FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS

AND NAGARJUNA

Paul O’Grady

This paper compares arguments from Aquinas and Nagarjuna on contingency and

necessity, examining theways inwhich they arrive at opposed positions. However, neither

set of arguments is unproblematical and both require appeal to further positions to

support them. A curious parallelism begins to emerge between the positions when seen

with their background assumptions, despite their obvious differences.

Introduction

In this article I wish to compare Aquinas’s argument for a metaphysical source

of necessity in the third way of the famous five ways of the Summa Theologiae with

Nagarjuna’s rejection of such a position in the Mulamadhyamikakarika and assess

the relative merits of each position. However, before beginning the comparison,

I wish to discuss some possible objections to the very idea of such a project.

The notion of ‘incommensurability’ has come to be used more and more in

recent times in philosophical discussions. Gaining its currency from Kuhn’s work in

philosophy of science where he suggests that there may be different paradigms for

scientific research which are incommensurable with each other, the term has come

to have wider use. It is used to signal a multiplicity or heterogeneity of approaches

to a thinker or topic, none of which can claim pre-eminence. So, for example, in

a recent survey of studies of Thomas Aquinas, Fergus Kerr (2002) repeatedly

notes the incommensurability of approaches taken, generally viewing this in

a positive light, as a sign of the fruitfulness and pluralism of studies in this area.

However, talk of incommensurability often comes up short when faced with

issues about truth. While difference may well be celebrated and methodological

or hermeneutical agility embraced, few enough want to commit themselves to

relativism about truth. That is, most recognise that accepting relativistic accounts

of truth leads to problems of self-refutation and self-stultification. So, to avoid that

cul-de-sac, diversity of interpretation is emphasised, which by precisely affirming

difference, avoids problems about contradiction. Things which simply differ do

not contradict each other. To form a contradiction there has to be a connection,

one has to affirm p and not-p, whereas with difference there is p and q, different

things happily co-existing.

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2005ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/05/020173-188

q 2005 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940500478687

One way of ensuring such peaceful co-existence is to emphasise the notions

of the hermeneutical and the contextual. Reading texts in context allows the

proliferation of difference, since the differences of context disallows first-order

debate between positions. So, for example, Hume comes out of an entirely

different context to that of Aquinas, and hence his concerns can’t address the

same issues as Aquinas. A theologian reading Aquinas comes with different

questions and presuppositions to a philosopher, and so they have incommensur-

able approaches. A fortiori, Aquinas and Nagarjuna have different contexts,

different cultures, different questions, different inheritances, different presupposi-

tions and so different positions. Therefore, on this outlook, it would be just too

crude to think of them as actually dealing with the same issue.

Overemphasising incommensurability is a generally unfruitful way of

reading thinkers. It evades the fundamental issue which motivates the inquirer,

the quest for truth. While contextualisation is vital and hermeneutical situating is

essential, these are nevertheless but preparatory for dealing with substantive

issues. General arguments for this view have been offered and I shall not rehearse

them here (see O’Grady 2005). However, I believe that a specific demonstration of

the engagement of such philosophers with each other will dispel some of the

doubts deriving from considerations of incommensurability. What emerges in the

case of Aquinas and Nagarjuna is that they genuinely address the same

metaphysical issue: that both approaches fall prey to various problems, that a

curious structural parallelism emerges in their positions as they strive to avoid

these problems and that elements of Aquinas’s position may well prove vital to a

coherent defence of that of Nagarjuna.

In the next section I shall introduce the two protagonists, contextualising

them and providing background information for the specific debate. The third

section looks at the key point of conflict between them. Initially there is a broader

conflict of general positions which crystallises into a specific disagreement on a

basic question in metaphysics, namely whether there has to be a source of

metaphysical necessity in existence (Aquinas), or whether absolutely everything

can be contingent (Nagarjuna). After presenting the sharp clash in views, I then

want to examine various problems besetting both positions. Aquinas’s argument

is notoriously difficult to interpret, and I shall examine attempts to make sense of

it. Nagarjuna, likewise, lends himself to different schools of interpretation and

questions of the stability of his position arise. In the sixth section, I want to suggest

that modifications of both positions required by their internal tensions push them

both to an oddly similar sequence of metaphysical distinctions—wherein the

differences between them soften, if they still don’t disappear.

