Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā : A Foucauldian Interpretation.

(1)

1

U

NIVERSITY

OF

A

MSTERDAM

Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:

A Foucauldian Interpretation

Author:

Supervisor:

Christopher Law M. Leezenberg

Submitted July 15th_{, 2013}

(2)

2

Introduction

One of the problems with trying to understand the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is that the context in which it was written is different in so many ways from our own. In order to get a sense of what Nāgārjuna tried to achieve in this work, we can therefore try to understand it as presenting a philosophical position that falls in line with a philosopher (or school of philosophy) with which we are more familiar.

A Foucauldian reading of Nāgārjuna, therefore, tries to understand certain aspects of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā by painting them as proto-Foucauldian. The claim is not therefore the simple case of noticing a similarity in their respective philosophies, but rather that we (with the specific conditions of our western philosophical education) can

understand better the purpose of Nāgārjuna’s work by applying Foucauldian concepts and theories to it.

Why should we attempt to read Nāgārjuna on any other than his own terms? Ideally it would be possible to reconstruct Nāgārjuna’s philosophy entirely in the terms of his Buddhist philosophical tradition. However, the difficulties in making accurate translations of his central terms (in the case of Garfield’s translation the terms are translated from a Tibetan translation of the original Sanskrit), and the fact that our understanding will inevitably be influenced by our Western philosophical tradition mean that such a goal is likely to be ambitious. In place of this, a reading of Nāgārjuna that looks at his work through the perspective of a Western philosopher accounts for the historical contingencies of the thinkers, but tries, nonetheless, to forge an understanding out of the disparity.

Why specifically a Foucauldian reading? In chapter 1, I will outline the previous lines of interpretation that have been attempted on the back of the major developments in

(4)

4

Western thought: the German Idealist, Analytic, and post-Wittgensteinian interpretations. Although each has their merit, they ultimately (and perhaps unsurprisingly) appear unsatisfactory. Foucault’s significance in contemporary philosophy (and its surrounding disciplines) should immediately make him an interesting candidate for a reading of Nāgārjuna. However, as we will see in this thesis, it is his radical philosophies of transgression and language, and perhaps most importantly, his understanding of the historical contingencies of his own work and the condition of western thought as a whole that make a Foucauldian reading somewhat more satisfactory.

In the first chapter I will introduce the philosophical work of Nāgārjuna, and survey the pervious interpretation that has been developed by Western commentators. I will explain the basic structure and methodology that Nāgārjuna employs in the

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and outline the central concepts of svabhava and śūnyatā.

The following three chapters will take features of Nāgārjuna’s philosophical system (roughly corresponding to the ontological, semantic, and cognitive senses of svabhava), and try to understand them through the lens of Foucault’s theories of transgression, language, and philosophy as a way of life.

Chapter 2 focuses on the ontological sense of svabhava. Here I take Nāgārjuna’s discussion of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra in chapter XXV of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and argue that by using the Foucauldian (and to some extent Nietzschean) affirmative philosophies, we can best understand Nāgārjuna’s identification of these dharmas. I will also discuss similarities in the surrounding philosophical traditions of both of these thinkers so as to reinforce the suitability of the reading.

In the third chapter I will discuss the philosophy of language (semantic svabhava) that is found to be inherent in Nāgārjuna’s philosophical system. Although he doesn’t

(5)

5

discuss this explicitly in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, much of it can be inferred (and

supported by his other works). Foucault’s discussion of language is somewhat more explicit; compounding this with the proximity found in the previous chapter, I will argue that a Foucauldian reading of Nāgārjuna also clarifies how one might understand his semantics.

Finally, in chapter 4 I will present an argument that has been developed by Schroder (2000) that reads Nāgārjuna’s work as more preoccupied with the practicalities of Buddhist enlightenment than previous Western metaphysical interpretations felt able to encompass. The paper creates a conflict in Western Nāgārjuna interpretation between the metaphysical and metapractical, which, I argue is unfounded. In order to demonstrate this I will use Foucault’s late work on the relationship between subjectivity and truth to show that the debate is founded on a Western division between the practical and the theoretical in philosophy.

(6)

6

Chapter 1: Nāgārjuna

1.1 Biographical Detail

Very little is known about the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; scholars agree that he lived in India sometime around the second century AD, but there is no agreement about where exactly he worked. Some writers (Streng 1976: 29) claim that he came from a

Brahmanical family, explaining that we would have been highly educated and well versed in the metaphysical/philosophical disputes of the time. There is some agreement that he came from the south of India, although there is further disagreement over “where he worked (almost all places in India have been suggested)” (Westerhoff 2009: 5)

The one thing that all commentators agree upon is that Nāgārjuna was the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. There are a great deal of works attributed to him, although the six main works that constitute the Yukti Corpus are considered to form the backbone of Mādhyamaka thought (Murti 1960: 88). The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is considered to be his defining piece since it contains the core of the Madhyamaka thought of emptiness; Murti (1960: 89) calls this work “the Mādhyamika Śāstra [scripture] par excellence”. There are also many minor works on a range of topics that have been attributed to him; Westerhoff (2009: 5) notes that “the Tibetan canon attributes 116 different texts of very diverse content and quality to him”.

For this reason, this thesis is mainly focussing on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. There may be a need to draw on his other works (for example the Vigrahavyāvartanī in the discussion of his semantics), but this will only be to support the argument of the

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. I will also make some use of his Buddhist commentarial tradition, as

(7)

7

1.1 Philosophical/Religious Context.

Nāgārjuna’s position in the history of Buddhist thought is more easily determined than his biographical information, largely due to the importance of his most famous work, the

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

After the death of the Buddha (483BC), his community of followers were left with the task of continuing to spread his message and studying his teachings. Given the radical nature of his ideas, and the rich culture of philosophical/spiritual traditions in India at that time, various schools of Buddhism with differing interpretations of his ideas soon arose.

One of these traditions, the Abhidharma (literally meaning “concerned with the teachings” (Ronkin 2010)) sought to analyse all experiences into a categorised system of dharmas. Although the oral tradition of early Buddhism had often led to the enumeration of ideas as a memory aid, the Abhidharma Buddhists were the first to construct a technical and systematic analysis.

The Abhidharma exegesis… attempts to provide an exhaustive account of every possible type of experience—every type of occurrence that may possibly present itself in one’s consciousness—in terms of its constituent dharmas. This enterprise involves breaking down the objects of ordinary perception into their constituent discrete dharmas and clarifying their relations of causal conditioning. (Ronkin

2010)

Whilst Nāgārjuna’s style owes much to the structural analysis of the Abhidharma Buddhists, he disagreed with the fundamental point that it was possible (or advisable) to find the basic units (constituent dharmas) of all experiences. He argues, against the Abhidharma, that all dharmas are in fact empty (śūnya).

