Abstract
The paper taps the agency of the imaginary interlocutor in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nāgārjuna to delineate existential anguish in the Madhyamaka. The paper asks whether the protestations of the imaginary interlocutor cannot be recast as anguished. It claims that an objection to emptiness (śūnyatā) can be voiced even after the metaphysical commitment to intrinsic existence (svabhāva) has been relinquished. By interpolating anguish into the Madhyamaka, the paper posits an unorthodox phenomenological objection to śūnyatā.
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Notes
Henceforth, Madhyamaka refers to the philosophical enterprise of Nāgārjuna (second century CE) alone, unless the involvement of Candrakῑrti (seventh century CE) is specifically signposted.
All references to BN are to Sartre (2003), translated by Hazel E. Barnes.
Sartre defines bad faith as ‘lying to oneself;’ one enters bad faith to escape the anguish of freedom/nothingness (Sartre, 2003, 70–94).
It could be objected (as an anonymous reviewer does) that existential anguish may have a place in the Madhyamaka of Nāgārjuna only if Nāgārjuna is interpreted as positing a ‘conventionalist ontology’. I disagree. My claim about anguish in the Madhyamaka is not contingent upon the choice of a particular interpretative framework. Anguish could be shown to be generated in the Madhyamaka when we subject it to a phenomenological evaluation. And a phenomenological reading does not add to the already congested shelf of interpretative frameworks. It is, rather, a much-needed correction.
I find this ironic. As I elaborate below, Nāgārjuna seems to betray the proclivities of a phenomenologist in explicating conventional reality.
The following verse nails the imaginary interlocutor for getting emptiness all wrong:
Sa tvaṃ doṣān ātmanῑyān asmāsu paripātayan,
aśvam evābhirūḍhaḥ sann aśvam evāsi vismṛtaḥ (MMK 24:15). Verses from MMK in the original Sanskrit are taken from Siderits and Katsura (2013). All translations of MMK, unless stated otherwise, are also from Siderits and Katsura (2013).
Sarvaṃ ca yujyate tasya śūnyatā yasya yujyate,
sarvaṃ na yujyate tasya śūnyaṃ yasya na yujyate (MMK 24:14).
As a case-in-point, consider the exposition of Madhyamaka fictionalism by Jay L. Garfield. Though incisive, by revealing itself to be oblivious of the participant(s) in the fiction, it occasionally falls into flippancy: ‘So, measured against reality, many of the claims in works of fiction are simply false, and nobody frets about that’ (italics mine) (Garfield, 2006, 1). By ‘nobody’, Garfield obviously means a reader or a viewer. On the other hand, a phenomenological treatment of Madhyamaka fictionalism would concern itself with the standpoint of the participant. And a participant in a fiction may well ‘fret’ (and be anguished) about being stuck in an imperfect, fictional world.
By translucent interiority, Sartre would imply that consciousness is exhausted in what it is conscious of. Thus, when I experience anguish on the precipice, I am also blinded to the sub-personal causes for that experience. Consciousness cannot be determined by what is not a part of it, such as impersonal brain events.
‘A law is a transcendent object of knowledge; there can be consciousness of a law, not a law of consciousness. For the same reasons, it is impossible to assign to a consciousness a motivation other than itself’ (Sartre, 2003, 11).
Sartre does not make the metaphysical argument that reality in-toto is empty. As we have seen, he contends that extra-mental being confronts human existence as a self-identical positivity (Sartre, 2003, 46). But this insight is only meant to illumine the notion of nothingness, and not inform us about the nature of reality per-se. Pace-Nāgārjuna, Sartre would not have it that the table before me, for instance, is empty; what his phenomenological prose would rather depict is how I might experience that table as a self-sufficient plenitude, in contrast to my own emptiness (Sartre, 2003, 98). It is through such a contrast that I become acutely conscious of nothingness.
For Sartre, the encounter with nothingness must be experientially prior to any frantic attempt to configure oneself as a stable being. Mādhyamikas, on the other hand, take the tendency to superimpose svabhāva to precede the realisation of śūnyatā. Unless one has already been cognizing the world through the prism of svabhāva, and has been suffering as a consequence, there would be no point to seeking the soteriological corrective of śūnyatā. Mādhyamikas blame timeless ignorance (avidyā) for the propensity to superimpose (samāropa) svabhāva. They, unlike Sartre, lack a satisfactory explanation for why people are so given to transact through the modus of svabhāva in the first place. Some contemporary scholars such as Westerhoff (2009, 50) appeal to evolutionary predispositions to explain the tendency to reify. Regardless, I think that Sartre is correct in contending that a quest for definite values must pre-suppose a prior tryst with anguish.
Could Mādhyamikas classify the tacit acceptance of psychological determinism as an instance of how the framework of svabhāva is employed in everyday life? I think they should. Mādhyamikas must distinguish between how the notion of svabhāva is used by philosophers from how svabhāva permeates the everyday behaviour of cowherds, etc. They must explain the seduction of svabhāva, not just among certain philosophers, but also for common folk in their daily drudgery.
Even if anguish is shown to be the result of a neurological disorder, it would still retain its position in an existentialist philosophy as the primary symptom of the human condition. This claim may find an endorsement in the contention by Zahavi (2014, 60) that even a fractured (or delusional) experience does not lose the first-personal perspective and the feeling of for-me-ness.
