Chandrakirti's Prasannapada

Chandrakirti (c. 600 - c. 650) was an Indian Madhyamaka Buddhist monk whose writings included commentaries on the teachings of Nagarjuna (c. 150 - c. 250). His Prasannapada ("Clear Words") and Madhyamakavatara ("Introduction to the Middle Way") examined and interpreted Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika ("Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way"). 

      His Sunyatasaptativritti ("Commentary on the Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness") and Yuktisastikavritti ("Commentary on the Seventy Stanzas on Reasoning") also examined and interpreted Nagarjuna's teachings.
      In the Prasannapada, Chandrakirti says that Nagarjuna teaches that the true nature of things is that they are neither arising nor perishing, neither coming nor going, neither temporary nor eternal, neither differentiable nor non-differentiable.¹ The true nature of things is that they are without self-existence. 

      Things do not arise spontaneously or independently; rather, they are caused to exist, and they depend on causes and conditions of existence. Thus, they arise through a process of dependent origination (and not spontaneous origination).
      The true nature of things is marked by eight characteristics: not arising independently, not perishing, not coming, not going, not terminating, not enduring eternally, not being differentiable, and not being non-differentiable.
      Nothing is self-caused or arises of itself. Everything is interdependent. The concept of a divine being as someone or something that is self-existent and not caused by anything other than itself is therefore unintelligible.²
      The self-existence of things is illusory. There is no self, and there is no other, so it doesn't make sense to say that things arise from themselves or from what is other than themselves.
      Nothing truly arises at all, insofar as if something exists, it cannot be said to have been brought into existence, because it must have already existed (at least in some respect).
      Everything is unreal, in the sense that all our perceptions of things as existing in their own right are illusory.
      Motion is illusory, in the sense that if something were in motion, then it would have to be conceived of as having already traversed a path of motion or as not yet having traversed a path of motion or as traversing some path that is distinct from what has already or has not yet been traversed. But there is no motion in what has already been traversed or in what has not yet been traversed or in what is somehow distinct from these two alternatives.
      Rest is illusory, in the sense that a mover does not come to rest, nor does a non-mover. Rest cannot be said to be the cessation of motion, if there is no such thing as motion. 
      The sensory faculties of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch do not exist, insofar as if they do not see, hear, smell, taste, or touch themselves, then they do not see, hear, smell, taste, or touch other things (because the self and the other don't exist).
      The self as a subject of perception is also illusory, because it neither exists nor does not exist in its own right. All subjects (and all objects) are unreal, because they are not what they seem to be. All things are without self-nature, insofar as they are not self-caused, and insofar as their essential nature is impermanent and changeable. If the essential nature of things were invariable or unchangeable, then their transformation would be impossible, because the alteration of things that continue to exist as they did in their previous state is impossible.³ 
      Material objects don't exist, because matter can't be understood as their cause, and because if they existed apart from matter as their cause, then they would be uncaused, which is impossible (because nothing is ever without a cause). 
      Space doesn't exist, because if it did, then it would have to be a subject of characterization or a characteristic itself, but since neither subjects of characterization nor characteristics exist, space doesn't either.⁴ A subject of characterization is unintelligible without definable characteristics, and since we can't establish the existence of any subject of characterization (because nothing inherently exists or is self-existent), we can't establish the existence of any characteristics either. Thus, space neither exists nor does not exist, because there is nothing of which we can say that it inherently exists or does not exist.
      Time is unreal, insofar as it depends on the self-existence of things. While the present and the future may not be able to be established independently of the past, the past may also not be able to be established independently of the present and the future, so the nature of things that apparently exist independently of each other in the past, present, or future is illusory.
      Emptiness of self-existence is therefore a characteristic of all things (although it neither exists nor does not exist). There are no non-empty things, and there is no state of non-emptiness. All things are empty, and there are no self-existent things; and just as there is no self-existence, there is no other-existence.⁵ 