(8)

8

Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is divided into 27 chapters, each examining one of the important dharmas or teachings of earlier Buddhist thought (Suffering, The Four Noble Truths, Nirvāṇa, etc.). The argument is written in the form of four line stanzas. This concise style often makes Nāgārjuna’s intention unclear (Garfield 1995: 87), and subsequent

commentaries (both within the Buddhist tradition and outside interpretation) have resulted in a huge variety of attributed philosophical positions.

With each of the dharmas he chooses, Nāgārjuna shows, by a precise logical procedure, that they are empty (śūnya) of inherent existence (svabhava). The precise meaning of these terms is important, and we will examine them closely in a moment. First, however, we should briefly consider the logical procedure by which he demonstrates this emptiness.

Nāgārjuna’s ‘catuskoti,’ or tetralemma, divides the logical sphere into four distinct and exhaustive positions. These are varied according to the concept in question, but approximately cohere to the following outline:

(i) Existence (ii) Nonexistence

(iii) Both existence and nonexistence (iv) Neither existence nor nonexistence

For each of his examinations, Nāgārjuna supposes that the dharma submits to each of these conditions in turn. For example, as we will see in his examination of Nirvāṇa, Nāgārjuna considers the four possibilities to encompass an exhaustive set of states that it could embody.

(i) Nirvāṇa exists

(ii) Nirvāṇa does not exist

(iii) Nirvāṇa both exists and does not exist (iv) Nirvāṇa neither exists nor does not exist

(9)

9

With each of these possibilities isolated, Nāgārjuna shows by the method of reductio ad

absurdum1_{, that the assumption can be reduced to a contradiction. Having found the inherent}

contradiction in each of the distinct and exhaustive possibilities, Nāgārjuna concludes that the concept itself is empty of inherent existence (they are illusions that we mistakenly misapply to the world).

1.4 Śūnyatā and Svabhava

What does Nāgārjuna mean to say when he claims that these concepts are empty? He certainly does not, as we might expect, mean to say that they are nonexistent. Śūnyatā refers to the absence of svabhava (often translated as ‘own-being’ or some kind of

‘inherent-existence’). The true purpose of Nāgārjuna’s philosophical enquiry is therefore to be determined in the true meaning of this term svabhava. By examining the Madhyamaka concept of svabhava, we can see that its absence does not amount to nonexistence in the conventional sense of the word.

Westerhoff has identified three separate senses in which Nāgārjuna argues for the absence of svabhava, which produce a richer and more nuanced picture than the translation as ‘inherent existence’ is able to convey. The three senses are:

(i) Ontological svabhava (ii) Semantic svabhava (iii) Cognitive svabhava

In this section I will focus on the first of these, as it related most importantly to the

metaphysical debates of immediate concern. The second and third sense will be encountered in detail in chapters 3 and 4 respectively.

1_{This takes a proposition and, by logical moves, demonstrates that it entails a proposition which is}

(10)

10

Ontological svabhava, as the name suggests, relates to the idea of the independent existence of dharmas. It arises from a question of foundations: how can understand the grounds of the moments of our experience? When we divide and categorise them, what, if anything, lies at the end of this process? Considering three ways in which we could suppose a dharma to be grounded, Westerhoff has further divided ontological svabhava into three types: essence-svabhava, substance-svabhava, and absolute svabhava.

Essence-svabhava refers to the properties possessed of a dharma, such that, were it to lose them, it would cease to be that dharma. Fire would no longer be fire if it lost the

property of heat, so heat is part of the essence-sabhava of fire. Heat, however, is not part of the essence svabhava of water. Hot water is perfectly able to lose the property of heat without ceasing to be water. However, it is not able to lose the property of wetness. Water without wetness is not water.

Every essential property will be part of the specific quality of an object, but a specific quality need not be an essential property. The specific quality of an object is the unique combination of properties which distinguishes the object from all others. An essential property is something an object cannot lose without ceasing to be that very object. (Westerhoff 2009: 22)

The idea of essence-svabhava seems uncontroversial; Nāgārjuna does not want to argue that fire does not have the essence-svabhava of heat or that water would still be water without wetness. It is the second type, substance-svabhava, that Nāgārjuna’s analysis argues against.

Substance-svabhava is defined by Westerhoff as those qualities or properties of a dharma that it has without dependence on others. Dependence, here, can function in two ways. A dharma may be existentially dependent upon another, in the sense that the chicken is existentially dependent on the egg (The existence of the chicken depends on the existence of the egg). We can also consider the case of notional dependence. It would be wrong to say that South Korea is existentially dependent on North Korea, but there is a sense in which

(11)

11

they have a dependent relation. The existence of South Korea would not be affected if we were to suppose that North Korea had never existed, but the property ‘being South Korea’ would now be in question, since there is no North Korea for it to be South of. It is in this sense, then, that Westerhoff (2009: 27) argues that South Korea is notionally dependent on North Korea.

…we should note that for Candrakīrti2_{such substance-svabhāva is qualified by its}

non-dependence on other objects, either existentially or notionally. This fact is evident from the examples Candrakīrti gives for objects that are dependent on causes and conditions: the heat of water, the father and nearer shore, long and short.41

While the heat of fire depends existentially on the causes that heat up the water, the concepts “father shore” and “long” depend only notionally on the concepts “nearer shore” and “short.”… (Westerhoff 2009: 29)

Śūnyatā, then, is the absence of substance-svabhava, or, in other words, the claim that all dharmas are empty is actually the claim that there is no dharma, or part of a dharma, that is not dependent (either existentially or causally) on some other dharma(s). If, for example, we consider the experience of medium sized dry goods that occupies much of Western

metaphysics, the claim can be translated into one of anti-foundationalism. There are no objects, or parts of objects, that are not, in essence, dependent on other objects. This means that an ontology that takes things to be the mereological sums of basic units or simples is rejected by the Madhayamka analysis.

The final sense, absolute svabhava, turns out, according to Westerhoff, to be merely an instance of essence-svabhava. Nāgārjuna claims that all things are empty of substance-svabhava; this implies that all things would cease to be what they are, were the property of the absence of substance-svabhava to be removed. Absolute svabhava, then, is the essence-svabhava that is shared by all things: the absence of substance-essence-svabhava (or śūnyatā).

(12)

12

Absolute svabhāva is equated with the essence-svabhāva of all objects. In the same way as the property of heat constitutes the essence-svabhāva of fire, emptiness, that is, the absence of substance-svabhāva, constitutes the essence-svabhāva of all things. There are therefore only two different senses of svabhāva to be

distinguished, namely essence-svabhāva and substance-svabhāva; what I have called “absolute svabhāva” turns out to be an instance of the former. (Westerhoff

2009: 46)

However, he also thinks that the idea of an unchanging, nondependent absolute svabhava that is constituted by the absence of substance svabhava creates a paradox for the

Madhyamika. The conditions of immutability, nonfabrication, and independence that are said to characterise absolute svabhava are precisely the conditions of substance-svabhava that Nāgārjuna objected to in the first place.

