01:840:369 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Reductio Ad Absurdum, Mahayana, Madhyamaka
18 Oct 2018
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Mulamadhyamakakarika: nagarjuna, who lived in south india in approximately the second century c. e. , is the most important, in uential, and widely studied mahayana buddhist philosopher. Mulamadhyamakakarika, the method of reductio ad absurdum is the methodological core: our conventions and our conceptual frame work can never be justi ed by demonstrating their correspondence to an independent reality. Rather what counts as real depends precisely on our conventions: emptiness of phenomena: empty of inherent existence, or self-nature, or, in more. Western terms, essence: to say that the table is empty is hence simply to say that it lacks essence and important not to say that it is completely nonexistent. Thursday, october 11, 2018: from the standpoint of madhyamaka philosophy, when we ask of a phenomenon, Does it exist?, we must always pay careful attention to this sense of the word exist that is at work. No phenomenon, nagarjuna will argue, exists in the rst sense.
