The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy.pdf

Peter Della Santina The Madhyamaka and modern Western philosophy

INTRODUCTION

The task of comparative philosophy presupposes a more or less intimate acquaintance with the philosophies or philosophical traditions to be compared. While the writer of this article may perhaps pretend to a reasonable familiarity with the Madhyamaka philosophy, he cannot pretend to a similar familiarity with the Western philosophical tradition. This is said not as an excuse, but as a justification for the approach that is proposed for adoption in this article. Moreover, in the case in hand, it is proposed not simply to compare one philosophy with another philosophy, but rather a philosophy with a philosophical tradition which is by no means homogeneous. Since it is in any case not practicable to attempt to consider modern Western philosophy in its entirety, certain significant movements within the tradition will be dealt with instead, and reference will be made to specific systems only insofar as they serve to illustrate these movements or philosophical attitudes. In this context, it must be said that the task of selection has been made easier by the fact that in this century, there have been a number of attempts to identify Western counterparts of the Mad- hyamaka philosophy. This is of particular interest when the question of critique is to be approached, because it will be of greater value if the Madhyamaka is evaluated in relation to philosophies which at least on the surface have some claim to share the same universe of discourse. The examination of what might be the Madhyamaka critique of the thought of Kant and Wittgenstein is more promising, because these philosophies do bear some resemblance to the Mad- hyamaka, and have been recognized as such by modern scholars. Nonetheless, if comparison and critique are to be something more than merely an arid intellectual exercise, it will be necessary to look not only at the tenets of the systems to be so treated, but also at their antecedents and their purpose. Finally, in concluding this preamble, let it be said that philosophical comparisons have all too often in the past been undertaken with the idea of securing enhanced philosophical respectability for one of the two systems involved. That this hardly does justice to the intrinsic value, such as it is, of the system whose status is sought to be enhanced need scarcely be said. Alternatively, comparisons may be undertaken with a view to facilitating the understanding of a given philosophy in an alien universe of discourse. While this objective is undoubtedly worthy, one must guard against facile and superficial equations which may do more to foster misunderstanding than to promote comprehension. It is therefore imperative that genuine differences not be glossed over in the excitement of discovering apparent parallels.

Peter Della Santina received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Delhi, and is a part- time Lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Philosophy East and West 36, no. 1 (January, 1986). by The University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

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PHILOSOPHY: EAST AND WEST

Before proceeding any further, it may be useful for me to restate something which may seem obvious to those who are used to these investigations, but which is yet so important that it may profitably be reiterated if only because it informs much of what will be said later: namely, that the nature and history of the philosophical enterprise in the East, specifically in India, has been very different from that in the West. It may be said without fear of arousing much controversy that philosophy in India has always partaken of what has come to be called in the West religion, and, conversely, that religion in India has always partaken of what has come to be called in the West philosophy. To put it another way, the distinction between philosophy and religion, which has until rather recently been so sharply drawn in the West, does not by and large apply to the Indian tradition. Indian philosophy, therefore, has always contained and often been characterized by a soteriological preoccupation. This is not, however, to say that it thereby ceases to be philosophy. On the contrary, it may be argued that it is philosophy par excellence, philosophy with an existential relevance which philosophy in the West has not until very recently and even now not fully secured. Moreover, this existential relevance of Indian philosophy has not been purchased, as some would like to think, at the cost of intellectual clarity or even scientific rigor.

In the West, the story of philosophy has been something quite different. Although the philosophical enterprise witnessed a promising start in Greece, it soon fell into disrepute largely as the result of the growth of Christian orthodoxy. Philosophy did not accord well either with Semitic monotheism or with the Christian emphasis on faith. Despite occasional and furtive flirtations with Neo- Platonism, as for instance in Augustine, Christian orthodoxy remained stead- fastly wary of reason and gnosis. Small wonder in a tradition which had inherited the Judaic conviction of the absolute otherness and inaccessibility of God and which was anxious to preserve the uniqueness of Christ and of faith in Christ as the sole means of bridging the gulf between the absolute and man. Although Neo-Platonism did to some extent subvert Christian orthodoxy in the shape of mystical experience, the accommodation between the Judeo-Christian tradition and a gnostic soteriology was always an uneasy one. Mysticism, thanks perhaps to its esoteric quality, managed to survive in the hostile climate of orthodoxy, but philosophy fell by the wayside.