Westerhoff thinks this problem is solved by understanding that the conditions apply in different senses in the two cases. When we say that absolute svabhava (the absence of substance svabhava) is “unchanging, permanent,” what we really mean is that whenever we falsely ascribe substance-svabhava to the objects of our experience, the reality is that these things will be empty.

In this sense emptiness is unchanging, since it is a property to be ascribed to all things ever considered. Once they have been correctly analysed. (Westerhoff 2009:

45)

It is the false ascription, by human beings, of substance-svabhava to objects which, given Nāgārjuna’s arguments, we will properly understand as being empty of substance-svabhava that therefore gives absolute svabhava this apparently paradoxical permanence. However, we can see that it is permanence is a very different sense: the ascription of emptiness only exists as a remedy for the false ascription of substance-svabhava, but is by no means the same kind of inherent, unchanging property as, for example, the independence of simple units in a foundationalist metaphysics. We only need to ascribe emptiness because of the

(13)

13

human delusion of substance-svabhava—by themselves, the dharmas are free too of this ascription.

Now that we have a rough idea of the purpose and content of the

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, we will briefly examine the previous interpretations and the Western

philosophies that Nāgārjuna has been likened to.

1.6 Previous Interpretation

German Idealism

The position of Nāgārjuna’s work in relation to the history of Indian philosophy makes his work comparable to the European intellectual revolution that was instigated by Kant’s philosophy of transcendental idealism. Murti (1960: 293) claims that something very like Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ can be seen in the Madhyamaka philosophy’s “challenge to dogmatism and speculative metaphysics.” He also claims that this challenge provided the conditions for dialectical philosophy to arise.

Both were led… to envisage the conflict in all its universality as a conflict in Reason. Criticism, dialectic, was born. Dialectic is at once the consciousness of the total and inevitable (antinomical) conflict of Reason and the resolution of it by rising to a higher plane of consciousness. (Murti 1960: 294)

Kant divided the world into the realms of the noumenal (a mind independent reality that is unreachable for human cognition) and phenomenal (the world of experience). Whilst the noumenal was ultimately unknowable for the intellect, the phenomenal world must be in some way a product of it. Kant also thought that the categorisations that make up the phenomenal world are the product of the intellect—in fact, that the experience we have of the world would not be possible without the imposition of these categories.

(14)

14

Several early Nāgārjuna scholars argued that Nāgārjuna’s distinction between the practical world in which humans naturally ascribe svabhava and the absolute realm of the realisation of śūnyatā expresses this Kantian division between the world as it appears to us, and the world as it really is (the thing in itself). Murti, however, claims that the lack of clarity in the Madhyamika position’s adherence to the Kantian worlds of noumena and phenomena show an error on the part of Nāgārjuna’s system. This problem is, however, as Westerhoff (2009: 10) rightly notes, “a defect not in the Madhyamaka position but in the choice of interpretive framework.”

The tradition of German Transcendental Idealism that followed Kant culminated in Hegel’s dialectical philosophy. This philosophy, which saw a negative dialectic at the centre of the movement of consciousness, has also been used to (miss)understand Nāgārjuna. Understanding śūnyatā as the same idea as the negativity at work in Hegel’s dialectic, Stcherbatsky claims that:

Both philosophers assure us that Negativity (śūnyatā) is the Soul of the Universe, “Negativiat ist die Seele der Welt”… Relativity, or negativity, is really the Soul of the Universe. (Stcherbatsky 1965: 53)

However, as we will see, Nāgārjuna’s śūnyatā is an entirely different concept to the

negativity of Hegelian dialectic. Although, in common usage, emptiness has a connotation of negativity, for Nāgārjuna śūnyatā denotes a concept that is neither negative nor positive; in fact, it eschews all such dialectical oppositions.

Analytic Philosophy

The Anglo-American school of analytic philosophy provided a suitable framework for analysing the logical aspects of Nāgārjuna’s theory. The trend for the reduction of philosophical ideas into a basic logical structure that could be analysed mathematically

(15)

15

would seem, initially, to be idea for the complex, and often obscure, logical procedures that form the essence of Nāgārjuna’s arguments.

The older poetic comparisons of Nāgārjunian verses with lines from Kant and Hegel were no longer considered truly philosophical, or even reputable scholarship. Instead… The identification of the conditionals, quantifiers, negations, and conclusions in the translation of the Mādhyamikakārikā became the occasion for the symbolic restatement and detailed analysis of the logical structure of the Sanskrit sentence. (Tuck 1990: 55)

Robinson’s paper, ‘Some logical aspects of Nāgārjuna’s System’ claimed that “Attempts to find transformulations based on analogy with Western thinkers have not got very far.” (Robinson 1957: 292) He claimed that the philosophical structures of German Idealism varied much too greatly from the Madhyamaka school to make their comparison

productive. Instead, Robinson favoured an analysis that transformed Nāgārjuna’s system in the language of Western logic.

Clearly, the problem requires more precisely formulated questions, and a rigorous methodology, with consistent definitions of terms and delimitation of fields of inquiry. (Robinson 1957: 294)

Although this approach is likely very useful in forming an understanding of Nāgārjuna’s process, it manages to lose sight of his intention as an unintended consequence since the anti-foundationalism of Nāgārjuna’s concept of śūnyatā also attacks the a priori assumptions of analytic philosophy.

Neither the attempt to develop a logically perfect language for describing the world nor to ground our knowledge of the world on the supposedly secure foundation of sense-data could find much favor with Mādhyamikas. (Westerhoff 2009: 10)

Although Nāgārjuna used techniques that were apparently analysable with western

symbolic logic, the anti-foundational intent of his of central claim (the absence of svabhava) it should be clear that this project would be at best an analysis of methods rather than philosophical intent.

(16)

16

Post-Wittgensteinian Interpretation

In response to the failure of the logical analysis of Nāgārjuna, his western interpreters turned to a similar figure in their own tradition. The late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein clashed with the logical certainties of the analytic school. His philosophy of language, in particular, taught that rather than corresponding to a fixed reference between a unit of language and a part of (or class of parts of) the world, the meaning of the words and

sentences that we use are determined by the ways in which we use them. The meanings are therefore unfixed, and able to change according to the specific social and historical

conditions that arise.