      Eternalism holds that things exist inherently, and that they never do not exist. Nihilism, on the other hand, holds that things that previously existed can cease to exist.⁶ However, to be entangled in either of these two dogmas is also to be entangled in the realm of samsara (the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth).⁷ The Madhyamaka view (the Middle Way) is a path between the two dogmas, and it holds that the existence or non-existence of things is only appearance and not true reality.
      Chandrakirti argues that Madhyamaka is not a form of nihilism, although it holds that nothing is real in itself or has any inherent existence, because it accepts the conventional reality of things for the purposes of the everyday world.
      But even though Madhyamikas (adherents of the Madhyamaka school) accept the conventional reality of things in the everyday world, they recognize the difference between conventional reality and ultimate reality. The ultimate reality of things is that they do not exist in their own right, and that their apparently self-existing nature is illusory. The ultimate reality of things is also that they are neither real nor unreal, insofar as reality is seen (by naive realists) as belonging to things in the everyday world.
      Thus, there are two truths (or distinct kinds of truth): the truth of the everyday world, and the truth of ultimate reality.
      Basic afflictions, such as desire, aversion, and illusion, are causes of suffering, and their eradication leads to release from the realm of samsara. When we extirpate these basic afflictions and understand the true nature of things, we no longer mistake ignorance for true knowledge, or conventional reality for ultimate reality.
      Chandrakirti describes four misbeliefs that lead to illusion: (1) the belief that there is something imperishable in the five perishable factors of personal existence (form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness), (2) the belief that whatever is perishable is subjected to suffering, so happiness rather than suffering can be found in the five factors of personal existence, (3) the belief that the body is pure, and (4) the belief that there is an enduring self among the five perishable factors of personal existence.⁸
      The Four Noble Truths are (1) the truth of suffering, (2) the truth of the origin of suffering, (3) the truth of the cessation of suffering, and (4) the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering. Through the Four Noble Truths, clear knowledge of the nature of afflicted existence is possible, as is understanding of the way to overcome the source of affliction, the acceptance of the way leading to cessation of affliction, and the final realization of liberation.⁹ If the Four Noble Truths did not hold, then none of these stages would be possible.
      Nirvana or release from suffering is attained by the extinction of the afflictions, and by the cessation of the perishable factors of personal existence. It is "neither something that can be extirpated, like desire, nor something that can be realized through action, like the fruit of moral striving...It is only by the dissipation of all named things that it is attained."¹⁰ 
      Jay L. Garfield and Sonam Thakchoe (2025) criticize the view that Chandrakirti is a radical nihilist who denies the possibility of any knowledge, and they instead characterize his epistemological position as a moderate realism about the conventional world. However, they say that Chandrakirti also synthesizes this position with panfictionalism and illusionism. They argue that he believes that ordinary people may be warranted in their beliefs, because even if people are deluded with regard to the mode of existence of phenomena, this position does not entail that they are also deluded with respect to the conventional properties of phenomena, so it is possible for them to obtain valid knowledge of those properties.¹¹ 
      Garfield and Thakchoe also describe Chandrakirti's epistemological position as a pragmatic coherentism, insofar as he sees epistemic practices as recursively self-correcting on the basis of perception, judgment, and reasoning. They deny that his position is a form of global error theory, because he believes that we can distinguish between conventional truth and falsehood.¹² This position also provides a middle way between foundationalism (the view that knowledge is based on foundational or self-evident truths) and relativism (the view that all truths are relative to a person's viewpoint), since conventional truths and ultimate truths aren't taken to be foundational to each other, and since they don't depend on anyone's particular viewpoint.¹³


FOOTNOTES

¹Chandrakirti, Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapada of Candrakirti, translated from the Sanskrit by Mervyn Sprung (Boulder: Prajna Press, 1979), p. 32.

²Ibid., p. 43.

³Ibid., p. 147.

⁴Ibid., p. 106.

⁵Ibid., p. 157.

⁶Ibid., p. 161.

⁷Ibid., p. 163.

⁸Ibid., pp. 214-215.

⁹Ibid., p. 225.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 249.
¹¹Jay L. Garfield and Sonam Thakchoe, By the Light of the Moon: Candrakirti's Prasangika Madhyamaka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), p. 50.