The Protagonists

(a) Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was a thirteenth-century Italian Dominican

friar who is best known for the voluminous writings he produced over a relatively

174 P. O’GRADY

short career of 20 years as a university teacher in Paris and at various places in

Italy.1 He studied and taught at the University of Paris at one of its most turbulent

stages, just over half a century after its foundation. Two main opposed tendencies

in the university were a conservative religious appeal to Platonically inspired

thinking, fostered by the religious authorities and a radical appeal to an

interpretation of Aristotle, heavily influence by the Islamic philosopher Averroes,

which flourished in the arts faculty. Aquinas attempted to steer between these

two tendencies and engaged in controversies with both sides. Therefore Aquinas,

in some respects, exemplifies the Buddhist doctrine of the middle way. However,

his approach is not a kind of syncretism, seeking easy assimilation of disparate

views by blending them all together. Rather, there is a genuine openness to other

participants in the search for truth and an attempt to seek out what is true in other

positions—ignoring whether they appear to be friends or foe. Aquinas notes,

just as in a courtroom you can’t make a judgement until you have heard both

sides of a case; so also, if you are going to be a philosopher, you have to listen to

all the thinkers with their opposing positions in order to have more resources for

making a good judgement.2

This even-handedness goes with a tough-minded approach to the questions he

addresses. Reading Aquinas, one gets a sense of a relentless intellect making

distinctions, clarifying, arguing, seeking supporting argumentation, analysing

claims, offering reasons. The argumentation is compact, explicit, tight and has

little rhetorical excess. Using William James’s typology of philosophical intellects,

however, this tough-minded approach is linked to tender themes—the existence

of God, free will, virtue ethics, immortality. The mode of argumentation is closer to

Russell or Ayer than to Augustine or Pascal. He combines a religious sensibility

with an analytical approach to philosophy.3

His philosophical work constitutes a genuine innovation in the history of

western thought. Sometimes derided as merely Christianised Aristotelianism,

Aquinas uses Aristotle in distinctly unAristotelian ways. His account of existence,

the eternity of the world, the virtues, the soul, while all based in a generally

Aristotelian framework, nevertheless constitute developments of Aristotle’s work

(see Owens 1992). A recent scholarly issue has been a re-evaluation of the role of

Platonism in his work. This comes out most clearly in his discussion of the

metaphysics of participation (dismissed by Aristotle as a mere metaphor) and in

his account of the divine ideas. Aquinas harnesses together both Greek traditions

and articulates a rational position which attempts to make sense of the Judaeo-

Christian worldview (see Booth 1983; Boland 1996).

Hence Aquinas’s work constitutes one of the classic articulations of

a philosophical theism. The account is subtle, non-anthropomorphic and

metaphysically nuanced, drawing on Jewish and Islamic sources. He presents an

account where there is space for faith to co-operate with reason, but in the

reasoned parts his claims make no special pleading. It is intended as rationally

compelling for any disinterested party. Now clearly this position doesn’t have the

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 175

same force in the modern world where Aristotelianism is by no means universally

accepted—which has led to some curious contortions among theologians

wanting to read Aquinas as really a fideist and not attempting to offer

straightforwardly philosophical defences of his beliefs (Kerr 2002; Rogers 2004).

Finally one might note that Aquinas, as a pre-modern, appears unusually

attuned to contemporary movements in philosophy which seek to throw off some

of the more characteristic features of modern philosophy. Since he has no

investment in Cartesian subjectivity, or in solipsistic notions of the self, his views

can seem interesting to those in recovery from modernity. The agenda of his

epistemology is not set by scepticism. His view of ethics doesn’t suffer from the

characteristic modern split of on the one hand having realistic psychology with

a dubious account of normativity, versus on the other a worked-out story

of normativity in a thoroughly implausible psychology. Hence a steady growth in

secular interest in Aquinas’s work in recent years.

(b) Nagarjuna

It is probable that Nagarjuna was a second-century Indian Buddhist monk.

Little is known with any certainty about his life.4 We do know that he wrote

a number of important texts—but issues about the exact number of authentic texts

and the status of the extant texts are fraught. Schools of Buddhist thought

distinguish themselves by their interpretations of his texts. His most important work

is called the Mulamadhyamikakarika—or ‘fundamental verses on the middle way’.5

The middle way is traditionally ascribed to the teaching of Buddha who, like

Socrates, put nothing in print. Despite many pious protestations about the inability

of putting such sublime teaching into mere human language, an enormous amount

of writing was generated by it, including philosophical treatises.6 Classical Indian

philosophy was basically characterised by systems which presented views on reality

(Brahman) and the individual soul (Atman), grouped together under the label

‘orthodox’ by virtue of their recognition of the Vedas as an authoritative vision of

the world. Buddhism was unorthodox in that it rejected any special role for

authoritative revelations, privileging individual experience, rejecting the view that

there is such a thing as the stable reality called Brahman and rejecting the notion

of a substantive self (Anatman) (see Williams 1998).

Early schools of philosophical Buddhism resembled Logical Atomism in

western philosophy (see Gudmunsen 1977). Reality was analysed into

conventional and ultimate reality. Conventional reality was a construction made

on the basis of the more fundamental atomistic realities which existed, called

Dharmas. Such Buddhist schools were called the Abhidharma and much of their

work consisted in giving extensive lists of categories of Dharmas. For such schools,

the notion of the ultmate furniture of the world made sense—even if it consisted

of a kind of Heraclitean fleeting play of atoms.