According to this school of Nāgārjuna interpretation, the dependency that underlies the absence of svabhava…

…was regarded primarily as reflecting the underlying idea of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of language according to which language, and in particular the language of philosophical statements, could not be regarded as independent of the interrelated nature of conceptual thought and conventional language. (Westerhoff 2009: 11)

Nāgārjuna’s understanding of śūnyatā, particularly in its semantic sense (as we shall see in chapter 3), lends itself to an interpretation that attacks the foundationalism that

characterised much of the pre-war analytic philosophy. The later Wittgenstein’s theory of language, that the words and sentences we use are given meaning by their use rather than reference, has been used by some commentators to argue that the Mādhyamaka

interdependence of language/dharmas is a fundamentally Wittgensteinian notion. It isn’t just that we can divide up the objects in the world in any way we choose. We divided the world into ‘objects’. Once we have made the distinctions, the

distinctions are real enough, but nothing new has been brought into existence, the world has changed in no way except the way in which we use words. Even here we must be careful not to slip back into the assumption of ‘essences’. It is not that when a distinction has been made we can then (at last!) compare the word with the object

(17)

17

we have made it represent. There are no essences for the words to represent.

(Gudmunsen 1977: 39)

These interpretations take Nāgārjuna’s claim of śūnyatā to emphasise not the nonexistence of dharmas, but there uselessness. To divide the world up into dharmas, and then claim that this is the way things really are is the wrong way to proceed. The lack of the inherent, nondependent, existence of dharmas therefore implies that their language, whilst it is of no value in relation to the absolute world of experience that the Abhidharma Buddists would have claimed, can still be utilised as a conventional system that understands these

limitations.

1.7 Conclusion

The work of Nāgārjuna has presented the Western philosophical tradition with a complexity that has allowed repeated changes of interpretation. Each of these interpretations, influenced by the philosophical trends of the time has had its own advantages and each tells us

something different about the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

It is not my aim here, to criticise these interpretation. I would rather present an alternative interpretation that may well incorporate some aspects of these readings. In the following chapters, then, I will examine Nāgārjuna’s text instead from a Foucauldian perspective. I will argue that certain aspects of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā become clear in the context of Foucault’s early essay ‘Preface to Transgression’ and that one can build a more cohesive picture of the intention of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā as a whole by considering Foucault’s later work on the formations of the relationship between subjectivity and truth in the history of Western thought.

(18)

18

Chapter 2: Foucault: Transgression

2.1 Transgression and Nonpositive Affirmation

Foucault’s interest in the concept of transgression is part of a trend in continental philosophy in which he follows Sade, Bataille, and, to some extent, Nietzsche. His interest is rooted in sexuality; the transgression of the boundaries that society places on sexuality and sexual conduct. However, we can see transgression, and the philosophical ideas that allow for its possibility in a much wider scope.

The concept of transgression is really a pair of concepts: transgression and the limit. Transgression only ever takes place as the crossing over of a limit, and, Foucault thinks, we can only truly understand the limit in terms of the possibility of its transgression.

The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever density of being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were absolutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows. (Foucault 1977: 34)

Foucault thinks that the possibility of transgression is to be found in a new philosophy of ‘nonpositive affirmation’ which sets itself against the negative dialectics that has been central to western philosophy since Hegel and Kant. He compares the break made by a philosophy of nonpositive affirmation to the revolution that Kant instigated with his distinction between the two kinds of nothing: nihil privativum and nihil negativum. The private nothing (nihil privativum) is a nothing which is defined as the absence of some already existing thing—the absence of flowers in an empty vase for example. Kant writes:

Reality is something; negation is nothing, namely, it is the concept of the absence of an object, such as a shadow or cold (nihil privativum). (A291/B347)

(19)

19

This is contrasted with the negative nothing (nihil negativum) which designates the nothing which is not the absence of something, but is inherently contradictory (like the absence of a married bachelor).

The object of a concept which contradicts itself is nothing because the concept is nothing; it is the impossible, such as a two sided rectilinear figure (nihil

negativum). (A291/B348)

However, for Foucault, this distinction is not satisfactory. In both cases, we can consider the nothings to refer to the noninstantiation of a set of properties. In the case of the private nothing, the properties that define the existing object (flowerness etc.) along with the spatial and temporal conditions of the statement. In the case of the negative nothing, no spatial and temporal conditions are required and the set of properties is limited to the absent thing in question (the property of being a bachelor and the property of being married for example).

The nothing at the centre of Foucault’s philosophy of nonpositive affirmation, whilst analogous to this shift, refuses to be restricted to the mere non-instantiation of a set of positive properties. Foucault’s nothing does not submit to the opposition of positive

properties and their negative absences. The nothing that is not the absence of something, or the impossibility of something is a difficult concept, but as we will see, it is this new nothing that is able to make his philosophy truly affirmative since it has no interest in denial.

Nothing is more alien to this experience [the experience of transgression] than the demonic character who, true to his nature, “denies everything.” Transgression opens onto a scintillating and constantly affirmed world, a world without shadow or twilight3_{, without that serpentine “no” that bites into fruits and lodges their}

contradictions4_{at their core. (Foucault 1977: 37)}

Foucault’s reference here, first to ‘a world without shadow or twilight’ and then to the lodging of contradictions at the core, are a direct reference to Kant’s two kinds of nothing.

3_{Is this a reference to Kant’s example of the nihil privativum?} 4_{And this a reference to the nihil negativum?}

(20)

20

The world without shadow or twilight is one free of Kant’s nihil privativum, and the absence of the ““no” that bites into fruits and lodges contradictions at their core” indicates the lack of

nihil nagativum.

For Foucault, transgression is neither a denial of existing values and the limits corresponding to them (it contains he says, “nothing negative”) nor an affirmation of some new realm of values and limits. It is (and here Foucault employs Blanchot’s term) a “contestation” of values that “caries them all to their limits.”(Gutting

2005: 22)

Foucault compares his philosophy of nonpositive affirmation to Blanchot’s idea of

contestation. The intention of this similarity becomes clear when we consider, for example, how Blanchot uses the term (or at least one of its corollaries: struggle) in a political context.

A true communist dissident is the one who leaves communism, not in order to move closer to capitalist beliefs, but to define the true conditions of struggle [lutte] against capitalism. (Blanchot 1937, cited in Hill 1997 :40)

Contestation, in its political incarnation, refuses the opposing conditions of political life: to dissent communism is not to endorse capitalism. Contestation does not consider dissent as either a nihil privatum or a nihil negativum. Foucault makes the point, that contestation, rather than being a process of negation, carries existence and values ‘all to their limit’:

Rather than being a process of thought for denying existence or values, contestation is the act which carries them all to their limits and, from there, to the Limit where an ontological decision achieves its end; to contest is to proceed until one reaches the empty core where being achieves its limit and where the limit defines being. There, at the transgressed limit, the “yes” of contestation reverberates, leaving without echo the hee-haw of Nietzsche’s braying ass.” (Foucault 1977:36)

Here Foucault makes an explicit reference to Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy. In order to better understand the influence of Nietzsche’s ideas on Foucault’s philosophy of nonpositive affirmation, we will now examine how Nietzsche sees the progression of the spirit towards a life affirming state.

(21)

21

2.2 Nietzschean Affirmation

Perhaps Nietzsche’s most well-known aphorism (GS125), describes the demise of the

European intellectual tradition’s reliance on metaphysical and religious dogmas. Commonly referred to as The Death of God, this entails not only the end of the dominance of Christian religious influence, but a whole range of beliefs that give a kind of metaphysical consolation to the temporary and meaningless nature of human existence.