It was not until the advent of modern science and the European enlightenment that Western philosophy again dared to raise its head, and when it did so, it found itself in the unenviable position of being neither here nor there, in a sort of halfway house between religion and science. It could not aspire to the soteriological content and existential relevance of religion, but neither could it pretend, despite sometimes fervent efforts, to the intellectual rigor of science. As a result, philosophy in the West remained until very recently an academic diversion, a


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parlor game for the educated few who neither were called to the church nor chose to follow the utilitarian way of science. The effects of the limitation of the wider and, one might well argue, legitimate role of philosophy are still very much evident in the thought of Kant and in that of his contemporaries and immediate successors. Indeed, it was not until this century that philosophy in the West began to show signs of recovery from the crippling experience of orthodoxy and an inclination to resume its classical role as a whole science (of becoming) with a soteriological concern and an existential relevance.

RATIONALISM AND EMPIRICISM

The history of modern Western philosophy began with the conflict between rationalism and empiricism. It is an accepted fact that even the philosophy of Kant (which will be dealt with at some length presently) was an attempt to resolve this early and apparently insoluble problem of Western philosophy. Briefly, the conflict revolves around the question of whether certain general propositions- that A is A and not non-A, and that every event must have a cause, and so forth-are a priori facts about reality or merely a posteriori conventions. In the first alternative, such propositions are assumed to be innate, the result of direct rational insight and so universally necessary. In the second alternative, they are derived from experience and therefore merely contingent.l

The Madhyamaka, and indeed Buddhists in general, have no difficulty dealing with the problem of general propositions which appear to be innate or a priori- that is, not the products of immediate experience. They are able to do so because of the conception of rebirth. In the Buddhist view, this life is the effect of a countless series of earlier lives. The totality of experience accumulated through- out these existences results in what are termed mental formations or predispositions (samskdra). For Buddhists, such predispositions contain not only a static element but also a dynamic one, for which reason the term is sometimes trans- lated as volitions. In other words, the totality of accumulated experience not only supplies the pattern of experience, but also inclines one to act in a particular way according to habitual tendencies. However, here it is the static more than the volitional aspect of mental formations that is of interest, and Buddhists have a specific word for this static aspect of intentionality. It is vdsana, mental im- pression or propensities. Mental impressions are the habitual patterns created in the mind by repeated experience. Nagarjuna is quite specific about ascribing the appearance of the world to mental impressions.2 So what of a priori propositions? For Buddhists, they are a priori in the sense that they are not derived from the experience of this life alone; in other words, they are with one at birth. Nonethe- less, they are not a priori in the sense that they are not the result of what has been called rational insight, but are rather ultimately the outcome of accumulated experience over innumerable existences. Nor are they necessary. This last does not concern Buddhists because they have never been exercised over how things


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must be in all possible worlds, but on the contrary, their concern is with how things are here and now.

IDEALISM AND REALISM

If the history of Western philosophy has been colored from the beginning by the conflict between rationalism and empiricism, there is also another conflict which has been perhaps of even greater importance. That is the conflict between idealism and realism. Like the conflict between rationalism and empiricism, the conflict between idealism and realism may be traced to an ambivalence in the attitude of Descartes, but unlike the first-mentioned conflict, that between idealism and realism did have a similar history in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. Descartes was able to hold that rational insight supplies necessary truth about reality (despite the devil, who induced him to doubt the very existence of the external world) only because of his confidence in the goodness of God.3 While the latter may have constituted a satisfactory solution for Descartes, the doubt which he so unambiguously articulated was to dog philosophy for a very long time in the West.

Naive realism is content to accept things for what they appear to be; it is the attitude of the man in the street. But philosophers are often not content to leave things alone. If they were, they would not be philosophers, but tradesmen or agriculturists. In addition, certain obvious examples of illusion, such as the moon appearing larger at the horizon that at the zenith, may have contributed to the growing preoccupation with the question of the reality of the external world.

This led to the emergence of representative or critical realism, a notoriously unstable philosophical position. Briefly, it affirmed that although the external world exists, perception does not provide direct access to it. All that perception provides is acquaintance with the representations or effects of the external world. The problem is that if one is never directly acquainted with the external world, but only with its representations or effects, how is one to know for certain that it exists at all. The inescapability of this question once again brought philosophy face to face with Descartes' devil. The only obvious solution was idealism of either the dogmatic or the pragmatic variety. The inevitability of this process is clearly illustrated in the West by Locke and Berkeley.