Nagarjuna inaugurated a new kind of approach—denying the very validity of

the idea of the ultimate furniture of reality. This approach was called Madhyamika

176 P. O’GRADY

and it consitutes the philosophical basis of one of the two main strands of

Buddhism—the Mahayana tradition. Tibetan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism both,

in different ways, represent developments of the Mahayana ideal and see

Nagarjuna as a key figure in their development. The key idea articulated by

Nagarjuna is emptiness (Sunyata). The most salient feature of reality is this

emptiness—not substantial things, or even fleeting atoms. However, making sense

of this idea of emptiness is central to the philosophical divisions within Buddhism.

Buddhism after Nagarjuna had a flourishing philosophical diversity. Some

held that Nagarjuna advocated that the fundamental nature of reality is ineffable,

that rational thought cannot reach to it, yet non-rational, intuitive thinking, whose

best exemplars are in various kinds of meditative practice, can pierce the veil of

illusion and get to reality as it is (see Battacharya 1990). Others rejected this

approach, holding that the core doctrine is that there is no ineffable reality, that

emptiness really is empty itself and that one has to constantly beware of falling

into reifying modes of thought.7 Others still, saw Buddhism as articulating genuine

scepticism (see Matilal 1986).

One remarkable feature about Nagarjuna’s position is that the philosophical

positions and manoeuvres taken by him are the ones which usually characterise

militantly antireligious thinkers—for example Sextus Empiricus, Hume or Nietzsche.

He appears as a naturalist—with rejection of design, of essence, of causation, of

necessity. Nevertheless these views are articulated within a thoroughgoing

religious culture, with meditative practices, rituals and monasticism. In different

Buddhist traditions he is treated as a saint or a revered teacher of the dharma.

So there is this paradox of what is in the West extremely antireligous

thought being housed in what would be seen in the West as archetypally religious

practice—reeking of what Hume disdainfully called the monkish virtues.8

The Conflict

It certainly looks, from a general survey of their work, that Aquinas and

Nagarjuna defend opposed philosophical positions. Aquinas can be characterised

as a metaphysical realist. He holds to the reality of essences, of genuine causal

powers and the ability of mind to grasp reality as it is. Nagarjuna’s system is much

more sceptical. His basic method of argument is the reductio ad absurdem, which

he uses against Indian realists to attempt to show the instabilities and problems

of their systems. Many of the positions he attacks are ones held by Aquinas

(i.e. attacking essences, attacking genuine causal powers).

At this general level one might be tempted to adopt the strategy outlined in

the Introduction and suggest that they offer incommensurable views of the world

and that it is an issue of tradition, training, culture or temperament as to whether

one finds Aquinas or Nagarjuna congenial. One might characterise it in the

manner that debates between theists and atheists have come to be seen in some

quarters, as expressing outlooks on the world, strategies of interpretation of

reality.9 However, such an easy resolution of the debate goes against philosophy’s

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 177

interest in trying to achieve a reasoned analysis of the conflict. It is a too ready

concession to a general scepticism about the possibility of achieving insight and

truth by means of reasoning. It is possible that this latter may well be the truth of

the situation (i.e. scepticism may be true)—but it cannot be taken as the initial

default position. Much more work needs to be done to show that it is true and that

a resolution is not available. In the meantime it is important to try to understand

how exactly they differ from each other.

The general clash of approach concretises in a specific point on which they

hold opposed views which arises as part of Aquinas’s sequence of arguments for

theism.10 There is a great deal of interpretative debate as to how Aquinas actually

viewed the famous five ways for demonstrating the existence of God.11 Does he

think of them as a rational foundation for the rest of his edifice? Or are they rather

internal to a religious worldview and should be interpreted accordingly—not as

free-standing rational supports for that worldview? Are they to be construed

as original arguments or are they perfunctory presentations of what Aquinas and

his contemporaries viewed as non-gainsayable truths accepted by all rational

people? For the purposes of a dialogue with Nagarjuna I shall read them as free-

standing metaphysical arguments designed to convince a philosophical opponent

of the truth of the conclusion.12

The third of the five ways is the one which is most relevant to this discussion.

Aquinas begins by noting that things in the world come into being and pass away

out of being. He then argues that everything cannot be like this. If everything were

like this, then at some time there would have been nothing. If there ever had been

nothing, there would be nothing now. Since that is patently not the case, then it

must be the case that not everything is coming to be and passing away, but there

are some things which must be—necessary beings. Given such necessary things,

Aquinas asks whether this necessity comes from themselves or from another?

