In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Nāgārjuna argues that the Four Noble Truths should be understood in terms of conventional and ultimate truths. However, there are some issues for understanding this distinction. Explain (at least one) issue that arises for this distinction and discuss how a Madhyamaka might respond to it. Is this a plausible response? Give your own reasons for or against.

The Axioms of Experience: Nāgārjuna, Emptiness, and the Paradox of Assertion

If you were to reinterpret Buddhism from the foundations of the Four Noble Truths, how would you do it? With the teachings of the Buddha and rigorous logic at your disposal, what methods could you employ? In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Nāgārjuna uses the lens of emptiness (śūnyatā) to deploy the two truths doctrine. In this, he defines conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya) — the realm of everyday experience — and ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) — the way things actually are underneath the surface, devoid of inherent existence (svabhāva). To understand the Four Noble Truths, Nāgārjuna argues, one must view them relative to these two forms of truth, and the ultimate truth of emptiness is what makes the path given by the Four Noble Truths possible at all. However, this distinction between conventional and ultimate truths is not without its interpretive difficulties and apparent contradictions. If ultimate truth is truly emptiness, wherein emptiness is the lack of intrinsic nature, beyond linguistic designation, how can Nāgārjuna speak on it?
This presents a rather significant challenge, which has been referred to as the paradox of expressibility. Nāgārjuna uses conventional language and reasoning to generate a philosophical system that claims to result in an ultimate truth that transcends those pesky limitations; how can he assert the ineffable nature of ultimate truth, or that it is really emptiness that grounds the Four Noble Truths, while in the same breath using conventional language and reasoning to convey those selfsame ideas? Is it not true that his claims should thus be contradicted by his own assertions?
This essay explores the paradox that arises from Nāgārjuna’s application of the two truths to the Four Noble Truths. I will argue that a plausible Madhyamaka response can be elucidated through an analogy of mathematics and axiomatic systems. Specifically, I suggest that conventional truth functions like a set of theorems derivable via a given axiomatic framework wherein its truths are relative to the systems accepted and unproven starting points (i.e., the axioms). Ultimate truth, in this analogy, is not a higher-order theorem that is described within a superior system but rather the meta-level insight that the axioms underpinning reality lack inherent necessity. They are groundless, lacking svabhāva, perhaps rooted only in the raw data of experience itself. Emptiness, or nothingness, emerges as an ultimate truth precisely because it represents a state that is understood through the minimal axioms given by experience, devoid of any conceptual representation. Nāgārjuna’s assertions about ultimate truth can then be understood not as paradoxical descriptions, but as conventionally-phrased signposts towards the limits and axiomatic nature of the conventional framework being used. I will examine how a Madhyamaka thinker might deploy this view, evaluate its plausibility against potential objections, and offer my own reasons for using a mathematical analogy in an essay on Nāgārjuna’s assertions on truth and reality. And ideally, without inadvertently denigrating Nāgārjuna’s claims as a “big tautology.”
At the heart of Nāgārjuna’s project is śūnyatā. Everything, he argues, is empty of svabhāva – that independent, intrinsic, stand-alone nature things are often assumed to have. I want to make clear that this isn’t nihilism– he’s not saying nothing exists. Far from it. Things exist, but dependently. They pop up because of causes, conditions, parts, and crucially, the conceptual labels (prajñapti) we stick on them. This is dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), and Nāgārjuna flat out equates it with emptiness: “Whichever is dependently co-arisen / That is explained to be emptiness. / That, being a dependent designation / Is itself the middle way” (MMK 24.18).
To analyze this dependently arisen world, Nāgārjuna needs the two truths doctrine: “The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma / Is based on two truths: / A truth of worldly convention / And an ultimate truth” (MMK 24.8).
Conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya): This is our everyday world, the world that works according to shared language, social norms, cause-and-effect as we see it, and practical labels. This is where tables, chairs, you, me, suffering, and the Four Noble Truths function just fine. It’s truth based on worldly consensus (lokaprasiddha), as Candrakīrti would later put it – what works and what we agree on (Westerhoff, 2018, p. 135).
Ultimate truth (paramārthasatya): This is how things really are when you strip away the conventional assumptions and analyze deeply: empty of svabhāva. This truth is non-conceptual, non-dual, beyond the reach of our usual linguistic boxes (prapañca-free). It’s the direct seeing of the dependently arisen, and thus inherently empty, nature of everything – including suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path.