Metaphysical explanations. – The young person values metaphysical explanations

because they reveal to him something in the highest degree significant in things he found unpleasant or contemptible; and if he is discontented with himself this feeling is alleviated when he comes to recognize the innermost enigma or misery of the universe in that which he so much condemns in himself. (HH17)

In the wake of the Death of God (in the broadest sense of this expression), Europe faces the problem of nihilism. How can people find meaning in a world that was previously

explained through the dogmatic prescriptions of Christian morality? Whilst the divesting of these dogmas is, in Nietzsche’s view, an undoubtedly essential process, it leaves a vacuum at the centre of European thought.

Nihilism... is the recognition of the long waste of strength, the agony of the “in vain,” insecurity, the lack of any opportunity to recover and to regain composure— being ashamed in front of oneself, as if one had deceived oneself all too long. (WP12)

Nietzsche does not object to nihilism per se, but rather distinguishes it into two varieties. Passive nihilism he finds problematic, since it ‘turns away from life’ and accepts the meaninglessness of existence. This is dangerous because it provides no opportunity for further development, but can only represent the final stage in a process. After all, if one turns away from life (truly and completely without the possibility of return), then there is no new understanding to be aspired to.

The strength of the spirit may be worn out, exhausted, so that previous goals and values have become incommensurate and no longer are believed; so that the

(22)

22

synthesis of values and goals (on which every strong culture rests) dissolves and the individual values war against each other (WP23)

This results in a society that values nothing, is at war with itself, and has no way to escape this situation. Nietzsche categorised Buddhism as a form of passive nihilism; however, it is likely that there was no distinction made between Māhāyana Buddhism and its earlier incarnations (Van der Braak 2011: 4).

Active nihilism on the other hand, Nietzsche’s preferred variety, does not deny life by turning away. Instead, it actively seeks to destroy all existing values and norms, but, crucially, it does this only so as to replace them. For Nietzsche it is essential to embrace this active form of nihilism if we are to overcome the problem posed for European thought by the death of God. This destructive criticism is the role that Nietzsche envisages for his ‘free spirits.’

[Nihilism] can be a sign of strength; the spirit may have grown so strong that

previous goals (“convictions,” articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power)…

It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction—as active nihilism.

(WP23)

It is, then, in this context of the overcoming of ‘all values and valuations,’ that Nietzsche announces his philosophy of life affirmation—the philosophy that will ultimately be able to overcome the death of God through the process of active nihilism. In the aphorism entitled ‘for the new year,’ he describes his personal philosophical aspirations:

Amor fati5_{: let that be my love from now on! I do not want to wage war against}

ugliness. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let

looking away be my only negation! And, all in all and on the whole: some day I

want only to be a Yes-sayer. (GS276)

(23)

23

This, then, is presumably what Nietzsche expects as the outcome of the process of active nihilism. We can see that it is only in the absence of ‘all values and valuations’ that we are able to achieve this amor fati. The existence of valuation (the saying yes to certain things and no to others) would not be consistent with a philosophy that tries to avoid negation (other than to look away).

At the level of the individual, the path to this innocent state of true life affirmation requires a double self-overcoming that is described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche explains this through the allegory of the three metamorphoses. Here the conditions of the human spirit are represented by a camel, a lion, and finally a child.

In the first stage the spirit is described as a weight baring camel. The camel looks for heavy weights to carry so as to prove its strength to itself. For example: “loving those who despise us, and offering the spectre our hand when it tries to frighten us,” “lowering oneself, in order to hurt one’s haughtiness… Letting one’s folly shine forth, in order to mock one’s wisdom…” (Nietzsche 2008: 23) This spirit, then, corresponds to the naïve affirmer, who, trying too hard, takes on board all the weights that life can offer. However, this spirit can overcome itself, just as, in his analogy, the camel carries its heavy weights out into the desert and there becomes a lion.

All these heaviest things the weight-baring spirit takes upon itself: like the camel that presses on well laden into the desert, thus does the spirit press on into its desert. But in the loneliest desert the second transformation occurs: the spirit becomes a lion; it will seize freedom for itself and become lord in its own desert.

Its ultimate lord it seeks out here: his enemy it will become and enemy of his ultimate god; it will wrestle for victory with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon that the spirit no longer likes to call Lord and God? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the dragon. But the spirit of the lion says ‘I will.’

(24)

24

The lion represents the throwing away of ‘all values and valuations’6_{and the unburdening}

of the heavy weights that the camel bore. The dragon, with its ‘Thou shalt,’ clearly

represents God and religion (or dogmatism in general), and the spirit of the lion’s reply of ‘I will’ asserts its freedom and independence from the dogmas and transcendental

consolations of the past. However overcoming also represents the descent into nihilism (at least of the active variety), and so, for Nietzsche there must be another stage in the ideal development of the spirit. From the majesty of the lion, he chose the innocence of the child to represent the final stage of the spirit.

But say, my brothers, what can the child yet do that even the lion could not do? Why must the predatory lion yet become a child?

Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying.

Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed: the spirit now wills its own will, the one who had lost the world attains its own world.

(Nietzsche 2008: 24)

In the final stage of the spirit’s development, and the aspiration of Nietzsche’s work, the spirit finally achieves the true affirmation of life that was desired of in For the New Year (GS276). Despite the similarities between the Yea-saying of the camel and the child, the spirit must pass through the nihilistic phase of the lion in order for its life affirmation to be true and meaningful.

The braying ass, that Foucault’s nonpositive affirmation leaves ‘without echo,’ is more like the first stage. The ass affirms, or takes on the weight of the world, naively— without knowing how or why it does so. In this passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a collection of characters are gathered in Zarathustra’s cave when they begin, without apparent sense, to worship the braying ass.

(25)

25

Amen! And praise and honour and wisdom and thanks and glory and strength be unto our God, from eternity to eternity!’

—But the ass in response brayed Yea-Ah.

‘He bears our burdens, he took upon himself the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never says Nay; and whoever loves God chastens him.’

‘Inconspicuously he goes through the world. Gray is the body-colour in which he veils his virtue. If he has spirit, he conceals it; but everyone believes in his long ears.’

(Nietzsche 2008: 273)

This is just a short extract of a list of prayers to which the braying ass can do no other than say ‘Yea-ah.’ The braying ass (like the camel) can only affirm; and this fact denies its affirmation any true meaning.

Foucault’s reference to Nietzsche’s braying ass in ‘Preface to Transgression’ is extremely suggestive. It suggests that he also understands the failings of a naïve (positive) affirmation, and expects his philosophy of nonpositive affirmation to be much more than this (and leave it behind without echo). Although he doesn’t refer to Nietzsche’s nihilist phase (the lion), we may infer from his stressing of the nonnegative character of

transgression that it is not to be identified here either. What we have then, is an affirmative philosophy that sets itself against both a naïve positivity, and a destructive nihilism. His philosophy of nonpositive affirmation, like Nietzsche’s child, does not submit to the opposition of positive and negative. It is only in the absence of this illegitimate opposition that Foucault finds transgression possible.

In his philosophy of life affirmation, Nietzsche seems to be trying to paint a picture of hope for the future in an age that seemed to him in danger of falling into passive nihilism (an age which also represented the worst Hegelian inspired Wagnerian decadence).

Nietzsche sees the possibility for an alternative; an alternative that takes individual self-overcoming at the centre of a drive to fill the void left by the Death of God.

(26)

26

1.3 Nāgārjuna: Nirvāṇa and Saṃsāra

Of all the dharma’s that Nāgārjuna examines in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Nirvāṇa is surely one of the most important. By showing, in turn, that it cannot fulfil any horn of the

tetralemma, Nāgārjuna demostrates that it cannot be distinguished from the world of cyclic existence (saṃsāra).

At this point of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Chapter XXV), Nāgārjuna has already shown the emptiness of many dharmas. His imaginary opponent therefore challenges him on the nature of nirvāṇa: if all things are empty of independent existence as they argue, how can we understand nirvāṇa—the fundamental goal of Buddhist soteriology?

If all this is empty,

Then there is no arising or passing away. By the relinquishing of what

Does one wish nirvāṇa to arise?

(MMK XXV 1)

True to his philosophical ground, Nāgārjuna demonstrates that nirvāṇa too, is empty of inherent existence, and cannot be distinguished (except perhaps through perspective) from saṃsāra. Nirvāṇa, as the ‘relinquishing and ceasing’ of the illusions of inherent existence could not be other than empty. If it were nonempty, Nāgārjuna claims, then it could not be the ceasing of the illusion of svabhava.

If all this is nonempty,

Then there is no arising or passing away. By the relinquishing of what

Does one wish nirvāṇa to arise?

(MMK XXV 2)

Nāgārjuna demonstrates his claim by showing that nirvāṇa fails to satisfy the possible horns of the tetralemma. These possibilities are, he claims, exhaustive:

(27)

27 (ii) Nirvāṇa is non-existent

(iii) Nirvāṇa is both existent and non-existent (iv) Nirvāṇa is neither existent nor nonexistent

And, as he will show, none of these is satisfactory. First though, if nirvāṇa were to be nonempty, this is how Nāgārjuna considers it must be understood:

Unrelinquished, unattained, Unannihilated, not permanent, Unrisen, unceased:

This is how nirvāṇa is described.

(MMK XXV 3)7

Nāgārjuna deals with each of the four possibilities in turn, showing that this understanding of nirvāṇa precludes either its existence, nonexistence, existence and nonexistence, or neither existence nor nonexistence.

If nirvāṇa were to exist, in the conventional sense, it must, he claims be subject to the conditions of death and decay that are characteristic of all existing things. However, this contradicts the very notion of something that constitutes the relinquishing of the samsaric world of cyclic existence. Moreover, he characterised nirvāṇa as unrisen, and unceased; existing things must rise and cease.

Those existing things, things that have svabhava, are found, he thinks, to be

compounded. That is, the existence of foundational simples in this ontology implies that all existing things will be compounded by aggregates of these simples. Saṃsāra is the realm of compounded existents—therefore, if nirvāṇa is to be distinct from saṃsāra, it cannot be compounded.

If nirvāṇa were existent, Nirvāṇa would be compounded. A non-compounded existent Does not exist anywhere.

(MMK XXV 5)

(28)

28

Finally, and this is where we see the importance of substance-svabhava as the nondependent properties of things, Nāgārjuna argues that if nirvāṇa were said to exist, it must be

dependent.

If nirvāṇa were existent,

How could nirvāṇa be nondependent? A nondependent existent

Does not exist anywhere.

(MMK XXV 6)

Nāgārjuna has already argued that the things we take to be existent must be dependently arisen. However, nirvāṇa, considered as opposed to saṃsāra, must therefore be

nondependent. But in this case, it cannot exist in the conventional sense, since these existents are dependent (empty of substance-svabhava).

The combination of these arguments is considered by Nāgārjuna as sufficient ground for the dismissal of the first horn of the tetralemma: Nirvāṇa is existent. The next step

follows logically; if nirvāṇa is not existent, surely it must be nonexistent? Nāgārjuna thinks not, and argues as follows.

If nirvāṇa were not existent,

How could it be appropriate for it to be nonexistent? Where nirvāṇa is not existent,

It cannot be a nonexistent.

(MMK XXV 7)

The problem with claiming that nirvāṇa is nonexistent depends on how we understand nonexistence claims. To claim that something is nonexistent, in the conventional sense, requires some determinate understanding of the thing that is said to be nonexistent. Paradoxically then, nirvāṇa’s not being existent also precludes the possibility of its being nonexistent. Garfield (1995) explains this point by comparing the unjustified nonexistence of nirvāṇa claim to one that is generally agreed upon (like the nonexistence of Santa Clause):

(29)

29

Note the difference between saying, in the sense relevant here, “nirvāṇa is nonexistent” and “Santa Clause does not exist.” The later, Nāgārjuna would certainly agree, is not only coherently true. But in explaining the semantics of the latter, we can posit a concept of Santa Clause and interpret the sentence as asserting that that concept is not instantiated. But when, in trying to characterize nirvāṇa, one is tempted to say that it is a nonexistent, this is in response to the difficulty we have just noted in asserting that nirvāṇa in fact exists. Garfield 1995: 327)

The argument then, is, given that we cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of what nirvāṇa is (in terms of positive determinate terms/concepts), we have no right asserting its nonexistence. ‘Nirvāṇa is nonexistent’ cannot be interpreted as a claim about the lack of instantiation of certain properties, since we were unable to give these properties in the first place.

Next, then, we consider the possibility that nirvāṇa is both existent and nonexistent. This is immediately implausible. Considering the normal usage of the terms ‘both’ and ‘and,’ the impossibility of the claims that a) nirvāṇa is existent, and b) nirvāṇa is nonexistent, directly implies that a) and b) (nirvāṇa is existent and nirvāṇa is nonexistent) is also absurd.

...having seen that each of the conjuncts is individually impossible, their

conjunction, even were it not a conjunction of contradictories, could certainly not be coherent. (Garfield 1995: 328-9)

Furthermore, if nirvāṇa were this type of conjunct, it would be the kind of compound that is typical of saṃsāra. It would also be dependent on these separate conjuncts:

If nirvāṇa were both Existent and nonexistent,

Nirvāṇa would not be nondependent. Since it would depend on both of these. How could nirvāṇa

Be both existent and nonexistent? Nirvāṇa is uncompounded.