¹²Ibid., p. 53.

¹³Ibid., p. 59.

Marcus Steinweg, on The Aporias of Love

Marcus Steinweg, in his book Aporien der Liebe (Aporias of Love, 2010), says that the aporias of love are conditions of its possibility, insofar as love means resistance to narcissistic self-mirroring and openness to otherness. Love is aporetic, because it is both singular and universal, and because it exposes the lovers to the conflict not only between singularity and universality, but also between uniqueness and structuring convention.
      According to Steinweg, there are at least five aporias (insoluble problems) belonging to the experience of love: (1) the aporia of emptiness, (2) the aporia of happiness, (3) the aporia of hyperbolism, (4) the aporia of intensity, and (5) the aporia of the impossible.
      The aporia of emptiness is that the lover feels an emptiness in the absence of the beloved, and yet this absence is also the ground of possibility for another encounter between the lover and the beloved.
      The aporia of happiness is that, as difficult as it is not to expect happiness from love, those who free themselves from this expectation may also be those most likely to be happy.
      The aporia of hyperbolism is that love may become a kind of fever that drives us to reach beyond ourselves, opening us to the presence of the Other. Rather than promoting greater stability, love may take us through peaks and valleys of experience.
      The aporia of intensity is that love may be an experience of something that eludes us and is beyond us and yet is capable of being experienced.
      The aporia of the impossible is that for love, the possible and the impossible (like reality and ideality) are pseudo-alternatives, because every love creates its own aporias. Love is situated in the aporetic compossibility of finitude and infinity, and the aporia is also revealed by the unity in which the finite singularity of lovers encounters the infinite universality of love.¹ 
      Still another aporia is that of the "who" and the "what" of love. Do we love someone because of who they are as a whole person or because of the particular qualities (such as attractiveness and intelligence) that they possess? The blindness of love may consist in our being willing to lose sight of the "what" in order to affirm the "who."² 
      Still another aporia is that to affirm the Other as constitutive of oneself is also to affirm the incompleteness of oneself without the Other, and the incommensurability of oneself with the Other as Other.
      Other aporias of love include those of reason and unreason, presence and absence, and immanence and transcendence.

FOOTNOTES

¹Marcus, Steinweg, Aporien der Liebe (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 2010), p. 15.

²Ibid., p. 38.

Exam Question in Sentential Logic

This semester, I'm taking a class in deductive logic at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Below is my answer to a question on our second exam (construct a derivation of the conclusion in line 2 from the premise in line 1). The exam covered derivations in sentential logic, based on Gary M. Hardegree's Symbolic Logic: A First Course, second edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999). The annotation to the right of each line shows the justification for its presence in the derivation, with "Pr" standing for premise, "CD" standing for conditional derivation, "As" standing for assumption, "ID" standing for indirect derivation, "DD" standing for direct derivation, and "X" standing for contradiction.

Below is my answer to another question.

Brandon Terry presents "Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement"

Philosopher Brandon Terry, talking about his new book, "Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement," at Red Emma's bookstore, in Baltimore.

Meeting Brandon Terry.

Brandon Terry is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Codirector of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. His new book is a ground-breaking work of scholarship exploring the varying interpretations of the civil rights movement that are found in contemporary politics and offering a new vision of what the civil rights movement has been and what it can still be.