Nāgārjuna insists these two truths need each other. You can’t grasp the ultimate without the conventional scaffolding, and you can’t get liberated without understanding the ultimate: “Without a foundation in the conventional truth / The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. / Without understanding the significance of the ultimate / Liberation is not achieved” (MMK 24.10). The conventional gives us the language (however provisional) to point towards the ultimate; the ultimate truth of emptiness makes the conventional world (with its change, causality, suffering, and path) possible in the first place. If things had fixed essences (svabhāva), Nāgārjuna argues, nothing could change, suffer, cease, or be followed as a path (MMK 15.8). That’s why understanding the Four Noble Truths demands understanding emptiness: “For him to whom emptiness is clear, / Everything becomes clear. / For him to whom emptiness is not clear, / Nothing is clear” (MMK 24.14).
Okay, so we’ve established that the two truths framework is powerful. But then we immediately get slammed into a wall: the paradox of expressibility (or assertion). If ultimate truth is emptiness, and emptiness means transcending all our conventional concepts and language, how can Nāgārjuna use that very language to tell us anything meaningful about the ultimate? There are a few issues here:
1. Nāgārjuna makes statements that sound like descriptions of the ultimate nature of reality – emptiness is dependent origination (MMK 24.18), reality is “pacified, free from hypostatization, without conceptualization” (MMK 18.9, cited in Westerhoff, 2018, p. 129). How can words from the conventional toolbox build something defined as outside that toolbox?
2. He claims understanding emptiness (the ultimate) is necessary for liberation and explains why the Four Noble Truths work (MMK 24.10, 24.14). This seems to treat the ultimate, ineffable truth as a kind of causal or explanatory ground for conventional effects, which feels weird if it’s truly beyond all conventional relations.
3. The doctrine itself, the claim that there is an ultimate truth beyond assertion, is itself an assertion made in conventional language. This looks suspiciously self-refuting. Garfield and Priest (2003) nail this with their formulation: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” (p. 13). If that statement is ultimately true, it contradicts itself. If it’s only conventionally true, what authority does it have to say anything definitive about the ultimate?
The entire project of the MMK, filled with arguments for emptiness, looks like Nāgārjuna is pulling off a magic trick: “saying the unsayable” (Garfield & Priest, 2003, p. 13). How does he get away with it? Well, the Madhyamaka tradition doesn’t try to solve the paradox by ditching emptiness or the two truths. Instead, it reframes everything, focusing on Nāgārjuna’s method and the function of his language.
The Prāsaṅgika Method: This is the signature move of the school linked to Candrakīrti. Instead of directly proving points about ultimate reality, they show how their opponent’s views, which always assume svabhāva, lead to absurd or contradictory consequences (prasaṅga) (Westerhoff, 2018, p. 123). Importantly, showing the opponent’s view is incoherent doesn’t force the Mādhyamika to assert the opposite claim as an ultimate truth (Westerhoff, 2018, p. 124). They can tear down without building their own metaphysical skyscraper, thus avoiding the problem of describing the ultimate foundation.
Semantic Deflationism: Remember Nāgārjuna saying he has “no thesis” (VV 29, cited in Westerhoff, 2018, p. 128)? This supports a deflationary view of truth. Maybe “true” at the conventional level isn’t about matching some deep, intrinsically real state of affairs. Maybe it’s just a way we endorse statements that work within our shared conventions (lokaprasiddha) (Westerhoff, 2018, p. 135; Tanaka, 2014, p. 61). In this reading, Nāgārjuna’s statements about emptiness aren’t describing ultimate reality. They’re just useful pointers (prajñapti) within our conventional talk, tools whose “truth” is about their effectiveness in getting us to ditch the illusion of svabhāva, not about accurately picturing the ineffable (Glanzberg, 2018, sec. 5.1).
Semantic Contextualism: Siderits offers another angle (2014, p. 74; 2015, pp. 197-200). Meaning and truth depend heavily on the context. Saying “Suffering exists” is perfectly fine and true within the practical, conventional context of applying the Four Noble Truths. Saying “Suffering is empty” is fine and true within the specific, analytical context of Madhyamaka philosophy aimed at showing the lack of svabhāva. Because the contexts and aims are different, the statements are “semantically insulated” – they don’t actually contradict each other in a problematic way. Nāgārjuna uses conventional language, but its meaning and function shift depending on the specific philosophical game he’s playing.
Put together, these responses suggest Nāgārjuna isn’t trying (and failing) to describe the indescribable. He’s using conventional language strategically, like a skilled therapist using words not to state ultimate facts, but to dismantle harmful illusions (the belief in svabhāva) and nudge us towards a realization that language itself can’t capture. The paradox fades if we focus on how he’s using language, not what ultimate thing he’s supposedly referring to.
So, how convincing is this Madhyamaka escape act? Pretty convincing, I think. The Prāsaṅgika method gives them a way to argue without getting pinned down ontologically. And the semantic strategies offer plausible ways to see Nāgārjuna’s language as meaningful and functional without being straightforwardly descriptive of the ultimate, thus dissolving the paradox.
But, you might still have nagging doubts. Doesn’t deflationism risk making truth too flimsy, as Siderits (2015, pp. 191-192) asks? If emptiness is just another conventionally endorsed idea, why is it supposed to be uniquely liberating? And doesn’t contextualism risk cutting the ultimate off from the conventional too much (Siderits, 2014, p. 70)? If the analysis of emptiness happens in its own insulated context, how does it actually help with the real, conventional suffering we’re trying to end?
This is where I think an analogy with mathematics, specifically axiomatic systems, can really help clear things up and make the Madhyamaka case stronger.