Both existents and nonexistents are compounded.

(30)

30

Finally, as we saw in the second stage, the claim that something is nonexistent requires a determinate understanding of that something. Therefore, to claim that nirvāṇa is neither existent nor nonexistent (¬(¬existent&existent) in logical terms) would require some

determination of the negated object (existence and nonexistence of nirvāṇa). However, as we have just seen, the claim that nirvāṇa is both existent and nonexistent turns out to be

impossible. Therefore the claim that nirvāṇa is neither existent nor nonexistent also turns out to be absurd.

Nirvāṇa is said to be

Neither existent nor nonexistent.

If the existent and the nonexistent were established, This would be established.

(MMK XXV 15)

Now that he has dismissed all four horns of the tetralemma, Nāgārjuna concludes that the assumption, on which this argumentation was based, that there is a definite distinction between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra was flawed from the start.

There is not the slightest difference Between cyclic existence and nirvāṇa. There is not the slightest difference Between nirvāṇa and cyclic existence. Whatever is the limit of nirvāṇa, That is the limit of cyclic existence.

There is not even the slightest difference between them, Or even the subtlest thing.

(MMK XXV 19, 20)

The radical conclusion, then, of this line of argument, is that with the overcoming of the illusions of svabhava, there is no change at all. The limits, as Nāgārjuna says, of these two worlds are precisely the same; the only difference can be that in nirvāṇa, the illusion of svabhava has been lifted—things, themselves, are unchanged.

(31)

31

1.4 Foucauldian Interpretation

In this section, I will argue that we can understand Nāgārjuna’s identification of the limits of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra as an expression of the affirmative philosophy that we saw in Foucault and Nietzsche. The nothingness that drives Foucault’s philosophy of nonpositive

affirmation has much in common with śūnyatā, and, by examining their respective philosophical traditions, we can draw a strong link between affirmation in Foucault and Mādhyamaka Buddhism.

Foucault’s nothing went beyond Kant’s distinction between the nihil negativum and

nihil privativum: the new nothing was not part of the dialectical opposition of existent

concepts and their noninstantiation. This is a similar move to Nāgārjuna’s śūnyatā, which separates itself from the opposing poles of existence and nonexistence. Schuab also notices this similarity in her paper, ‘Foucault’s oriental subtext’:

…what has been considered “the crux of the Mahayana or Buddhism in general” (Inada 153)—the belief that samsâra, the world of indistinguishable things, and

nirvâna, the void, become indistinguishable in the ultimate monistic emptiness of

all things—enables Foucault to deny emphatically any involvement with

metaphysics while permitting metaphysics to pervade his subtext. (Schuab 1989:

311)

Although Schaub approaches the connection from the other side, arguing that it is best to understand Foucault’s work in the light of an undisclosed Buddhist subtext, I think that we can still see here the value of using a Foucauldian understanding of affirmative philosophy to recognise the affirmative nature of Nāgārjuna’s identification of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. It is not clear whether Foucault was familiar with Nāgārjuna’s work (although Schaub suggests that many of his contemporaries would have been). Either way, the possibility of oriental themes underlying Foucault’s work make him a good candidate for the interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s thought.

(32)

32

It is his philosophy of nonpositive affirmation in particular, and the emptiness on which it rests, that suggest that we can understand Nāgārjuna’s work as an affirmative philosophy. Schuab also notices the similarity (again operating in the reverse direction, but nonetheless pertinent) between Foucault’s nonpositive affirmation and the affirmative presence of śūnyatā.

The correspondence between Foucault’s writing and Oriental concepts can also be seen in some of his earlier texts… Seemingly paradoxical, nonpositive affirmation becomes understandable as a Buddhist subtext where the presence of the void can affirm, as zero can. (Schuab 1989: 311)

This comment shows how Foucault used this emptiness to endorse his philosophy of

nonpositive affirmation. If emptiness in Foucault supports an affirmative philosophy, surely śūnyatā in Nāgārjuna can help us to understand the identification of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra as affirmative.

Before Nāgārjuna’s identification of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, the Buddhist tradition had understood the world of cyclic existence (saṃsāra) as the result of the mistaken application of dualistic concepts. Through careful practice and correct understanding, they thought that one could be freed of suffering and reach nirvāṇa in this life. The revolution of Nāgārjuna’s identification was to claim that there was no nirvāṇa to be freed from saṃsāra into. Nirvāṇa and saṃsāra were one and the same, meaning that the right course of action was to affirm the world, just as it is. This affirmation, understood through this Foucauldian reading, frees itself, rather, from the dialectical maze of positive and negative ascription. It no longer attempts to liberate itself from the negatively ascribed aspects of existence in order to achieve the positively ascribed state of nirvāṇa.

Just as we have seen emptiness as separate from the dialectical framework of being and nonbeing, existence and nonexistence, so too is affirmation (in both Foucault, and this

(33)

33

Foucauldian Nāgārjuna) separate from the dialectical framework of positivity and negativity, negation and approval. Nāgārjuna’s affirmation, like Foucault’s, carries these oppositions to their limit and there finds transgression.

[Transgression] is the act which carries [values and existence] all to their limits

and, from there, to the Limit where an ontological decision achieves its end;

(Foucault 1977:36)

Nāgārjuna’s affirmative philosophy is not drawn into the trap of denying the existence of values,’ but, rather, understands not only that these values and valuations are limited, but also that in their transgression it is possible to truly affirm. Schaub interprets Foucault’s capitalisation of ‘Limit’ in this paragraph as an indication of spiritual intent8_{, reinforcing the}

plausibility of his Buddhist connections.

By taking Foucault’s influence in Nietzsche, and a koan from the Chán tradition (in which we can see the influence of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy) we can further see how the stages of overcoming are mirrored across these traditions. The Chán master Qingyuan Weixin is thought to be the original source of the following koan from the Zen collection, here quoted in Buddhism &Science: A Guide for the Perplexed:

Before I had studied Chan for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers. (Lopez 2001: 227)

The process of overcoming, resulting in something very similar to the start is also the idea of Nietzsche’s metamorphoses. Both cases begin with a naïve affirmation (the camel;

mountains are mountains). Both pass through a negative or nihilistic phase (the lion;

8_{“The once-only capitalization of “Limit” is obviously significant. Foucault’s subtext works through}

orthography. It delineates the radically other, the “empty core,” into which one can only be initiated by transgression. The spiritual aspect suggested is borne out as Foucault continues…” (Schaub 1989: 312)

(34)

34

mountains are not mountains). Both arrive at a final affirmation (the child; mountains are mountains) that, although it seems to have the same limits as the early affirmation, is somehow different (as a result of the process of transformation—self-overcoming).

Van der Braak notices this similarity, and describes the realisation that mountains are not mountains as a realisation of śūnyatā. The full process, however, requires a further realisation—the emptiness of emptiness.