If from another there would be an infinite regress unless one postulates a

necessary being whose necessity is not explicable in terms of any other being.

Aquinas, as is his fashion, says this is called God. There are two main parts to

this argument. An initial stage argues to the existence of necessary beings.

Such necessity is not logical necessity—it is not a covert ontological argument.

The mere existence of such necessary beings does not yield God. Aquinas accepts

a multiplicity of such necessary being—ones which do not corrupt. Examples in his

worldview include the heavenly movers and rational souls. Because of their

metaphysical lack of composition of matter and form, they do not, so to speak,

have the wherewithal for corruption. He then argues that among such necessary

beings there must be one which is uniquely singled out as the source of necessity

in the others. It is that which is called God. To specify the point of conflict with

Nagarjuna, Aquinas argues that there is a unique source of metaphysical necessity

in existence—not everything is dependent.

Nagarjuna holds that the metaphysical core of reality is captured in the notion

of dependent co-origination.13 This is a way of understanding the Buddhist idea that

everything that exists is fleeting, depending on other things for its existence.

178 P. O’GRADY

The central ethical teaching of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths, holds that

suffering characterises the human condition (see Conze 1959, 186). The origin

of suffering is attachment to fleeting reality, which is doomed to disappoint us.

The remedy for suffering is the realisation of the transitoriness of all things, and the

corresponding cultivation of detachment in the face of this. Nagarjuna supplies a

metaphysical gloss on the meaning of the transitoriness of reality. His view is

that entities lack any self-existence (svabhava).14 All things are dependent.

His arguments for this position, in general, are along the lines that if you attribute

self-existence to any entity, you end up with unacceptable consequences, a classic

reductio ad absurdem strategy. What is most important about his position is that this

is absolutely general. There is no single being which escapes this transitoriness.

All beings are characterised by emptiness. And emptiness is itself empty—he is not

articulating a kind of negative theology, where the word covers a hidden reality, in

the manner of Denys the Areopagite, for example. So Nagarjuna articulates a

position which diametrically opposes that of Aquinas. Aquinas says not everything

can be transitory and erects a doctrine of theism on this view. Nagarjuna holds that

everything is transitory, and enlightenment comes about by the personal realisation

of this truth. Let’s look in some more detail at each side of this impasse.

Aquinas’s Realist Argument

Aquinas’s argument is by no means perspicuous or straightforward. It is the

focus of a great deal of interpretative controversy and there is no single clear

canonical interpretation of the argument which is regarded as obvious by most

commentators. For the sake of clarity, let’s look at the argument in logical

reconstruction.

1. There are contingent things. [uncontroversial observation of the world]

2. Contingent things are such that they don’t exist at some time [explanation of

contingency]

3. If everything is contingent then at some time there is nothing [crucial move]

4. If at one time there was nothing there would be nothing now. [accept ex nihilo

nihil fit ]

5. That conclusion is false—so there never was nothing. [observation and modus

tollens ]

6. If there never was nothing, then not everything can be contingent [from 3]

7. If not everything is contingent, then there is something necessary [from the

meaning of ‘contingent’]

8. Whatever is necessary derives its necessity from itself or another [truism]

9. No infinite regress of necessary beings [general argument against infinite

regress]

10. 10 A first necessary being must exist. [conclusion]

The first phase of opposition lies in challenging line 3. As it stands it contains

a gross logical error—pounced on by critical commentators such as J. L. Mackie

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 179

(1982, 89) and Anthony Kenny (1969, 56). It contains a quantifier error. The move

from ‘everything is capable of going out of existence’ to ‘at some time everything

goes out of existence’ is fallacious. It is analogous to making the inference from

‘All roads have an ending’ to ‘there is one ending to which all roads lead’.

Now Aquinas wouldn’t have been familiar with the label ‘quantifier error’, but

would nevertheless have been familiar with the kind of fallacy involved, known in

Aristotelian parlance as the fallacy of composition and division—wrongly applying

properties of an aggregate or group to a member of that group.15 So the question

arises whether Aquinas just simply failed to see the error, or whether there was

a deeper reason why he didn’t think this move was fallacious—that there were

hidden premises operating. Given his knowledge of the kind of error involved and

his general logical acuity, the principle of charity counsels us to look for such

hidden ways of making the argument come out as valid.

One suggested solution is that Aquinas is assuming the eternity of the world

(see, e.g. Lovejoy 1964). Given an infinity of time and a genuine possibility, that

possibility must be realised. Hence if it is a genuine possibility that everything

could cease to exist simultaneously, this would actually come about. If it didn’t

come about then it wasn’t a genuine possibility and it’s negation would be

necessary, namely it would be necessary that not everything is capable of ceasing

to exist. Such a suppressed premise would make valid the argument and get rid

of the fallacy. Unfortunately Aquinas cannot make use of such a premise, since he

actually believes it to be false. While he doesn’t think there are good philosophical

reasons showing that the world is not eternal, he nevertheless holds on the basis

of revelation that the world did actually begin. Because he holds the eternity of

the world as actually false, he couldn’t have it in mind as a suppressed premise

in the argument (Davies 2001).

