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J Indian Philos (2008) 36:507527
DOI 10.1007/s10781-008-9045-9
Jay L. Gareld
Published online: 24 June 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract Huntington (2007); argues that recent commentators (Robinson, 1957; Hayes, 1994; Tillemans, 1999; Gareld and Priest, 2002) err in attributing to Ngrjuna and Candrakrti a commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of Ngrjunas and Candrakrtis texts. Huntington argues instead that mdhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic and do not offer arguments. He also argues that interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order to be faithful to these texts. I demonstrate that he is wrong in all respects: Ngrjuna and Candrakrti deploy arguments, take themselves to do so, and even if they did not, we would be wise to do so in commenting on their texts.
Keywords Madhyamaka Ngrjuna Candrakrti Huntington Positionlessness Mlamadhyamakakrik Madhyamakvatra Vigrahavyvartan
J. L. Gareld (&)
Department of Philosophy, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063, USA email: [email protected]
J. L. Gareld
Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
J. L. Gareld
Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, Varanasi 221 007, UP, India
Turning a Madhyamaka Trick: Reply to Huntington
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508 J. L. Gareld
Huntingtons Substantive Charge
In a recent paper (Huntington 2007) CW Huntington lumps Hayes (1994), Robinson (1957), Tillemans (1999) and me1 together as a gang of four who allegedly read Ngrjuna through the lens of modern symbolic logic. [103] To have done this is apparently not good. Huntington asserts:
I believe that the compulsion experienced by so many of Ngrjunas modern readersto force a logical grid over the work of a writer who is so obviously and profoundly distrustful of logicderives, to a considerable extent, from a skewed understanding of the intellectual history of Indian Buddhism. [111]
I tend not to reply to charges that my own work over-rationalizes the putatively irrationalist Buddhist tradition as I generally nd these discussions a bit tired. But I am so honoured to be included in such august company, so bemused to see such a disparate set of scholars collected together in a single heterodox school, so outraged to be charged with taking Bhvavivekas side against Candrakrti (and to be charged...