The history of the evolution of Buddhist schools in India is also not without examples of the movement from naive realism to representative realism to idealism. The first is nicely illustrated by the Vaibhasika school, perhaps the first systematic formulation of the philosophy of the Buddha. The Vaibhasika interpretation could not, however, remain unchallenged for long in the critical environment of the Buddhist tradition, and soon it was supplanted by the Sautrantika school, a species of representative or critical realism which had a much greater role to play in the evolution of Buddhist thought in India. Nonethe- less, the inherent instability of the Sautrantika position was not long to endure unnoticed. The Yogacara or Vijiinnavada responded to the Sautrantika view of


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representative realism by jettisoning the external world. This was easy for the Yogacarins, because they, deeply influenced as they were by the model of meditative experience, had no particular love or use for extra-mental reality.

The foregoing discussion presents a tidy picture of a scholastic philosophical evolution which fits very nicely into the pattern of naive realism, representative realism, and idealism mentioned earlier, but is this all that Buddhist philosophy offers in reply to the West? What of the Buddha's own attitude and what of the Madhyamaka, which, it will be argued, represents the systematic expression of the former?

The Buddha was preeminently concerned with experience. His rejection of metaphysical speculation is well-documented and has been acknowledged by scholars.4 So was the Buddha an empiricist? Not so far as the term has been accepted within the Western philosophical tradition. Why? Because he recognized all experience to be essentially and finally mental. The sense organs do not see, hear, and so forth, divorced from consciousness. So the Buddha was not an empiricist in the Western sense of the term, although it may be argued that his attitude is more genuinely empirical than that of the Western empiricist, because the assumption of an extra-mental referent is hardly justified by experience; rather it is more of the nature of dogmatism. But what of the nature of reality? Quite simply, the Buddha was not interested in questions about the ultimate nature of reality. He was not interested in describing it. He rejected even the categories of existence and nonexistence as ultimately predicable of reality.5

So what is one to make of a philosophy which does not concern itself with describing the ultimate nature of reality? A number of answers to this question have been proposed. One common, although now somewhat outdated, answer is that the Buddha was not a philosopher at all. According to this view, he was interested in ethics. Another more modern view holds that the Buddha did not teach philosophy, but psychology. Although more satisfying than the former, this answer, like the first, begs the question. The real point at issue is the definition of terms. How is one to deal with an intellectual tradition which does not fit comfortably into the category of either philosophy or religion as they have been understood in the West? Like the problem of the conflict between rationalism and empiricism, and like so many other problems that stem from that attempt to apply alien conceptual models to a tradition which is not constrained by them, the conflict between philosophy and psychology does not occur for Buddhists. If all experience is essentially and finally mental, then a system of soteriology which provides for the realization of an existentially desirable mode of experience must also resolve the problem of reality. The pragmatism of the Buddha did not allow him to concern himself with the question of the nature of a reality which in fact was not experienced, being extra-mental. This is the point of the rejection of metaphysical speculation as not conducive to edification, as exemplified in the parable of the wounded man.6 The important fact to remember is that, as the Yogacarins realized, this attitude does not for practical purposes alter one's


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picture of the everyday world. One can very well go on acting as if there were external objects, because that is the way it all appears to one, without assuming their extra-mental reality.

The Madhyamaka, it is argued, embodies that pragmatic and antimetaphys- ical attitude which was the real heart of the Buddha's teaching. As such, it acknowledges the fact that all experience is mental and that metaphysical speculation is soteriologically counterproductive. This is evident in the works of Nagarjuna. He has said, "This world of illusion, a delusion of consciousness, comes not from anywhere, goes not nor really stays." 7 "The wheel of becoming is produced through the propensity (vasana) for erroneous conceptualisation (vikalpa)." 8 "Since regarding that very same object one is desirous, and regarding that very same object one is malevolent, and regarding that very same object one is deluded; therefore they (desire, malevolence, and delusion) are produced through conceptualization. Conceptualization also is, in reality, not existent."9 "The afflictions (klesa) and action (karman) arise from conceptualization and this from conceptual constructions (prapanca)." 10 "As the painter painting a terrible monster is himself frightened thereby, so is the fool frightened with transmigration." 11 "All phenomena are interdependently originated as shown through the examples of magical spells, drugs, and illusion. Therefore, they are ultimately proved to be perfectly beyond existence and non-existence." 12

"Ultimately, this world is beyond truth and falsehood, therefore, the Buddha does not assert that it really exists or does not.... How could the omniscient one say it has limits or no limits or has both or neither?" 13 "Those who think in terms of existence and non-existence do not grasp the truth of the Buddha's teaching." "The Buddha repudiated both the thought that something exists and that something does not." 14 "Know that the ambrosia of the Buddha's teaching is the pro- found and uncommon doctrine going far beyond existence and non-existence." 15

