Chandrakirti and Wittgenstein: Similarities in East/West thought

Jason

It's always interesting seeing the (often little known) similarities between Western and Eastern philosophy. In reading about Wittgenstein and his ideas about language presented in Philosophical Investigations, for example, I'm reminded a lot of the early Prasangika Madhyamikas. For example, the Wikipedia article on Philosophical Investigations summarizes one of Wittgenstein's arguments about language, meaning, and use as "meaning is use"—i.e., "words are not defined by reference to the objects they designate, nor by the mental representations one might associate with them, but by how they are used." This is reminiscent of a famous line by Chandrakirti in Clear Words (composed sometime in the 7th century CE): "Words are not like policemen on the prowl: we are not subject to their independence. On the contrary, their truth lies in their efficacy; they take their meaning from the intention of the one using them."

In addition, the idea that one of the consequences of Wittgenstein's argument is that "there is no need to postulate that there is something called good that exists independently of any good deed" is similar to the logical consequence of Chandrakirti's argument, which is that in debate, "It follows that we have merely invalidated our adversary's thesis. We need not accept the antithesis of the logical fault we have exposed" due to the fact that Prasangikas advance no thesis of their own. So just as one doesn't need to postulate that there's something existing on its own side called 'good' that exists independently of good deeds, one doesn't have to accept or advance a thesis of their own in order to invalidate that of another; and whereas Wittgenstein's argument can be seen as a rejection of Platonic realism, