The Tree of Enlightenment

that the philosophy of emptiness was equally valid in the case
of the non-Buddhist Brahmanical and Vedantic schools. e
works of Nagarjuna and Aryadeva fall within the formative and
fundamental period of the philosophy of the Middle Way. e
period after Nagarjuna saw the emergence of two Middle Way
sub-schools, the Prasangika and the Svatantrika. e division
between these two schools is based on how they present the philosophy
of emptiness.
When we discussed the philosophy of emptiness in Chapter 18,
we spoke about a characteristic method of argument, the reductio
ad absurdum, that Middle Way philosophers used to reject
the positions advanced by their opponents. In Sanskrit this form
of argument is called prasanga, and it was from this term that
the Prasangika school took its name. Arguments ad absurdum
are designed to expose contradictions and absurdities in opponents’
positions. For example, the theory of self-production (i.e.,
that entities originate from existent things) was advocated by a
rival of the Prasangikas, the Sankhya philosophical school. Selfproduction
can be refuted by the argument that if entities originated
from themselves, then they would go on originating indefinitely
and we would have an endless series of reproductions of
the same existing entities. In other words, there would be nothing
new under the sun. e prasanga argument is that entities
do not originate from themselves because they already exist, and
the origination of something that already exists is plainly absurd.
Besides, if existent entities do originate, then they will go on
reproducing themselves ad infinitum.
Alternatively, one might reject the Sankhya theory of selfproduction
by means of a syllogism. is form of argument is
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