Ewing Chinn, ‘Nagarjuna's fundamental principle of pratityasamutpada’

Philosophy East and West 51 (January 2001), 54-72

Nagarjuna contends that the doctrine of Pratityasamutpada (dependent origination), properly understood, constitutes the philosophical basis for the rejection and avoidance of all metaphysical theories and concepts (including causation). The companion doctrine of sunyata constitutes the denial of metaphysical realism (or ‘essentialism’) but does not imply an anti-realist, conventionalist view of reality (as Jay Garfield maintains). Pratityasamutpada, the true doctrine or, literally, ‘the exact or real nature of the case,’ is really two sided: it is (1) a ‘causal’ principle explaining the origin of all that exists, and (2) a semantic principle concerning the mutual dependency of concepts and beliefs in both the systematic and historically contingent sense. The latter implies a pragmatic approach to meaning.