Here attention should be drawn to three key terms: propensities, conceptualization, and conceptual constructions. The first of these has already been encountered. The second, conceptualization (vikalpa), has sometimes been trans- lated as imagination or (as Sprung'6 does) "hypostatizing thought." Even in the Sautrantika view, it was responsible for the notions of the self, the whole, and so on, but in the Madhyamaka, it is responsible for the totality of the objects of experience. Finally, conceptual constructions (prapanca) has been a source of difficulty for translators and interpreters of the Madhyamaka philosophy. This is perhaps in part because in the Brahmanical tradition, it has an ontological flavor. Even Sprung translates it as "the manifold of named things," which is at best ambiguous because one is not sure whether the emphasis should be on named or on things. The Tibetan exegetical tradition holds that the term ought to be understood in the sense of expressing the objectively experienced counterpart of conceptualization (vikalpa)-in other words, the crystalized and objectified aspect of conceptualization. It is interesting to note that Cheng, basing himself on an early Chinese Madhyamaka tradition, agrees with this interpretations.17 It


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would be remarkable if this interpretation of the term were not correct, given the fact that two recognized, independent, and venerable Buddhist traditions agree upon it. Significantly, this interpretation avoids going beyond the exclusively mental nature of experience and does not ontologize the object. At the same time, however, it can deal with the object as if it were real for practical purposes.

So is the Madhyamaka philosophy reducible to idealism; and what then is the distinction between the Madhyamaka and the Yogacara, the recognized school of Buddhist idealism? Indeed, it is argued on the basis of the passages just quoted that the fundamental attitude of the Yogacara was already implicit in the Madhyamaka and even more in the Buddha's own utterances. This much is supported by the interpretation of Santaraksita, founder of the synthetic school of the Yogacara-Madhyamaka, who, it is contended, only made explicit and systematic the tendencies already evident in the works of Madhyamaka authors. Nonetheless, the Madhyamaka is not idealism in the metaphysical or ontological sense. This is in fact the point upon which the Madhyamaka and the Yogacara split. The Yogacara, according to the Madhyamaka view, err insofar as they make consciousness into a real, an existing, thing, an ontological or metaphysical entity. They stray, too, from the Buddha's way in that rather than avoiding the alternatives of existence and nonexistence, they assert both the existence of consciousness and the nonexistence of the object. The Madhyamaka, while acknowledging the fact that all experience is mental, can yet avoid the pitfalls of metaphysical dogmatism, because this fact leads it not to metaphysical assertion and negation, but rather to soteriological freedom. The Madhyamaka indeed, as Candrakirti points out, has no difficulty in employing the attitudes of realism, idealism, and so forth, because all these formulations are just pedagogical devices, soteriological tools, not ontological assertions.18

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AND EMPIRICAL REALISM

In the West, Immanuel Kant attempted to resolve the conflict between rationalism and empiricism, and the more fundamental one between realism and idealism, by means of his critique of pure reason. It has been suggested that his solution raises more problems than it solves, and it has sometimes been regarded as skepticism.19 It is ironic that the Madhyamaka has been compared to this system. It may be ventured that a certain affinity in philosophical attitude and a striking coincidence with regard to a set of philosophical problems prompted this comparison. Like the Madhyamaka, Kant's characteristic philosophical method is critical and dialectic, and, like the Madhyamaka, his philosophy is ostensively opposed to metaphysical speculation. The antinomies of Kant correspond exact- ly to the sets of metaphysical problems rejected as not tending to edification by the Buddha.20 Notwithstanding these similarities, it will be argued that the analogy between the views of Madhyamaka and Kant is more apparent than real. Kant arrived at his characteristic philosophical standpoint through an examination of the mind or reason. For this, he has been credited by T. R. V.


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Murti with what has been termed the Copernican revolution in philosophy.21 In other words, he focused the attention of philosophy upon the subject rather than the object. But Kant was unable to dispense with the assumption of an extra- mental reality. Indeed, he sought to explain knowledge as the result of the combination of the data given in experience with the forms of intuition and of understanding: space, time, substance, and causality. This being the case, all that is known, all that can ever be known, is phenomenal-that is, what is presented to the knowing subject through the structures of the mind. The absolute, things in themselves, the noumenal, can never be known but can be assumed because sense data, according to Kant, must have a cause which is not the subject. The effects of the unknown things-in-themselves which influence sensibility are representations. The purpose of Kant's critique was to limit the domain of knowledge to the empirical. In this way, he hoped to expose the pretensions of metaphysicians who vainly seek to say something about the unknowable noumenal. Thereby he intended to make room for faith through disallowing reason in the sphere of the absolute, essentially the same concern that had animated the doctors of the Church at Nicaea more than a millennium earlier.