The insight that mountains are really mountains refers to the emptiness of emptiness, the end of any attachment to the liberating insight of emptiness. This results in a restoration of innocence and an affirmation of the world as it is. The result of the first self-overcoming, the negation of truth, needs to be overcome as well in a second negation. (Van der Braak 2011: 24)

Nāgārjuna’s argument that nirvāṇa (the dharma previously understood perhaps as the liberation of the illusion of svabhava) is itself empty (and must therefore be identified with saṃsāra) captures this essence of ‘mountains are really mountains’ in its this-worldly

affirmative outlook. We saw that even nirvāṇa, a state in which śūnyatā is fully realised and the cyclic existence of saṃsāra is broken away from is also subject to Nāgārjuna’s reduction ad

absurdum.

This is a double movement that is also visible in accounts of the Buddha’s life. After his privileged upbringing, he engaged in increasingly nihilist practices culminating in the ascetic ideal that drove him almost to death. Out of this extreme nihilism, he found the middle path and achieved enlightenment. There are probably many more examples of this double overcoming: Herman Hesse’s Sidhartha is an obvious example.

1.5 Conclusion

These formulations of double overcoming are, of course, overly simplistic. Both Nietzsche and the Zen tradition recognise the limits of these models; however, they are still considered

(35)

35

useful as a means of understanding. Nāgārjuna would put these stories in the realm of conventional truth—whilst ultimately empty, they can still be a useful tool in realising the emptiness of our illusions of svabhava.

Nevertheless, the similarities between the two traditions’ understanding of the means through which overcoming (or transgression) must be performed suggest that reading Nāgārjuna’s philosophy in a Foucauldian light can be productive. There are, of course, huge differences between these thinkers and their intentions, but, it seems that their conceptual coincidence makes this understanding of Nāgārjuna as achieving a kind of Foucauldian affirmation highly plausible.

By reading Nāgārjuna’s identification of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra as an expression of the same emptiness (and emptiness of emptiness) that we find in Foucault’s philosophy of nonpositive affirmation, I think that we can understand his philosophy as an essentially affirmative one. This is a perspective that is perhaps missing from previous western Nāgārjuna interpretations (especially one’s based on German Idealism).

(36)

36

Chapter 3: Language

3.1 Foucault’s Philosophy of Language and Semantics

The philosophy of nonpositive affirmation that we encountered in the previous chapter also has implications on the philosophy of language and semantics. Outlining a new

philosophical perspective that eschews the dialectical position of opposing concepts in favour of a nondialectical affirmation, especially one that is built on an idea of a nothingness that goes beyond the simple negation of concepts and their combined noninstantiation, should entail some new considerations of language as well. Foucault needs to find a way to speak about the experience of the limit and transgression that he found essential in the previous chapter.

How is it possible to discover, under all these different figures, that form of thought we carelessly call “the philosophy of eroticism,”… the experience of finitude and being, of the limit and transgression? What natural space can this form of thought possess and what language can it adopt? Undoubtedly, no form of reflection yet developed, no established discourse, can supply its model, its foundation, or even the riches of its vocabulary. (Foucault 1977: 40)

It is clear that Foucault finds the dialectical language that we are forced to use unsatisfactory for the task of expressing the experience of transgression. The philosophy of nonpositive affirmation eschewed all dialectical oppositions; therefore, a language constructed on the basis of such oppositions would be unable to truly expresses its thought.

In effect, do we not grasp the possibility of such thought in a language which necessarily strips it of any semblance of thought and leads it to the very impossibility of language?...The reason is that philosophical language is linked beyond all memory (or nearly so) to dialectics; and the dialectic was able to become the form and interior movement of philosophy from the time of Kant only through redoubling of the millenary space from which philosophy had always spoken.

(37)

37

The philosophical language with which we are historically conditioned to operate is entirely satisfactory for a dialectical philosophy, but is unable to serve Foucault’s new philosophy of nonpositive affirmation that is constructed on the empty core of a non-dialectical nothing. The nothing at the centre of this philosophy and its rejection of the opposing dialectical poles of positivity and negativity, etc., make a language that is constructed on these principles of at best a limited, conventional use.

Foucault, does not think that we will be able to quickly reinvent language to overcome this dialectical obstacle; instead, he thinks, we can use this conventional level to point to the empty centre at its limit, and carry to the limit the dialectical terms with which we are lumbered

Would it be of help, in any case, to argue by analogy that we must find a language for the transgression which would be what dialectics was, in an earlier time, for contradiction? Our efforts are undoubtedly better spent in trying to speak of this experience and in making it speak from the depths where language fails, from precisely the place where words escape it… (Foucault 1977: 40)

In the previous section of ‘Preface to transgression,’ Foucault uncovered a new philosophical outlook that broke with the dialectical tradition. It is clear, here, that he now intends to translate these claims into their linguistic counterparts. The failure of a dialectical

philosophy to account for the experience of transgression implies, according to Foucault, the failure of dialectical language to speak to this experience. This is to be expected; and, whilst this may make it difficult to communicate the idea, we can still use the conventional

language of dialectics to ‘talk around’ the experience of transgression. Through this process, we may move towards the nondialectical language (and perspective) that captures the essence of transgression.

In a language stripped of dialectics, at the heart of what it says but also at the root of its possibilities, the philosopher is aware that “we are not everything;” he learns as well that even the philosopher does not inhabit the whole of his language like a secret

(38)

38

and perfectly fluent god. Next to himself, he discovers the existence of another language that also speaks and that he is unable to dominate, one that strives, fails, and falls silent and that he cannot manipulate, the language he spoke at one time and that has now separated itself from him, now gravitating in a space increasingly silent. (Foucault 1977: 41-2)

Here Foucault points to the idea that, putting to one side the failure of dialectical language in speaking to the experience of transgression, any language that we convince ourselves we have mastered does not obtain the omnipotent status that we might assume. The language is a contingent entity that is determined by its use rather than an ultimate guide to the nature of reality.

This philosophical inquiry is perhaps reflected in his later discussion of discourses and regimes of truth in the context of social institutions. Here we see again a limited use of language that operates within certain socially determined norms. The regime of truth is a contingent arrangement, a game of truth whose language is limited by the game in which it operates. The truth of a regime of truth does not hold any ultimate significance (like the truth of a Platonic heaven, but is rather entirely determined and limited by the game in which it is operates.

Hence, there being no absolute underlying historical substance that grounds these contingent forms, there is no game of truth (language) that could be called upon to give a fixed structure to the multiplicity of social institutions and norms.

How does this constitute a critique of language then? A language (considered as a particular regime of truth) is subject to the contingently determined conditions of its arising. The meanings of its terms are therefore conventional. To put it in Wittgensteinian terms: meaning is given by use (in this case the use that a term is subject to within a specific discourse or regime of truth), rather than reference. Although terms in a discourse might well be argued to refer to ontological entities/categories, the contingent nature of the