Another proposed solution is to gloss ‘everything is such that it does not

exist at some time’ as meaning ‘everything is dependent’ (Davies 2001). This moves

straightforwardly to the argument that not everything can be like this, since

dependent things only exist by virtue of something else. Holding that absolutely

everything is like this is incoherent. Hence there are some things which are not

dependent, that is, which do not come to be by generation and which are

perishable. Of these things one can ask whether they have this property

intrinsically or by virtue of another. An infinite regress of such things is not

possible, and so one has to posit a first cause of necessity. The first problem with

such an interpretation is that it moves from the text quite a long way—it doesn’t

explain away the quantifier error, it ignores it (Wippel 2000, 464). Secondly, it

collapses the third way into an argument rather like the first way—a first cause

argument—removing any particular use for the notion of necessity. Thirdly, it

doesn’t have the resources to answer critics such as Kenny (1969, 69) who note

that even if the argument is valid, it is compatible with positing eternal matter as

the source of necessity. Fourthly, and most importantly in this context, it simply

begs the question against a position like Nagarjuna. It doesn’t argue that

everything cannot be dependent, it merely asserts it.

180 P. O’GRADY

A different, more fruitful and quite traditional way of looking at this argument

is to think that it implicitly involves the distinction between essence and existence

which is the keystone of Aquinas’s metaphysical position. Things are given a

metaphysical analysis, in that they consist of essence (their structure) and

existence—the instantiation of that structure in reality. These are two distinct

principles which make up a thing—principles which are not things themselves.

Aquinas holds that nothing in the world contains the basis for its own existence

within itself—existence always comes from without. Contingent things rely on other

contingent things for their existence. Even things which do not go out of existence

require an external source of their existence. Such a source of existence would

be a reality whose essence is to exist—whatever that might be like. This would be

an absolutely independent reality. It wouldn’t be quite right to call it a being—since it

is the source of all being, and the sole reality in which the principles of being

are identical, essence ¼ existence. On this way of looking at the third way, the

argument is indeed about dependence, but it is explicitly about dependence in

respect of existence. If absolutely everything which exists were dependent in this

way, then there would be nothing. An independent reality is required.

Objections to this reading query the intelligibility of the distinction between

essence and existence. The bare idea of existence, removed from all other possible

specifications of a thing, is seen as an empty idea, a non-genuine predicate. While

there may be an intuitive basis for this distinction, namely that there is something

to be said about the instantiation as distinct from the non-instantiation of

properties, the full-blown metaphysical distinction of essence and existence is not

sustainable. Existence is a kind of metaphor, a residual Platonically-inspired

reservoir idea of being, wherein all things are connected. English-speaking

commentators on this idea generally tend to be sceptical about such metaphysics.

However, for the moment, I want to mark it as a plausible candidate for

interpreting the third way as a valid argument.16

Nagarjuna’s Anti-Realist Argument

Nagarjuna begins his assault on realism by challenging realist notions of

causation.17 This holds that entities have real causal powers, that causes feature

in the genuine list of things which exist in reality. Nagarjuna changes the focus

of explanation. When confronted with the vast web of interconnections which is

nature, we select and note aspects which reflect our explanatory needs. We select

regularities and nodes of interaction which have salience for us—but we should

beware of projecting such patterns into nature itself. Such patterns are conditions—

but conditions, unlike causes, are not occult metaphysical entities with mysterious

powers. Rather they play a role in explanation—uniting explanandum and

explanans—but with no commitment to the metaphysical reality of causes.

Observed regularities explain nature. We trace patterns and make predictions.

However, this is possible in a metaphysically light-weight fashion. One way

of characterising this light-weight approach is to deny the notion of essence.18

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 181

There are no objective patterns existing in nature which hold independently of the

web of interconnections. Even the separation of entities into self-standing discrete

realities involves choice, arbitrary separation from what is contiguous, from what

went before and goes after, from causes and results. Nature does not carve itself up

into explanatory units—we do that. Our discriminations, which are natural habits,

mask the metaphysical emptiness of reality. There are no self-standing independent

existents, independent of categorisation of them. Note that this blocks all forms of

metaphysical realism—specifically it doesn’t sustain idealism, which holds that the

real nature of entities is that they are constituted by mind. This denies any validity to

the very idea of the way things are in reality.

