Appendix II: Modern Forms of Madhyamaka—Re-Testing the Verdict¶

This volume’s verdict on Madhyamaka takes its classical form as object: Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Candrakīrti, and their continuations in China and Tibet. Yet the obligation to “present the strongest form before criticism” (Preface) has no temporal limit. During the past half-century, research on Madhyamaka within the analytic-philosophy tradition has produced several evidently stronger modern forms, each reinforcing one of classical Madhyamaka’s most vulnerable aspects. This appendix presents three principal approaches and asks the same question of each: must this volume’s verdict be revised?

The semantic reading: raising emptiness to the meta-level

Siderits and Garfield’s “semantic reading” argues that emptiness is not a metaphysical proposition about things but a second-order proposition about truth. To say all phenomena are empty does not mean that everything is made from something called “emptiness”; it means there are no bearers of ultimate truth. Its slogan is self-reflexive: “The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”¹ This reading blocks the two oldest blades. It does not deny conventional efficacy and therefore avoids the charge of nihilism; it refuses to establish emptiness as an entity and therefore avoids reobjectification. One point must be conceded. The criticism of reobjectification in Madhyamaka Part II, Chapter 3 loses half its force under the semantic reading. This is genuine philosophical progress.

But what does the reading do to the remaining links in the verdict? Raising emptiness to the semantic meta-level does not shorten the distance between view and craving but adds another layer. This volume’s migration argument concerning suffering says that Madhyamaka moves its operating surface from pre-reflective craving to views at the reflective level (Madhyamaka Part II, Chapters 1 and 2). The semantic reading moves the view one level further, into a theory about theories. How can the second-order insight “no theory possesses ultimate warrant” reach non-theoretical, pre-reflective attachment? The causal gap expands from “between view and feeling” to “between meta-view and feeling.” The semantic reading is candid on this point: it principally treats emptiness as therapy for philosophers’ metaphysical attachment. Yet philosophers’ grasping is one small branch within craving’s genealogy. For people who do not practice philosophy, meta-level discipline cannot reach the level where the target resides. The verdict therefore does not change but becomes more precise. The semantic reading saves Madhyamaka’s philosophical dignity at the cost of further diluting its soteriological content. The migration argument repeats unchanged and in purer form at the meta-level.

The defense of no position: the cost of consistency

The second approach defends “no position.” Tillemans and Westerhoff argue in different ways that Nāgārjuna’s declaration “I have no position” can be consistent. A negation can avoid commitment to the contrary thesis; saying “phenomena lack intrinsic nature” need not establish an intrinsically existent universal proposition. Tools from logic and pragmatics can disarm the oldest charge, self-refutation.² This volume likewise acknowledges the successful portion: no position can be defended at the level of statement.

But this volume’s criticism of no thesis never rests upon logical consistency. It concerns normative content (Madhyamaka Part II, Chapter 5): by what means does a system that successfully preserves no position direct practice? Once the blade is removed, the question remains and becomes harder. The more thoroughly no position is preserved, the thinner the practical content the system itself can supply, and the more the whole path must be borrowed—from Abhidharma meditation and curricula of doctrinal classification. This is structurally identical to Candrakīrti’s situation. Systematization is not betrayal but necessary compensation for no position. A philosophical quietism capable of defense grants a blank authorization in the truth of the path. Victory in consistency does not revise that verdict.

Perspectivism and the Gelug reading: answering with a curriculum

The third approach is represented by Garfield. The conventional world is retained in full, emptiness is a way of seeing convention rather than another reality, emptiness itself is empty at the summit, and ethics and practice are housed within a sound conventional truth. One genealogy of this reading must be recorded explicitly: it is a contemporary rewriting of Gelug interpretation. Garfield studied with Geshe Yeshe Thabkhas and translated Tsongkhapa’s Ocean of Reasoning with Geshe Ngawang Samten, as the note to Madhyamaka Part II, Chapter 3 records.³ Genealogy is not a fault, just as Candrakīrti’s inheritance from Nāgārjuna is not a fault. But its status as the “standard modern reading” must be registered as an extension of a particular tradition of doctrinal judgment rather than a neutral scholarly starting point. Volume I, Part XII, Chapter 3 reserves a section for the history by which it became the default picture in English-language scholarship.

Its effect on the verdict again has two sides. Full preservation of the conventional is the strongest reply to criticism that Madhyamaka “dismantles too much.” This volume accurately credited Tsongkhapa’s work in the Madhyamaka part. Yet the causal mechanism remains unchanged. The Gelug route’s answer from seeing emptiness to ending craving has always been a curriculum—the paths of persons of three capacities, the sequence of calm-and-insight, and discipline under a teacher—not an output of the argument. How change in perspective rewrites pre-reflective craving remains answered through pedagogical arrangement rather than causal explanation. Verification likewise remains unchanged, with one modern observation added: modern Madhyamaka studies test the validity of arguments, not the occurrence of cessation. This is not a failure of scholars; philosophy is not professionally responsible for liberation. Only one displacement must be prevented: using the philosophical flourishing of modern Madhyamaka studies as evidence that Madhyamaka’s road of liberation works. They are different achievements. The more impressive the transcript from the debating hall, the more important to remember Madhyamaka Part II, Chapter 6: drift from cessation toward debate is exactly the form in which this criterion has become institutionalized as professional philosophy today.

Philology and logical reconstruction: a supplementary record

Beyond analytic approaches, two scholarly currents must be added because this volume benefits from their work. In Japanese scholarship, Kajiyama Yūichi studied the forms of Madhyamaka argument and Buddhist epistemology, while Katsura Shōryū systematized Buddhist logic and argumentation. His new translation of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā with Siderits joins semantic reading to philological labor.⁴ In Chinese scholarship, Wan Jinchuan’s lectures introduce Madhyamaka thought, while Ye Shaoyong’s comparative edition of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese recensions of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā establishes a new standard of textual precision. These contributions belong in the academic record and travel separately from the soteriological verdict. The verdict that Madhyamaka soteriology contains a structural gap does not diminish their value; their clearer establishment of Madhyamaka’s texts and arguments does not fill that gap.

Conclusion

The three approaches each reinforce one of classical Madhyamaka’s weakest points. The semantic reading blocks nihilism and reification; the defense of no position blocks self-refutation; the Gelug reading retrieves conventional truth and ethics. After every achievement is acknowledged, this volume’s two questions remain unchanged: mechanism—how does seeing reach pre-reflective craving?—and verification—on what basis and by whom is attainment certified? The verdict does not change, but one qualification is added. Modern forms make Madhyamaka harder to refute philosophically and make it promise less soteriologically. The more perfect its philosophical form, the more respectable—and greater—the distance from the original question “how does suffering cease?”

References¶