From the Madhyamaka point of view, Kantian philosophy is riddled with difficulties. Despite being dialectical, it is dualistic and ontological, even metaphysical, as Cheng points out.22 Synthesis is not a solution, as is clear from the Madhyamaka critique of the Jaina philosophy. In ascribing knowledge to a combination of objective sense data and the subjective forms of the mind, Kant betrays an ontological commitment to both the object and the subject. In addition, the assumption of an extramental reality requires that the gap between subject and object be bridged by a representative theory of perception, the instability of which has already been pointed out. Moreover, the radical polarity between the ontological character of Kant's notion of the noumenal and the phenomenal are foreign to the Madhyamaka. Finally and significantly, the end of Kant's critique is trivial from the Madhyamaka point of view.

Kant's system, as it has been said, grew out of the attempt to resolve the conflict between rationalism and empiricism-a conflict which did not exist for the Madhyamaka nor indeed for any system of Indian thought, for the reasons explained earlier. Again, Kant sought to resolve the controversy between idealism and realism by ascribing particular functions to the subjective and objective components in the formation of knowledge. In the process, Kant had to resort to a representative theory of perception. Although the history of Buddhist thought in India did include a phase of critical realism in the course of which a representative theory of perception was entertained, the Madhyamaka never had to face this predicament, because it never assumed an extra-mental referent of experience. These considerations, however, though telling enough in themselves, have never, to the author's knowledge, been considered by those who like to find parallels between the Madhyamaka and Kantian philosophy. Here, too, they shall not be treated at length, because it is when the real heart of Kant's


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philosophy, the doctrine of the noumenal and the phenomenal, is reached that there is a greater temptation to see apparent coincidences and yet an even greater danger that a facile identification of actually diverse philosophies will engender misunderstanding rather than appreciation.

The Kantian noumenal and phenomenal have been termed the absolute and the relative, and these terms have been imposed as it were upon the Madhyamaka conceptions of ultimate truth (paramdrtha-satya) and conventional or apparitional truth (vyavahdra or samvrti-satya). The Madhyamaka's advocacy of the ultimate truth has led T. R. V. Murti to call it absolutism. Although in all fairness it must be said that he does so in order to save the Madhyamaka from the charge of nihilism, does he do it justice in clothing it with another threadbare garment from the wardrobe of philosophical labels which is, to say the least, ill-fitting? Surely Murti knows that the translation of paramdrtha (literally, highest end, purpose, or meaning) as "absolute" can scarcely be justified etymologically. Similarly, the translation of the terms "vyavahdra or samvrti" (literally, convention, usage, language or obscured, covered, veiled) by "relative" stands on no firmer ground. What, then, other than a fascination with a conceptual analogy, could induce a competent scholar to adopt these terms for the Madhyamaka conceptions of the ultimate and conventional truths; and yet, a whole generation of translators, influenced by this same fascination with a conceptual analogy, have adopted these terms and have characterized the Madhyamaka as absolutism.

On the evidence of the Madhyamaka's own texts, too, the ultimate truth has nothing to do with Kant's things-in-themselves. Indeed, the division between the ultimate and conventional truths, for the Madhyamaka, is nothing more than a pedagogical device.23 Emptiness (sunyatd) is said to be the ultimate truth, but emptiness is not an ontological category, but a soteriological therapy.24 Empti- ness, the relativity of all things, is itself relative. The ultimate truth, like the conventional, is devoid of independent being. This much has been indicated also by Cheng.25 What then of the things-in-themselves, Kant's absolute, his noumenal? They could perhaps be likened to the unique particulars of the Sautrant- ikas, the conception so elaborately explained by Th. Stcherbatsky,26 but hardly to the Madhyamaka conception of emptiness or the ultimate truth.