Think of conventional reality (saṃvṛtisatya) like a formal mathematical system – Euclidean geometry, say. It starts with basic, unproven assumptions: the axioms (points exist, parallel lines don’t meet, etc.) and rules for manipulating symbols. From these, we derive theorems (like Pythagoras’, i.e., a2+b2=c2). The truth of these theorems is internal to the system; it depends entirely on accepting the axioms and following the rules. This system works; we can build bridges and navigate using Euclidean geometry.
Now, think of ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) not as another theorem within this system, or even a theorem in some fancier, higher-level geometry. Think of it as the meta-level insight about the axioms themselves. It’s the realization that the axioms of Euclidean geometry aren’t absolute, necessary truths about space existing independently out there. They are postulates, conventions, useful starting points for that system. They lack absolute, independent grounding; they lack svabhāva. Realizing emptiness is like understanding the conventional, axiomatic, ultimately ungrounded (śūnya) nature of our whole framework for conventional reality. It’s not saying the framework is useless or false within its domain, but that it doesn’t hook onto some absolute, independent foundation.
How does this fix the paradox of assertion? Nāgārjuna’s statements about emptiness (“All dharmas are empty,” etc.) are like meta-mathematical statements. Logicians like Gödel used the language and symbols of arithmetic to prove fundamental theorems about the limits and unprovable truths inherent in arithmetic itself. Similarly, Nāgārjuna uses the tools of conventional reality – language, logic, concepts like ‘dependent origination’ – to point towards the limits and the lack of ultimate grounding (svabhāva) of that very conventional system. His assertions about emptiness aren’t trying to describe the indescribable ultimate from some impossible outside vantage point. They are analytical conclusions within conventional philosophical discourse that function to reveal the conventional nature of convention itself, particularly negating the core conventional error – belief in svabhāva. The self-contradiction worry dissolves if we see he’s operating at a different level: using the system’s language (level 1) to make a point about the system’s own ultimate groundlessness (level 2). That’s not inherently paradoxical. This analogy, I think, makes the Madhyamaka position quite plausible, for several reasons.
1. It avoids “flattening” truth: Conventional truths (theorems) remain perfectly valid and useful within their system (conventional reality). The Four Noble Truths still work on their own terms.
2. It preserves the unique importance of ultimate truth: The meta-insight into the groundlessness (emptiness) of the whole system is profound and liberating because it targets the root of suffering – our clinging to the conventional axioms (belief in svabhāva) as if they were absolute.
3. It respects Nāgārjuna’s “no thesis” claim: His statements about emptiness aren’t positive metaphysical blueprints of the ultimate, but analytical pointers revealing the limits of the conventional framework from within that framework.
The mathematical analogy gives us a concrete model for how Nāgārjuna can coherently use conventional means to gesture towards that which lies beyond those means, demonstrating the very limits he’s talking about.
Nāgārjuna’s radical reinterpretation of the Four Noble Truths via the two truths doctrine runs smack into the paradox of expressibility: how to speak truthfully about an ultimate reality deemed beyond speech? The Madhyamaka tradition cleverly navigates this using the Prāsaṅgika method’s focus on consequence rather than assertion, and semantic approaches like deflationism and contextualism that reframe Nāgārjuna’s statements as strategic, conventional interventions rather than paradoxical descriptions of the ultimate.
While these responses are strong, the analogy with axiomatic systems provides, I believe, a particularly clear and plausible way to cash out the Madhyamaka position. Conventional truth functions like the theorems within an axiomatic system – valid and useful relative to its unquestioned starting points. Ultimate truth is the meta-level insight that these starting points, these axioms of experience, lack absolute, inherent reality (svabhāva); they are themselves conventions, dependently arisen, empty. Nāgārjuna, like a Gödel of metaphysics, uses the tools of the conventional system to demonstrate its own ultimate groundlessness. His assertions about emptiness are not paradoxical attempts to describe the ineffable, but conventionally-phrased meta-statements revealing the constructed, axiomatic nature of our reality. This preserves the practical validity of the Four Noble Truths while grounding their ultimate efficacy in the very emptiness that initially seemed to threaten them, showcasing Nāgārjuna’s profound contribution to understanding the intricate dance between language, reality, and liberation.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Nāgārjuna. (1995). Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (fragments). In J. L. Garfield (Trans.), The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (pp. 296-312). Oxford University Press. [MMK verses 15.8, 18.9, 22.11, 24.8, 24.10, 24.14, 24.18 cited]
Where Found: Fragments of this primary text, using the Garfield translation, were listed as required reading for Week 5 on Canvas. The full translation was also listed as helpful additional reading for Week 5. Relevance: This is Nāgārjuna’s foundational work and the direct source for his arguments on emptiness, the Two Truths, and their relation to the Four Noble Truths (especially Chapter XXIV). It also presents the statements that give rise to the paradox of expressibility. Essential for grounding the essay’s entire discussion in Nāgārjuna’s own words and central doctrines.

