Nagarjuna and the Art of Negation

Download or read book Nagarjuna and the Art of Negation written by Mathew Varghese and published by Sanctum Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading the philosophy of Nagarjuna in retrospective, his method of Nagarjuna is variously explained in this book. How the application of tetralemma-four-value structure (catuskoti) would give us enough resources to expand our thoughts and how that could help us negate the binary either/or structure of thought that demands theoretical postulations. Notably, the art of logical negation used by Nagarjuna employing neither/nor structure would help us understand the Middle Path (Madhyamika) philosophy clearly. Most of the philosophies use the structure of two-value logical interpretations to introduce their metaphysics and ethics. Metaphysical conception of soul-God is the basis of virtue ethics centred on transcendentals of goodness, truth, beauty, unity, justice, being, etc. of the classical Greeks, later being followed by Christians, Jews and Islamic thinkers. The conception of atman-Brahman is the foundation of Vedic philosophers' understanding of transcendentals as truth (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananada), Nagarjuna, on the other hand, employs negative dialectics to confute the logical structure of either/or that demands metaphysical concepts; and by employing the four-value logical structure, he introduces the transcendentals as wisdom and compassion. This book uses Nagarjunian art of negation to reread his philosophy differently to discern the concept of emptiness (sunyata) as the co-dependent evolution of various elements of the subjective self and the elements of objective experiences in the dominion of the subjective self and the elements of objective experiences in the dominion of the subjective self; therein it is possible to redefine no-soul (nairatmya) as self-being, and "dominion of subjectivity" for replacing a metaphysical postulation; and the transcendentals as wisdom and compassion.