Now what of Kant's notion of the phenomenal, the absolutely unknowable things-in-themselves known through the forms of time, space, substance, and causality? Kant believed these forms to be necessary and unalterable, and so from the Madhyamaka point of view inescapably ontological.27 For Kant, empirical knowledge was true, unlike metaphysics, because here, reason was limited to its proper sphere. This was natural enough for one who wished to guarantee the philosophical foundations of science, but for the Madhyamaka, the conventional or apparitional truth is neither necessary and unalterable, nor is empirical knowledge true. The first of these considerations has important rami- fications for the results of the Kantian and the Madhyamaka philosophical exercises, respectively, and the second, applied to the more recent attempt to see


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similarities between the Madhyamaka and the school of language analysis, disallows another popular misconception of the Madhyamaka philosophy.

Kant's philosophy yields few existential benefits, because in consonance with the Western philosophical tradition it is concerned with description rather than with change. As Hume was pleased to go back to playing backgammon after having indulged himself in philosophical diversions, so Kant was resigned to continuing to live in a world of illusion, finally and unalterably condemned to ignorance of the absolute, the higher truth, except perhaps through faith. Thus he damned man through philosophy in order to save him through religion, but no such maneuvers are necessary for the Madhyamaka. The only positive result of Kant's critique of metaphysics which does not depend upon revelation, is that it ostensively curbs the pretensions of metaphysicians and limits knowledge to the empirical. As a consequence, philosophers are warned to avoid the forbidden ground of rational psychology, speculative cosmology, and natural theology and are encouraged to concentrate their descriptive talents, such as they may be, on the sphere of the empirical.

For the Madhyamaka, the forms of experience-space, time, substance, and causality-are neither necessary and unalterable, nor are they intrinsically true even on the level of conventional truth. By the same token, the ultimate truth, or emptiness, is not in principle unknowable. The forms of the mind, space, and so on are for the Madhyamaka the result of conceptualization conditioned by mental impressions and corresponding to conceptual constructions; they are, in other words, objectified concepts. The habitual tendencies that give rise to these forms of experience can be self-consciously altered, and this indeed is the aim of the Madhyamaka philosophy. The ultimate truth, unlike Kant's things-in- themselves, is knowable not only by nondual perception vouchsafed by medita- tion, but also by inference, for "By the reason that sunders conceptualisation, the ultimate is known mediately."28 The result of this knowledge of the ultimate mediately and immediately is the progressive transformation of experience from the undesirable to the desirable. This is possible, for the Madhyamaka, because neither the conventional nor the ultimate is set up as an ontological entity existing as it were objectively and in its own right. Both are rather modes of experience, the latter preferable because psychologically and soteriologically desirable. In other words, that which makes one free is the truth.

It is of course not suggested that Murti is oblivious to all or any of these considerations. What is suggested is that, persuaded by the fascination of a conceptual analogy, his treatment of the Madhyamaka philosophy in relation to Kantian concepts and his liberal use of Kantian terminology inexorably lead to the emergence of a somewhat distorted picture of the Madhyamaka. This is not to deny the illuminating character of much of what Murti has to say about the Madhyamaka. It is to warn of the danger of accepting the applicability of alien concepts and terminology to a system of thought so patently different in its orientation and fundamental concern.


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LANGUAGE ANALYSIS

The Madhyamaka, as it has been suggested, is a system of soteriology. The system works by the application of progressive negations of (perhaps better) correctives. Thus the ultimate truth negates or corrects the conventional, while the ultimate truth is itself negated or corrected by enforcing the recognition of its therapeutic function to the exclusion of any ontological claim on its behalf. It is suggested that the Kantian interpretation, by making the Madhyamaka into a kind of transcendental absolutism, emphasizes the negation of the conventional, while the interpretation along the lines suggested by modern language analysis, by making the Madhyamaka into a kind of positivism, emphasizes the negation of the negation of the conventional truth, that is, the negation of the ultimate truth. However, the negation of a negation for the Madhyamaka does not mean the reinstatement of the original hypothesis. When it is said that the therapy is no longer needed once the disorder has been cured, this is not to accept the disorder as it was before the therapy was applied.

Streng and Gudmunsen like to emphasize the fact that, like Wittgenstein, the Madhyamaka rejects the notion of an extralinguistic referent of words. This is indeed to say very little that is new or revealing about the Madhyamaka. The theory that words must refer to objects was chiefly advocated by the Naiyayikas in ancient India, and, like the whole of their philosophy of naive realism, it was a favorite object of refutation for the Madhyamaka. However, does the Madhyamaka's rejection of the notion of an extralinguistic referent of words mean that it endorses the everyday use of language as somehow valuable in its own right? Does it mean, as Gudmunsen suggests, that the result of the Mad- hyamaka critique is to leave everything more or less as it is?29 The latter in fact refers to the Zen story which runs, "Before you have studied Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying it, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had Enlight- enment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers are rivers." 30 Waldo goes so far as to claim that ordinary language statements are paradigms of what we call true and coherent,3 1 so is it then the end of the Madhyamaka philosophy simply to let everyone go back to playing backgammon or the ordinary language game with the assurance that here lies truth?

