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Journal of Indian Philosophy (2006) 34: 367395 Springer 2006
DOI 10.1007/s10781-005-6172-4J. WESTERHOFFARJUNAS CATUS: KOT: IThe catus: kot:i or tetralemma is an argumentative gure familiar to
any reader of Buddhist philosophical literature. Roughly speaking it
consists of the enumeration of four alternatives: that some propositions holds, that it fails to hold, that it both holds and fails to hold,
that it neither holds nor fails to hold. The tetralemma also constitutes
one of the more puzzling features of Buddhist philosophy as the use
to which it is put in arguments is not immediately obvious and certainly not uniform: sometimes one of the four possibilities is selected
as the right one, sometimes all four are rejected, sometimes all four
are armed. It seems that this confusion is only exacerbated by the
plethora of treatments we nd in the modern commentarial literature,
many of which try to analyze the tetralemma by recourse to notions
of modern logic. There is no agreement about whether the four
alternatives are to be understood as quantied1 or unquantied
propositions,2 whether any quantication is to be understood substitutionally or referentially,3 whether the Law of the Excluded
Middle holds for them,4 or whether they should be formalized in
classical,5 intuitionist6 or paraconsistent logic.7Despite some important work done during the last decades8 a
comprehensive study of the origin and development of the catus: kot:i
from its use in the earliest Buddhist literature up to its later
employment in the Buddhist philosophical works of Tibet, China,
and Japan remains yet to be written. The present paper is obviously1 Robinson (1967, 5758).2 Schayer (1933, 93).3 Tillemans (1990, 75).4 Staal (1975, 4647).5 Robinson (1957).6 Chi (1969, 162163).7 Priest and Gareld (2002).8 One of the most thorough treatments pertaining to its usage in the M
adhyamika
context is given by Ruegg (1977).N AG 368not intended to ll this gap, but has the specic objective of giving an
interpretation of Nagarjunas employment of the tetralemma9 which
makes both logical sense and is in accordance with his general
philosophical position.10The following discussion will be divided into four main parts.
Firstly, I will discuss the Indian distinction between two kinds of
negation which will be of central importance for understanding the
interrelations of the nested negations found in the tetralemma. In the