Birnbacher and Hommen's Account of Negative Causality

Dieter Birnbacher and David Hommen are philosophers at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Birnbacher has written widely on such subjects as ethics, applied ethics, theories of emotions, and the work of Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer. Hommen has written widely on such subjects as the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind.
      Together, they wrote a very enlightening book entitled Negative Kausalität (2012), which examines the question of whether negative entities such as omissions and non-actions can be causes or causal factors. This question has moral and legal dimensions, because it leads to the question of whether harmful actions are more blameworthy than non-actions, and whether actively causing harm is more blameworthy than passively allowing harm. The relative blameworthiness of harmful actions versus non-actions also leads to the question of whether intentional omissions of morally obligatory actions are more blameworthy than inadvertent omissions, and whether the blameworthiness of such omissions depends on the severity of the consequences (since harmless omissions may not be considered as morally blameworthy as those that have harmful consequences).
      As an example of the causality of omissions or non-actions, Birnbacher and Hommen describe a scenario in which a subject A goes on vacation, and he asks his co-worker B to water the plants in his office while he is away. B agrees to do so but fails to keep his word, and by the time A returns to the office, the plants have all died. B's omission of the action that A expected him to do is seen as a causal factor in the death of the plants.
      As another example of the causality of omissions, they describe a scenario in which a subject A regularly drinks coffee in the morning, but one morning doesn't, and this change in his usual daily routine prompts B to ask what is going on with him today. A's omission of something that B expected him to do is the cause of B's question. 
      Omission (Unterlassung) may need to be distinguished from negligence (Fahrlässigkeit), which may take the form of a failure to exercise the care required in a given situation, thereby causing harm, even though the subject may not have intended to cause harm or have even foreseen it. The subject has thus violated a duty of care.¹ Negligence, like omission, may take the form of non-action or failure to do something. 
      Doubts about whether omissions (Unterlassungen) or non-actions (Nicht-Handlungen) may be considered as causes (Ursachen) may also be associated with doubts about whether they may be considered as effects (Wirkungen). One solution to this problem may be to consider omissions as quasi-causal, hypothetically causal, or causal under counterfactual conditions, in which case the performance of an action that was not actually performed would certainly (according to the "strong" interpretation) or probably (according to the "weak"interpretation) have prevented the consequences in question. The strong interpretation may be epistemically problematic, insofar as it places a much higher burden of proof on anyone who claims to know with certainty that an action that was omitted would have prevented a given event from occurring.² Indeed, the claim that there may be a completely deterministic connection between actions or non-actions and their effects is difficult to substantiate, since it's almost always possible to conceive of circumstances in which additional factors could intervene to disrupt the causal connection between an action or non-action and its intended effect.³
      Birnbacher and Hommen make clear that to say the relation between non-actions and their consequences is one of hypothetical causality is not to say that it is one of actual causality. Hypothetical causality is not actual or genuine causality.⁴ However, they admit that the case in which A causes harm to B by omitting to do something may not always be so different from the case in which A actively harms B, and that we may need to ask whether we really need to approach the problem of moral responsibility differently in the two cases. Is there actually a genuine causality in the harms A actively causes B, but not in the harms that A causes B through inaction? 
      They explain that under a broad definition of omission, omission refers to the non-performance (Nicht-Ausführung) of an action (Handlung) that an agent could have performed under the given conditions. In order for the agent to have omitted performing the action, they must at least have been capable of performing that action. A narrower definition of omission, however, might also stipulate the expectedness (Erwartetheit) or requiredness (Erfordertheit) of the omitted action under the given conditions. Under this definition, an agent can only omit performing an action they were expected or required to perform under the given conditions.⁵
      Other examples of situations in which omissions may act as causal factors include (1) when A's omission of a certain action is a signal for (or triggers) a certain action by B, and (2) when A's omission of a required action causes B to act in A's place. 

      All omissions need not be intentional. If someone omits to do something, then they do not necessarily have to have had an explicit intention to omit doing that thing.⁶

      Birnbacher and Hommen note that the legal philosopher Michael S. Moore rejects the idea that omissions or non-events can be causes, because he says that non-events cannot be causal relata. Causal relations can only occur between events, and indeed, there are no such things as non-events, there are are only uninstantiated types of events.⁷Allowing harm to occur should therefore not be mistaken for causing harm by omission.

      Birnbacher and Hommen, however, argue that omissions or non-actions are no less real than the actions they contrast with. Negative events can be observed, just as their positive counterparts can be observed.⁸ The question then is: do we have a theory of causality that allows for the causal efficacy of omissions?