Wittgenstein, like Kant, was interested in securing legitimacy through delimi- tation. Kant wanted to rescue philosophy from disrepute through limiting reason to the empirical. This enabled him to disallow metaphysics and so open the way for religion. Wittgenstein wanted to rescue philosophy from conflict and perplex- ity through limiting the philosophical enterprise to the description of language and language itself to its everyday rather than its metaphysical use. In this way, he believed he could dissolve philosophical problems. While both these philosophers are concerned with saving something of the descriptive function of philosophy, the Madhyamaka has nothing to save, neither the metaphysical nor the


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ordinary use of concepts and language. The Madhyamaka is not interested in description, but in freedom, which interest is after all a reflection of their respective traditions.

If Wittgenstein differs from Kant in his attitude towards the role of philosophy in personal life, it is in that he no longer feels totally bound to leave religion alone, to divorce it as it were from philosophy. This perhaps reflects the progressive liberalization in the Western philosophical tradition which occurred between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, the discernible soteriological flavor of some of Wittgenstein's utterances can hardly justify the complete redefinition of philosophy within the Western tradition. It may be true, as Gudmunsen suggests, that Wittgenstein with his religious concern fits rather uncomfortably into a philosophical tradition notable for its lack of existential relevance,32 but Nagarjuna's position as a so-called philosophical writer in a religious tradition is by no means similar. Wittgenstein is something of an anomaly in the Western tradition, but Nagarjuna's philosophy occupies a central place in what can easily be termed the predominant Buddhist religious tradition. Moreover, Wittgenstein's tilt toward soteriology, refreshing as it is in the context of the Western philosophical tradition, supplies only a shallow and timid suggestion of freedom compared with the dramatic and radical transformation of experience offered by the Madhyamaka.

So what of the Wittgensteinian claim made on behalf of the Madhyamaka that the end of the philosophical exercise is to leave everything as it is? Nagarjuna never denied the relevance of the whole gamut of ethical and psychological practices offered by the Buddhist tradition as effective means of altering the undesirable character of experience conditioned by negative and dualistic propensities and so of realizing the transformed mode of experience known as enlightenment. If the end of the process is the discarding of the apparatus as indicated in works like the Mulamadhyamakakdrikd, it is analogous to the discarding of the raft once the river has been crossed.33 It is not tantamount to remaining on the near side of the river or, worse, returning to it. Is it therefore credible that, for the Madhyamaka, the end of soteriology should be a return to the mode of experience of the man in the street, an acceptance of the ordinary use of language as a paradigm of truth? If there is a return for the Madhyamaka, it is a return dictated by the requirements of altruistic soteriology, not by a positive evaluation of the ordinary use of language and the ordinary mode of experience.

For the Madhyamaka, language and ordinary experience are neither true nor false.34 If the Madhyamaka resorts to ordinary modes of expression in order to suggest the transformed mode of experience which is the goal of the soteriological process, it is merely a concession to a conventional usage sustained by a prevalent illusion. The Madhyamakas are very explicit about their condem- nation of ordinary linguistic convention. All these conventions are determined by a fundamental error, the nature of which is likened to a mirage, a dream, and a magical illusion.35


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CONCLUSION

The Madhyamaka teaches the middle way, a philosophical attitude enshrined in the very name of the system. The middle way is soteriologically desirable because it prevents entanglement in extremes-that is, in limited positions which impede freedom. No doubt the Madhyamaka makes use of positions and even of propositions in the working out of its soteriology. The literature of the system is replete with such formulations: realism, idealism, self, not-self, and so on. Nonetheless, to interpret the system by choosing to emphasize any of these formulations-the negation of the ordinary mode, the negation of the negation of the ordinary mode-to interpret it as absolutism, nihilism, or positivism, is to miss the real point of the system and to ignore the difference between philosophy and soteriology. It is for this reason that the interpretation of the Madhyamaka in terms of Kantian or Wittgensteinian thought is hardly satisfactory.