Nagarjuna’s distinctive thesis on this is to deny that entities have ‘svabhava’,

or independent existence, sometimes glossed as essence.19 Another way of

expressing this is to say that emptiness (‘sunyata’) characterises entities. The

fundamental metaphysical nature of things is that they are empty. Now such

a view is at face value difficult to sustain and seems to be a straight form of

nihilism. To hold that entities are empty seems to be to hold that entities do not, in

fact, exist. Opponents of Nagarjuna picked on this very point and indicated the

troublesome consequences of such a view.20 All the apparatus of Buddhism

would crumble on such a view—no Four Noble Truths, no Buddha, Dharma (the

teaching) or Sangha (community). Rather than sustaining and explicating

the Buddhist world-picture, such a view would wipe it out.

To respond to this criticism, Nagarjuna has recourse to a doctrine of two

perspectives on reality, a view which would be familiar to his Buddhist audience.21

There is a conventional way of looking at reality, in which one posits beings, causes,

events, properties and all the familiar paraphernalia of the world. This is the normal,

pre-critical way of seeing the world. However, there is also a more reflective

philosophical way of looking at reality—the absolute perspective. On such a view

one can see the conventions which hold together the conventional view of the

world—and realise that all things are in fact empty, that there is no self-existence.

Such a view does then bolster the Buddhist worldview. It explicates the fleeting

nature of reality and the natural human tendency to cling to what is really transient.

How the absolute perspective relates to the conventional perspective is at

the core of Nagarjuna’s position. It does not eradicate it, or supersede it. What

it amounts to is a principled denial that there is an ultimate way things are and as

such is in agreement with contemporary forms of anti-realism. Thus Nagarjuna’s

notion of emptiness is not a reified metaphysical reality. It is the denial of the kind

of reality which metaphysics usually holds to. So the absolute perspective doesn’t

eradicate the conventional. In fact it allows a deeper realisation of the

conventionality of all that we call reality. What exists is the flux of change,

which we conventionally sort and pattern for brief periods of time, with entities

appearing and disappearing. Thus the doctrine of emptiness coincides with the

doctrine of dependent origination.

Nagarjuna therefore answers the challenge that he is really a nihilist by

indicating that the doctrine of emptiness doesn’t wipe out conventional reality.

182 P. O’GRADY

It doesn’t hold that absolutely nothing exists. Rather it gives a characterisation of

conventional reality, showing that such reality is precisely conventional (see

Garfield 1995, 307ff). Included in the scope of this conventionality is the very

notion of the self. There is no trancendental ego which constitutes reality, the ego

is a conventional reality—and Nagarjuna would agree with standard Buddhist

analyses of the self into aggregates (see Gethin 1998, 135ff). However, what is

distinctive of his position is that the aggregates themselves are not substantial—

they lack independent existence.

The most obvious line of objection to this is to accuse his position of

undermining itself. The distinction between absolute and conventional is itself

conventional and so not real. Therefore it is an unusable distinction, and cannot be

used to sustain his position. Nagarjuna’s response, of course, would be to say that

one must understand the distinction itself as conventional—that from the

absolute level it also lacks reality, but this doesn’t make it unusable (see Garfield

1995, 316ff; Huntington Jr 1989). Like Wittgenstein’s ladder in the Tractatus, it

helps one see things rightly. Yet it still seems of doubtful coherence to use a

distinction which is under suspicion to defend the use of that very distinction. One

requires a different line of argument to avoid charges of begging the question.

Structural Parallels

It should now be clear that Aquinas and Nagarjuna are dealing with the

same metaphysical issue and coming up with contradictory accounts of it. Aquinas

defends the existence of a single independent source of necessity for all beings.

Nagarjuna denies the existence of any such source and affirms the dependence of

absolutely everything.

As we have also seen, neither Aquinas nor Nagarjuna have positions which

avoid internal problems. To make sense of Aquinas’s argument for a source of

necessity, one had to invoke the metaphysical distinction of essence and existence

and even using that, it is still questionable whether it really avoids logical error.

One might think that perhaps a parallel argument could be made using Aquinas’s

ingredients, but the one Aquinas actually offers is flawed. On Nagarjuna’s side,

despite his protestations to the contrary, it is not at all clear that he escapes the

charge of nihilism.

However, what I want to draw attention to here is a curious alignment of

both their positions, despite the fact that they appear diametrically opposed.

Nagarjuna’s worked out position entails a distinction between conventional and

absolute reality. Within conventional reality it makes sense to speak of essences or

forms, while in absolute reality it makes no sense to so speak. Given Nagarjuna’s

view that emptiness characterises all of reality, we can find a distinction of form

and emptiness in conventional reality. Forms have conventional reality, but

emptiness is their absolute reality, and this emptiness pervades even conventional

reality. The essence of the Prajnaparamitra literature, which Nagarjuna is

interpreting, is summed up in the refrain ‘form is emptiness, and the very

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 183

emptiness is form’.22 From an absolute perspective there is an identity of what,

from a conventional perspective, seem distinct. Nagarjuna is therefore committed

to two related sets of distinctions:

Conventional / Absolute

and

Form / Emptiness

The second distinction (form/emptiness) occurs in the first half of the former

distinction (conventional reality), while it collapses in the second half (absolute

reality).

Conventional / Absolute

Form / Emptiness Emptiness

With this set up, one can see a striking structural parallel to Aquinas’s

position. He likewise has two sets of distinctions, where the second distinction

holds in the first side of the former distinction and collapses in the second. His

initial distinction is between Dependent (created) reality and Absolute (uncreated)

reality. The second distinction is between form and existence.

Dependent / Absolute

And

Form / Existence

Form and existence are distinct in dependent reality. All things that exist in

the world are constituted by the metaphysical distinction between form and

existence. However, in the second half of the distinction, absolute reality, this

distinction goes. What remains is self-subsistent existent, a unique reality whose

essence is to exist. Thus the parallel to Nagarjuna’s position:

[Nagarjuna] Conventional / Absolute

Form / Emptiness Emptiness

[Aquinas] Dependent Reality / Absolute Reality

Form / Existence Existence

Now despite the structural parallel, the fundamental difference between the

intended positions remains. For Nagarjuna, the whole structure (Conventiona-

l/Absolute) is dependent, whereas for Aquinas there is an independent reality.

Is there a way of adjudicating this stand-off?

In relation to the objections levelled against their respective positions,

it seems that Nagarjuana’s position is less stable that Aquinas’s. Despite Nagarjuna’s

awareness of the danger of nihilism and his insistence that his position isn’t nihilist,

it still seems he falls into it. It is unclear that he can sustain the view that

holding all entities are empty isn’t nihilistic. His way out of nihilism is to invoke

the conventional/absolute distinction. Emptiness is as things are seen

from the absolute stance and this doesn’t wipe out the conventional. Yet the

employment of this very distinction doesn’t seem defensible, it doesn’t seem

184 P. O’GRADY

possible to sustain it without invoking some independent argument for it.

The situation is akin to C. I. Lewis’s observation about coherentism. Lewis holds that

it is absurd to think that beliefs can support each other when they themselves do not

stand on anything—it being like two drunken sailors attempting to stand up by

leaning against each other. It just don’t get off the ground!23 Likewise with the

conventional/absolute distinction. Without appeal to independent existence, it is

unclear how such a distinction is possible.

Furthermore, given that Nagarjuna denies that emptiness is equivalent to

nihilism and complete nothingness, it seems as if emptiness has to have some

positive content. With even a residual amount of positive content, the distinction

between conventional and absolute could be sustained. What might such content

be like? Well, it is merely to hold that emptiness has some reality independent of

that of conventional reality. A plausible candidate for such ‘contentful’ emptiness

would, ironically in this context, be Aquinas’s notion of existence. Aquinas doesn’t

reify existence—it is not a thing and neither is it a form or essence. It is not the

possible object of conceptual knowledge, since concepts track essences, not

existence. Hence substituting ‘existence’ for ‘emptiness’ yields the distinction

Conventional / Absolute

Form / Existence Existence

The required feature of the conventional realm is preserved, in that things

come to be and pass away, they do not have independent existence. Yet the very

possibility of this contrast is assured by having an independently contentful

notion of existence on the absolute side of the distinction. Thus Nagarjuna’s

distinction is altered by accepting Aquinas’s notion of an independent reality, but

underwritten by the postulation of that very reality.

A contextual response to the objection that Aquinas’s notion of existence is

unintelligible would be to contrast it with Nagarjuna’s ‘emptiness’. The kinds of

critic hostile to existence would be even more hostile to emptiness. So while not

an absolute rejoinder to such critics, it strengthens Aquinas’s position vis-a-vis

Nagarjuna.

Conclusion

I began by noting a currently fashionable doubt about the possibility of

bringing protagonists from different cultural and historical periods into dialogue

with each other, and then proceeded to engage Aquinas with Nagarjuna. At a

surface level their positions are diametrically opposed, Aquinas affirming a source

of metaphysical necessity, Nagarjuna denying this. On closer inspection both sets

of arguments had troublesome dimensions. Aquinas might overcome the

objections to his position by invoking the essence/existence distinction,

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 185

Nagarjuna responding to charges of nihilism by deploying the conventional/ab-

solute distinction.

I then noted a structural parallel between their sequence of distinctions and

indicated that Nagarjuna’s position still seemed vulnerable to charges of nihilism.

It seems as if something resembling Nagarjuna’s position could be salvaged by

using Aquinas’s notion of existence.

Does that then turn Nagarjuna into a theist? No. The positing of existence as

a metaphysical principle which serves as the basis on which to make the

conventional/absolute distinction doesn’t say anything about what such existence

has to be like. It merely accepts the point, which Aristotle makes about Heraclitus,

that change presupposes some form of fixity. Whether such a metaphysical fixed

point has any further characteristics which point in the direction of theism is

another matter altogether. The current argument merely holds that in the dialectic

of the debate between the postulation of a metaphysical source of necessity and

the rejection of such, Aquinas’s position appears to be more secure than that of

Nagarjuna.

NOTES

1. The best recent biographical study of Aquinas is Torrell (1996).

2. Commentary on the Metaphysics Bk.3 lect.1.

3. For an interpretation of Aquinas in this way see O’Grady (2005). For competing

interpretations see papers by Rogers and Jordan in the same volume. See also

n.12 below.

4. For some discussion see Murti (1955, 87ff). For criticism of Murti’s interpretative

presuppositions see Burton (1999, 5ff)—although Burton doesn’t attempt any

claims about the historical figure.

5. Translated as The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay N. Garfield, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1995.

6. For a survey of Buddhist writings see Gethin (1998, ch. 2, ‘The Word of the

Buddha: Buddhist Scriptures and Schools’).

7. Garfield’s commentary furnishes this interpretation.

8. ‘And as every quality which is useful or agreeable to ourselves or others is, in

common life, allowed to be a part of personal merit; so no other will ever

be received, where men judge of things by their natural, unprejudiced reason,

without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion. Celibacy, fasting

penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole

train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of

sense, but because they serve no manner of purpose. . .’ Enquiries Concerning the

Principles of Morals, Section IX, part 1, #219.

9. Consider the following: ‘The main themes of postmodernism thus become

clear. They amount to a comprehensive rejection of virtually everything that

the Enlightenment in general and Descartes in particular believed in. There is a

sharp criticism of the received ideas of representation, objective Truth,

186 P. O’GRADY

Reason and historical progress, leading eventually to the “death of man”,

a thoroughly wholesome loss of interest in the individual subject, his self-

mastery through self-consciousness, his moral autonomy and the justification of

his knowledge of the world. Instead we turn more to language, the sign,

communication, art and culture-criticism’. (Cupitt 1989, 39). Hence the

theist/atheist debate becomes pretty small beer indeed. A problem for positions

such as that of Kerr is how to articulate clearly how he can distinguish his view

from this one, without re-inflating the traditional Thomism he is seeking to

overcome, and without simply acceding to fideism.

10. In Summa Theologiae Ia q.2 a.3.

11. See Kerr (2002, ch. 4 ‘Ways of Reading the Five Ways’) for a good survey.

12. See ‘Aquinas, Philosophical Theology and Analytical Philosophy’ for a defence of

this view. This current paper, generating a dialogue between Aquinas and

Nagarjuna, furthers the claim of that paper, by means of a particular study. Those

who want to read Aquinas as essentially a Christian theologian, without an

essentially philosophical dimension, have to hold that his initial confessional

presuppositions would preclude such an encounter between the views of

Nagarjuna and Aquinas. They just don’t connect; they could perhaps proselytise

each other, but not engage in disinterested philosophical argument. This is the

very reason why such a reading impoverishes Aquinas.

13. Pratityasamutpada. ‘Whoever sees dependent arising also sees suffering and its

arising and its cessation as well as the path’. MMK ch24.40.

14. See Burton (1999 ch. 2) for a defence of the view that Nagarjuna is not a sceptic

and that the denial of svabhava is a positive doctrine.

15. Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations, ch. 4. For the proliferation of thirteenth-

century textbooks based on this, see Ebbesen (1982). There’s scholarly dispute

over whether Aquinas himself wrote such a textbook, the De Fallaciis—see

Torrell (1996, 523). The point is, however, that he would have been well aware of

the flaw involved.

16. For examples of the kind of objections which can be levelled at this kind of

reading, see Kenny (2002).

17. As I noted above I use the English translation of the Mulamadhyamikakarika

(hereafter, MMK) given by Jay Garfield in his The Fundamental Wisdom of the

Middle Way, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. I also accept his generally

anti-realist reading of Nagarjuna, in contrast to, say, T. R. V. Murti’s absolutist

reading in Murti (1955). For the attack on a realist account of causation see MMK

ch. 1.

18. MMK15.

19. See Garfield p. 89 n.4 on translating this term.

20. A plausible interpretation of MMK 24. 7–14 sees Nagarjuna responding to such

opponents.

21. MMK 24.18.

22. The Heart Sutra in Conze (1973, 142).

23. Argument cited in Haack (1993, 27).

FORM AND EMPTINESS: AQUINAS AND NAGARJUNA 187

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188 P. O’GRADY