Na hi svabhāvo bhāvānāṃ pratyayādiṣu vidyate (MMK 1:3a-b).
Either c1 is produced, or it is not. If the latter, then c1 cannot be real. On the other hand, if c1 is subject to origination, then is it identical with its cause (being a bundle of conditions)? If yes, then the objections against satkāryavāda would apply. However, if c1 is distinct from its cause, then an infinite regress (as pointed out in the main text) ensues. This line of argument is also from Siderits (2004, 405).
For an alternative account of the problems that cripple asatkāryavāda, see Westerhoff (2009, 104–109).
Apara-pratyayaṃ śāntaṃ prapañcair aprapañcitam,
nirvikalpam anānārtham etat tattvasya lakṣaṇam. (MMK 18:9).
Na nirodhaḥ svabhāvena sato duḥkhasya vidyate,
svabhāvaparyavasthānān nirodhaṃ pratibādhase (MMK 24: 23).
Yaś cābuddaḥ svabhāvena sa bodhāya ghaṭann api,
na bodhisattvacaryāyāṃ bodhiṃ te’dhigamiṣyati (MMK 24: 32).
The pronouncement that anger is unwholesome would offer little consolation to a patient with schizophrenia prone to involuntary bouts of rage. Today, disciplines such as psychiatry and clinical psychology can provide reliable and comprehensive models for diagnosis, treatment, and care for patients with mental illnesses. But since Ābhidharmikas claim to be in possession of a full-scale ultimate reality about all aspects concerning the mental, they should be disinclined to make any concessions to rival frameworks.
Pratῑtya kārakaḥ karma taṃ pratῑtya ca kārakam,
karma pravartate nānyat paśyāmaḥ siddhikāraṇam (MMK 8: 12).
But again, the insight about śūnyatā is not a full-spectrum explanation of the world. It merely, to borrow a term from military parlance, performs the role of a road-opening party (ROP).
The imaginary interlocutor in MMK is an Ābhidharmika, but need not have been. Any Buddhistic thinker who is prepared to look at śūnyatā beyond the śūnyatā-svabhāva dialectic should fit the bill.
Nāgārjuna initially issues rhetorical retorts to the protestations of the imaginary interlocutor (MMK 24: 7–14; Garfield, 1995, 293). Nāgārjuna’s attitude in the relevant verses is more dismissive than argumentative. For instance, at MMK 24: 7, he accuses the opponent of getting śūnyatā all wrong. At MMK 24: 8, 9, and 10, he builds satyadvaya as germane to the correct comprehension of śūnyatā, without quite telling us what his understanding of the two truths is (this happens at MMK 24:18). At MMK 24: 11, Nāgārjuna spells out the dangers of misinterpreting śūnyatā, while in the next two verses he contends that the true import of śūnyatā is subtle which the opponent’s fallacious reasoning fails to capture. At MMK 24: 14, Nāgārjuna stakes the famous harmony claim, contending that ‘everything is possible to whom emptiness is possible’ (translated by Siderits and Katsura (2013, 276)). It is only at MMK 24:16 that Nāgārjuna offers a diagnosis of the fear of the opponent. There he takes the opponent to be committed to svabhāva.
Svabhāvād yadi bhāvānāṃ sadbhāvam anupaśyasi,
ahetupratyayān bhāvāṃs tvam evaṃ sati paśyasi (MMK 24: 16).
Dve satye samupāśritya buddhānāṃ dharmadeśanā,
lokasaṃvrtisatyaṃ ca satyaṃ ca paramārthataḥ (MMK 24:8).
Ye’nayor na vijānanti vibhāgaṃ satyayor dvayoḥ,
te tattvaṃ na vijānanti gambhῑraṃ buddhaśāsane (MMK 24: 9).
Vyavahāram anāśritya paramārtho na deśyate,
paramārtham anāgamya nirvāṇaṃ nādhigamyate (MMK 24: 10).
Yaḥ pratῑtyasamutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe,
sā prajñaptir upādāya pratipat saiva madhyamā (MMK 24: 18).
The second and third verticals are discussed intermittently in the paper. They are not explicated separately.
See Wallace and Wallace (1997, 115).
Due to a paucity of space, we cannot spell out the idea of transcendental (pre-reflective) ignorance here. But this conception helps avoid awkward formulations about svabhāva, such as that svabhāva is superimposed in every act of cognition.
loko mayā sārdhaṃ vivadati nāhaṃ lokena sārdham vivadāmi/ yal loke’sti saṃmataṃ tan mamāpi asti saṃmatam/ yal loke nāsti saṃmataṃ mamāpi tan nāsti saṃmatam/ Original text and translation are from Tillemans (2011, 151).
Translated by Huntington, Jr. and Wangchen (1989, 177–178).
Tanaka (2016, 48) seems to think so too.
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The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for the journal and to the Editor for helpful directions toward revising and embellishing the paper.
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Correya, S.J. Giving the Imaginary Interlocutor Her Due: Existential Anguish in the Madhyamaka. SOPHIA 62, 133–157 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00925-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00925-0