Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

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Nagarjuna’s viewpoint. Nagarjuna presents these four extreme views of reality in a scheme that is called in Sanskrit: ‘catuskoti’, the equivalent of the Ancient Greek ‘tetralemma’, as follows: things have no substance: 1. neither out of themselves, 2. nor out of something else, 3. nor out of both, 4. nor without a cause. (tetralemma: a figure in Ancient Greek and Eastern logic with four possibilities.) This kind of tetralemma refutes the four modern views of reality as above mentioned. This shows that Nagarjuna does not fall into any of these extremes and that his view is completely up-to-date. In the very first verse of the MMK a tetralemma is pointed out: “Neither from itself nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause, does anything whatever anywhere arise”. [10] This verse can be understood as the principal statement of the MMK: the refutation of the four extreme metaphysical views which cannot be reconciled with the dependent arising of things. If this is the case, the remainder of the MMK would be a clarification of this verse. This requires careful examination. What is the assertion made by this verse? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute what evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the everywhere presence of things that somehow arise? If ‘to arise’ refers to the empirical data, then we are obliged to argue that if a thing does not arise out of itself, it must arise out of something else. So we should ask: what is the significance of the notion ‘to arise’? In another text, Nagarjuna gives some indications how to understand this view. He writes in his Yuktisastika (YS):
19. “That which has arisen dependently on this and that that has not arisen substantially (svabhavatah). What has not arisen substantially, how can it literally (nama) be called 'arisen'? […] That which originates due to a cause and does not abide without (certain) conditions but disappears when the conditions are absent, how can it be understood as 'to exist'? [11] By the notions of ‘to arise’ and ‘to exist’, Nagarjuna does not mean the empirical existence but the substantial existence, as we will see in the following examples. When in many passages of MMK Nagarjuna states that things do not arise (MMK 7.29), that they do not exist (MMK 3.7, 5.8, 14.6), that they are not to be found (MMK 2.25, 9.11), that they are not (MMK 15.10), that they are unreal (MMK 13.1), then clearly this has the meaning: things do not arise substantially. They do not exist out of themselves; their independence cannot be found. They are dependent and in this sense they are substantially unreal. Nagarjuna only rejects the idea of a substantial arising of things which bear an absolute and independent existence. He does not refute the empirical existence of things as explained in the following: “It exists implies grasping after eternity. It does not exist implies the philosophy of annihilation. Therefore, a discerning person should not decide on either existence or non-existence”. (MMK 15.10) For Nagarjuna, the expression ‘to exist’ has the meaning of ‘to exist substantially’. His issue is not the empirical existence of things but the conception of a permanent thing i.e. the idea of an own being, without dependence on something else. Nagarjuna refutes the concept of independent
Page 1 and 2: Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysi
Page 3 and 4: 1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key ter
Page 5 and 6: ideas of substance or subject, two
Page 7 and 8: 2. Nagarjuna Preliminary note We sh
Page 9 and 10: distinction between two forms of be
Page 11: (4) Instrumentalism Instead of favo
Page 15: A brief review of the 25 chapters o
Page 18 and 19: Chapter 2: A mover and the distance
Page 20 and 21: Chapter 10: Fire and fuel. Photogra
Page 22 and 23: Chapter 12: Suffering and the cause
Page 24 and 25: Chapter 13. A teenager and an aged
Page 26: Chapter 23. Pure and impure. Rio Ne
Page 29 and 30: A solar storm. Something is happeni
Page 31 and 32: sometimes three complementary bodie
Page 33 and 34: 5. The metaphysical foundations of
Page 35 and 36: Albert Einstein’s contribution to
Page 37 and 38: Niels Bohr’s contribution to the
Page 39 and 40: The atoms arrive in discrete lumps.
Page 41 and 42: Figure 1: In this Feynman diagram,
Page 43 and 44: centimeter) and are so weak that th
Page 45 and 46: philosophers and physicists have be
Page 47 and 48: What is reality? We have become acc
Page 49 and 50: 4. as an intermediate state by Roge
Page 51 and 52: Appendix 3: Alfred North Whitehead:
Page 53 and 54: of Miletus, alive at the date 600 B
Page 55 and 56: Christian scheme of salvation. Its
Page 57 and 58: accordance with his clear-cut intel
Page 59 and 60: seemingly obvious, are infected wit
Page 61 and 62: Of course in this action, and react
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temporal realization of ideas. The
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qualification not to be analyzed in
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Plato, the mathematician, for long
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now that it is dead, it is stone-de
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Italian Renaissance. In truth, they
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for the expression of high abstract
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particular observations. The other
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Greeks, Jews, and Muslims from such
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F.H. Bradley for instance, fall int
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merely that the equality of two and
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Alfred North Whitehead: Adventures
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occasions, can be validly used to s
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element shall have the character of
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that if there can be any intellectu
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The difference of ancients and mode
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course of such physical activities
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Section VIII. We have now reached t
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The common practice, interpreted by
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and in its forms. Thus we discover
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distinct meanings. It is to be reme
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This consideration is the basis of
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example consciousness, if it be pre
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together for common ends. Such unit
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monad can take account of another,
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facts and species are the product o
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adopted. Then the word Creativity e
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When a general idea has been obtain
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eality. The important invention of
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the correspondence between a model
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E. D. & Feldman, G. J. Quarkonium.
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8. Bibliography Bloom, E. D. & Feld
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'T Hooft, G. Symmetrien in der Phys
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Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

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