There is no doubt that philosophy in the West is beginning to show signs of transcending the constraints which the history of its origins and early develop- ment imposed upon it. A number of indications which may be gleaned from the approaches adopted by language analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, and post-structuralism are all evidence of the dawn of a new attitude in Western philosophy. Despite all this, in the opinion of the author, Western philosophy has yet to produce a system of thought that successfully unites the rigor of philosophy with the relevance of religion in an integrated system of soteriology capable of providing access to freedom in its fullest and most complete sense. Such a system is available in the Madhyamaka.36

NOTES

1. John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, 1956), pp. 183ff.

2. L. Jamspal and P. Della Santina, "The Heart of Interdependent Origination," The Journal of the Department of Buddhist Studies (University of Delhi, 1974), verse 4 and commentary.

3. Ibid., p. 496. 4. Majjhima Nikdya I, pp. 426-432 (Sutta 63); pp. 483-484 (Sutta 72); Samryutta Nikdya III,

pp. 257ff; Sarhyutta Nikaya IV, pp. 374-403 (Vacchagotta Samyuttam and Avyakata Samyuttan). 5. Sarhyutta Nikaya II, p. 17. 6. Majjhima Nikdya I, 426ff (Cila Malufikya Sutta). 7. Nagarjuna, RatndvalT II, verse 113. 8. "The Heart of Interdependent Origination," verse 5 and commentary. 9. Nagarjuna, Sunyatdsaptati, verse 50 (author's translation).

10. Nagarjuna, Malamadhyamakakdrikd, chap. 18, verse 5. 11. Nagarjuna, Mahdydna Viizaka, trans. by Susumu Yamaguchi, in The Eastern Buddhist 4,

no. 2 (Kyoto, 1927), verse 10. 12. Quoted from the Vyavahdra Siddhi of Nagarjuna in the Madhyamakalahkarapanjikd of

KamalaSila (author's translation). 13. Ratndval II, verses 104-106. 14. Mulamadhyamakakdrikd XV, verses 6 and 7. 15. Ibid., I, verse 62.


54 Della Santina

16. M. Sprung, Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way (Boulder, Colorado, Great Eastern, 1980). 17. Cheng, Hsueh-Li, "Nagarjuna, Kant and Wittgenstein: The San-Lun Madhyamika Expo-

sition of Emptiness," Journal of Religious Studies 17 (1981): 79. 18. Candrakirti, Prasannapadd, commentary to Mulamadhyamakakdrikd XVIII, verses 5 and 8. 19. Hospers, Introduction p. 185. 20. Majjhima Nikdya I, pp. 426ff (Cula Malunkya Sutta). 21. Murti, T. R. V., The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: George Allen and Unwin,

1955), pp. 123-124. 22. Cheng, "Nagarjuna, Kant and Wittgenstein," p. 75. 23. Mulamadhyamakakdrikd, XXIV, verse 10. 24. Ibid., XIII, verses 7 and 8; XXII, verse 11. 25. Cheng, "Nagarjuna, Kant and Wittgenstein," p. 68. 26. Th. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1962). 27. Mulamadhyamakakdrikd, XV, verse 8. 28. Madhyamakdlankdrakdrikd, verse 75 (author's translation). 29. C. Gudmunsen, Wittgenstein and Buddhism (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 44. 30. Ibid., p. 69. 31. I. Waldo, "Nagarjuna and Analytic Philosophy," Philosophy East and West 28, no. 3 (July

1978). 32. Gudmunsen, Wittgenstein and Buddhism, pp. 68-80. 33. Majjhima Nikdya, I., p. 135 (Alaguddupama Sutta). 34. RatndvalT, II, verses 104-106. 35. Muilamadhyamakakdrikd, VII, verse 34 (Sunyatdsaptati verse). 36. Prasannapadd, XCIII, verse 5; and XXII, verse 16 (author's translation).


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Issue Table of ContentsPhilosophy East and West, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1986) pp. 1-79Front Matter [pp. 1-1]What Is a Mean: The Question Considered Comparatively and Systematically [pp. 3-12]The Mahyna Deconstruction of Time[pp. 13-23]akara's Rationale for ruti as the Definitive Source of Brahmajna: A Refutation of Some Contemporary Views[pp. 25-40]The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy [pp. 41-54]Comment and DiscussionThe Bodhisattva Paradox [pp. 55-59]

Feature Book ReviewReview: untitled [pp. 61-66]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 67-68]Review: untitled [pp. 68-71]Review: untitled [pp. 72-74]Review: untitled [pp. 74-75]

Current Periodicals [pp. 77]Back Matter [pp. 78-79]

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The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy.pdf