relatum of a causal relation to be mentally supplied, so causation is conceptually constructed); the mereological argument (the dharma-whole is neither identical with nor distinct from its property-parts; tropes individuated by co-occurrence still depend on other tropes); the change argument (intrinsically-natured things cannot change — “a young man does not grow old,” MMK 13:5).
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Bhāviveka’s three motivations for syllogistic exposition (pp. 128–131): (i) prevent students from misreading prasaṅga arguments as reductios and adopting the negation of the rejected thesis; (ii) participate in Indian debate culture without committing the vitaṇḍā-fault (mere refutation without a defended position); (iii) place Madhyamaka inside the doxographical genre, which requires ranked positions to be ranked.
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Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika as doxographic fiction (p. 137). The split into two sub-schools “is certainly a doxographic fiction.” The terms are Tibetan retranslations not used by Indian Mādhyamikas of themselves. Bhāviveka’s commentator Avalokitavrata draws no distinction between Buddhapālita and Bhāviveka on the two truths; if Bhāviveka had perceived a great rift, it is “peculiar that he mentions them all in the same breath.” Crucially, “from Candrakīrti’s perspective we do not have two possible interpretations of Madhyamaka, including one that countenances syllogisms and conventionally real intrinsic natures, but only one.” For Candrakīrti, Bhāviveka is not a Mādhyamika at all, but a tārkika (logician).
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Two truths as the canonical device for dissolving apparent contradictions (pp. 119–120). The catuṣkoṭi at MMK 22:11 (“It is empty is not to be said, nor non-empty…”) and the closing line of MMK 25 (“no dharma was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone”) are both handled via the two-truths interpolation procedure: “no x” reads as “no ultimately real x.” Westerhoff cites Tsongkhapa 2002 vol. 3 pp. 188, 215–223 as the great expositor of this technique, anchored in the Buddha’s address to Mahāmati in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra — “thinking that they are not produced intrinsically, I said that all phenomena are not produced.”
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Critique of over-applied interpolation (p. 120). When the procedure is generalised, Madhyamaka denials shrink to denials of “scholastic epiphenomena” — ultimately real simulacra rather than the everyday entities the texts seem to be talking about. “Just what is the difference between holding an ultimately real thesis and just holding a thesis?…If there is no ultimately real matter, can mere matter not equally give rise to the kind of attachment the Buddhist path tries to show us to transcend?” Westerhoff cites Lopez 2006 pp. 58–60 for “a modern Tibetan criticism of this ‘interpolation procedure.‘” The chapter does not name Tsongkhapa as wrong but flags the over-application risk explicitly.
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Asaṅga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi charges Mādhyamikas as pradhāna nāstika (“the most extreme kind of nihilist,” p. 117). One of the earliest in-house Buddhist nihilism charges; Asaṅga argues that on the Madhyamaka view “both reality and designation are rejected.” Westerhoff’s later 2016 nihilism-defence is an answer to this two-millennia-old objection.
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Madhyamaka–Nyāya as a methodological as much as a doctrinal dispute (pp. 143–146). Nyāya negation only allows local absence (negating “pot in the house” presupposes pots elsewhere); a universal niḥsvabhāva claim cannot be stated in this framework. Likewise, the Nyāya five-membered syllogism requires a vaidharmya (discordant) example — but for an inference like “all things are empty because dependently produced,” no discordant example exists. The Mādhyamika’s solution is to use Nyāya’s logical machinery without its ontological commitments — prasaṅga methodology turning the opponent’s tools against him without himself adopting them. This frames the whole VV / Vaidalyaprakaraṇa / pramāṇa-rejection programme that runs through Atiśa, Gorampa, Mipham, Ninth Karmapa.
Methodology
Synthetic-historical chapter aimed at undergraduate / early-graduate audience. Westerhoff combines analytic philosophical reconstruction (the three svabhāva-arguments are presented with analytic-trope-theory machinery) with substantial engagement with traditional commentarial sources (Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka via Ames 2003, Candrakīrti, Avalokitavrata, Tsongkhapa, Tāranātha, Bu ston) and modern Buddhological scholarship (Walser, Schopen, Conze, Ruegg, MacDonald, Vose). The chapter respects traditional accounts as philosophically substantive (e.g. its treatment of the multiple-Nāgārjunas question and the Candrakīrti-tantra connection per Vose 2009) rather than as material to be naturalised away.
Notable quote
The split into two sub-schools is certainly a doxographic fiction. (p. 137)
Connections
- Continuous with westerhoff-madhyamaka-2009 (the analytic core), westerhoff-vigrahavyavartani-2010 (the VV primary-text base), westerhoff-candrakirti-2024 (the Candrakīrti follow-up), and westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 (the polemic). The 2018 chapter is the historical member of the Westerhoff family of works — narrative and synthetic where the others are systematic and constructive.
- Cites and extends Walser 2005 on MMK’s Tripiṭaka-citation strategy.
- Cites Ames 1995 (ames-prajnapradipa-ch2-1995) and Ames 2003 on Bhāviveka.
- Cites Vose 2009 on Candrakīrti’s rise from obscurity (Noble Lineage tantric connection).
- Cites Apple-relevant material (Atiśa’s Bodhipathapradīpa lineage list omitting Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla) — convergent with apple-jewels-middle-way-2018.
- Cites Ruegg 1981a on Atiśa, Mahāyāna-Madhyamaka geographical spread, and the avicāramanohara point (cf. ruegg-svat-pras-2006).
- Engages Burton’s nihilism reading via the Asaṅga pradhāna nāstika charge, anticipating Westerhoff’s own 2016 response.
- Cites Lopez 2006 on the modern Tibetan critique of Tsongkhapa’s interpolation procedure — a citation worth following up if Lopez 2006 is ingestable.