Secondary Sources

Garfield, Jay L. (1995). The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Oxford University Press.
Where Found: Listed as helpful additional reading for Week 5 on Canvas. Accessed for verse numbering and context for the primary text citations. Relevance: Used primarily to locate and provide standard verse numbering for the MMK citations referenced throughout the essay, ensuring accurate reference to the primary source material discussed.

Garfield, Jay L., & Graham Priest. (2003). Nāgārjuna and the Limits of Thought. Philosophy East and West, 53(1), 1–21.
Where Found: Listed as required reading for the Week 6 Tuesday lecture on Canvas. Relevance: This article is the primary source used in the essay for articulating the “paradox of expressibility” (p. 13). It clearly lays out the problem of how Nāgārjuna can speak about the supposedly unspeakable ultimate truth of emptiness and the apparent self-refutation involved, setting up the central issue the essay addresses. It also discusses the ontological paradox and the idea of the ultimate truth being that there is no ultimate truth.

Glanzberg, Michael. (2018). Truth. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/truth/
Where Found: The SEP was recommended as a reliable online resource. The Truth entry’s section 5 on Deflationism was specifically listed as helpful background for the Week 6 Tuesday lecture on Canvas. Relevance: Section 5 on Deflationism provided the necessary theoretical background to understand and accurately explain the deflationist interpretation of Madhyamaka truth discussed as a potential response to the paradox of assertion.

Siderits, Mark. (2014). Madhyamaka Emptiness and Buddhist Ethics. In J. Liu & D. L. Berger (Eds.), Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (pp. 64–77). Routledge.
Where Found: Found within the Nothingness in Asian Philosophy volume, which contains the Tanaka (2014) chapter listed as helpful background for the Week 6 Tuesday lecture on Canvas. Located via library search for the volume, prompted by the Tanaka reading. Relevance: Siderits’s concept of “semantic contextualism” (p. 74) is used as a key potential Madhyamaka response to the paradox. This approach helps explain how assertions about emptiness (ultimate context) might be “semantically insulated” from, and thus not contradict, assertions within the conventional/practical realm.

Siderits, Mark. (2015). Chapter 8: The Turn of the True. In Personal identity and buddhist philosophy : Empty persons (pp. 187–206). Taylor & Francis Group.
Where Found: This chapter was listed as helpful background reading for the Week 6 Thursday lecture on Canvas. Accessed via the provided PDF download link on Canvas. Relevance: This chapter provides crucial support for analyzing Madhyamaka semantic responses. It argues deflationism is a good fit for Buddhist anti-realism (p. 190), discusses the “flattening” critique (pp. 191-192), and presents a contextualist solution to related paradoxes (pp. 197-200).

Tanaka, Koji. (2014). In Search of the Semantics of Emptiness. In J. Liu & D. L. Berger (Eds.), Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (pp. 55–63). Routledge.
Where Found: Listed as helpful background reading for the Week 6 Tuesday lecture on Canvas. Accessed via the provided link or library search for the Nothingness volume. Relevance: Tanaka directly engages with the paradoxes raised by Garfield & Priest and examines semantic options for Madhyamaka, particularly deflationism and pragmatism (pp. 61-62), which are central to the discussion of Madhyamaka responses. His analysis helps frame the different interpretive strategies available for resolving the paradox.

Westerhoff, Jan. (2018). Selection from Chapter 2: Madhyamaka. In The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (pp. 121–137). Oxford University Press.
Where Found: This selection was listed as required reading for the Week 6 Thursday lecture on Canvas and provided via a download link. Relevance: This reading is essential. It details the Prāsaṅgika method (pp. 123-124), contrasting it with Bhāviveka’s Svātantrika approach, and discussing interpretations of Nāgārjuna’s “no thesis” claim (p. 128), directly informing the explanation of this key Madhyamaka response. It also touches on Candrakīrti’s view of conventional truth (lokaprasiddha, p. 135), supporting deflationist readings.