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

Reflections on Nagarjunas The falsehood of Criticism (Vigrahavyavartani)ABSTRACT In verse nine of the Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna go alongs a abnegation of his skepticism by insisting that he makes no proposition (pratijna) concerning the temperament of reality. B. K. Matilal has argued that this position is not an untenable one for a skeptic to hold, victimization as an explanatory model Searles distinction between a propositional and an illocutionary negation. The argument runs that Nagarjuna does not refute rival philosophical positions by only when refuting whatever positive claims those positions might make, but rather he refuses the very(prenominal) interpret of making an assertion. From this kind of illocutionary negation, however, a current 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 thith er are certain senses in which it seems that Nagarjunas resorting to the illocution we find in the Vigrahavyavartani may not stupefy been necessary for the maintenance of his skeptical position, for he has recourse to prasanga counter-arguments which can unceasingly 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 hostile to one another insofar as the latter may stretch out to the metaphysical, essentialist extremes criticized by the Buddhists. Nagarjunas 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 close-set(prenominal) than anywhere else. In verse nine of his Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna thematizes an obj ect glassion to his skeptical optic position in the following way.If all things were devoid of an unalienable nature, there would, nevertheless, be an absence of intrinsic nature (yadi sarvadharmanam svabhava na bhavet tatrani nihsvabhava bhavet). But then, regular this name absence of intrinsic nature would not be assertable (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