Reflections on Nagarjuna’s The Refutation of Criticism (Vigrahavyavartani) :: Nagarjuna Essays

Reflections on Nagarjuna’s The Refutation of Criticism (Vigrahavyavartani) ABSTRACT: In verse nine of the Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna gives a defense of his skepticism by insisting that he makes no proposition (pratijna) concerning the nature of reality. B. K. Matilal has argued that this position is not an untenable one for a skeptic to hold, using as an explanatory model Searle’s distinction between a propositional and an illocutionary negation. The argument runs that Nagarjuna does not refute rival philosophical positions by simply refuting whatever positive claims those positions might make, but rather he refuses the very act of making an assertion. From this kind of illocutionary negation, however, a certain paradoxicality arises: for in the negating the act of assertion, the skeptic is barred from asserting his or her own position, for under this condition, if he or she asserts that position, it is falsified! I want to argue that there are certain senses in which it seems that Nagarjuna’s resorting to the illocution we find in the Vigra havyavartani may not have been necessary for the maintenance of his skeptical position, for he has recourse to prasanga counter-arguments which can always offset the metaphysical and epistemological claims of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophers whom he confronts. There are also places in the Karika itself, where certain pramanas seem to be employed, that give one the impression that this kind of skepticism and the pramanas are only inimical to one another insofar as the latter may lead to the metaphysical, essentialist extremes criticized by the Buddhists. Nagarjuna’s illocution in this light seems an attempt to radicalize his difference from a developing Nyaya extensionalist theory of the pramanas, a theory in which the Buddhists and the Naiyayikas are closer than anywhere else. In verse nine of his Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna thematizes an objection to his skeptical "middle" position in the following way. If all things were devoid of an intrinsic nature, there would, nevertheless, be an absence of intrinsic nature (yadi sarvadharmanam svabhava na bhavet tatrani nihsvabhava bhavet). But then, even this name "absence of intrinsic nature" would not be possible (tatra nihsvabhava ity evam namani na bhavet). Why? Because there is no name whatever without an object (nama hinirvastukam kimcid api nasti). Thus since the name exists (namasadbhavat), there is an intrinsic nature of the things; and since they have an intrinsic nature, all things are non-void (asunya). (1) In the famous twenty-ninth verse, Nagarjuna, addressing the objection, writes: