The Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy is grounded in the theory of the two truths. This theory posits the existence of two levels of reality :1 the conventional truth corresponds to the way that things appear, and the ultimate truth corresponds to the way that things really are. Nāgārjuna, the second-century Indian scholar credited with founding the Madhyamaka tradition, frames the relationship between the two truths as follows: "Without relying on the conventional, the ultimate cannot be demonstrated. Without understanding the (...) significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved."2 In other words, the goal of Buddhist practice—liberation—relies on a correct... (shrink)

This essay presents a critique of dialetheist readings of Madhyamaka based on the philosophy of the fifteenth-century Tibetan scholar, Gorampa Sonam Senge (Go rams pa bSod nams Seng ge) (1429-1489). In brief, dialetheism is the acceptance that in a logical system there can be at least some cases in which a statement and its negation are true; that is, it involves the acceptance of true contradictions. Jay Garfield and Graham Priest's "Nāgārjuna and the Limits of Thought" attempts to reconcile apparent (...) contradictions in Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka writings by appealing to dialetheism.1 Tom Tillemans' response to that article, "How do Mādhyamikas Think?" advocates an interpretation of Nāgārjuna that relies on a weaker .. (shrink)