      They explain that while physicalist theories of causality, which postulate a physical relation between cause and effect, may be incompatible with the causality of omissions or non-actions, other theories, such as regularity theory, interventionism, and various forms of counterfactual theory may be compatible. 
      According to regularity theory, if a set of causal factors S is causally sufficient for a particular event W, then W regularly follows S, and individual occurrences of S are causal for W only as long as this regularity exists. The causality of S for W is seen in the regularity with which W follows S. However, a weakness of this theory is that it may fail to distinguish between causal relations and mere correlations in which there is no causal relation.⁹

      Interventionist theories of causality may distinguish between causal relations and correlations by postulating an external intervention (or event, or condition) that causes the omission or non-action, which then causes the given effect. For example, if B forgets to water A's plants because he has taken drugs that make him forget the promise he made to A, then his taking the drugs and his forgetting to water the plants (and thus omitting the action he was expected to do) may both be causal factors for the death of the plants. 
      According to counterfactual theory, the regularity that exists between cause and effect can be extended beyond actually occurring cases to counterfactual cases. Thus, in the example of causality described above, if B were not to water A's plants while A is away on vacation, then under the given background conditions, this omission would be causally sufficient for A's plants to die, in all possible worlds with the same nosological structure as the actual world.¹⁰

      Birnbacher and Hommen also explain that there tends to be a normative asymmetry between actions and non-actions insofar as actively causing harm is often judged more harshly than failing to prevent harm, even if the harm is the same in the two cases. Some of the qualitative differences between active and passive harms may be determined by the degree of intentionality, deliberateness, and willfulness on the part of the agent. Thus, for example, the Ten Commandments ("Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal," etc.) are predominantly prohibitions on actions, rather than prohibitions on omissions.¹¹

      The causal efficacy of omissions may also be seen in the fact that some omissions are seen as expected or desirable, such as refraining from playing a radio in the library or refraining from talking during a concert performance.

      Negative causes of events may include non-actions, omissions, inhibitions, absences, deficiencies, and non-occurrences of events. These negative causes can form links in causal chains, just like positive causes. And just as non-actions and omissions may only be seen as causes if the agent could have performed the non-performed or omitted action, so other negative causes may only be seen as causes if they could logically or nomologically have been possible. 
      An example of an absence as a causal factor would be the absence of a traffic light at a busy intersection, causing traffic congestion at that intersection. Another example of an absence as a causal factor would be the absence of snowfall at a ski resort, causing a decline in the number of tourists at that resort. Other examples include the absence of rain as a cause for drought, and the absence of oxygen as a cause of a match not lighting when struck.

      According to Birnbacher and Hommen, the inflation objection to the causality of absences is that a myriad of absences may be postulated as negative causal factors for any given event. For example, the absence of an elephant, the absence of a hippopotamus, and the absence of a rhinoceros in my bedroom may all be postulated as causal factors for my being able to sleep without being disturbed. A way of countering this objection may be to formulate criteria by which causally relevant factors are distinguished from irrelevant ones. With regard to the causality of omissions, such criteria might include restriction of the concept of omission to the non-performance of actions that are expected or required. However, the non-performance of unexpected or unsolicited actions may also in some cases be causal factors for events, so additional criteria must be considered. Other such criteria might be intended to exclude all negative causal factors that seem to be trivial, but even this strategy might be unsuccessful if some negative causal factors that at first seem trivial later turn out to be significant. Thus, Birnbacher and Hommen conclude that, despite the difficulty of countering the inflation objection, certain strategies for reducing the number of negative possible causes to be considered for any given event may still be preferable to restricting consideration of possible causes to only positive ones.

 

FOOTNOTES

¹Dieter Birnbacher and David Hommen, Negative Kausalität (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), p. 10.

²Ibid., p. 19.

³Ibid., p. 20.

⁴Ibid., p. 21

⁵Ibid., p. 29.

⁶Ibid., p. 19.

⁷Michael Moore, "For What Must We Pay? Causation and Counterfactual Baselines," San Diego Law Review, Vol. 40, 2003, p. 1223.

⁸Birnbacher and Hommen, p. 36.

⁹Ibid., p. 101.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 107.

¹¹Ibid., p. 115.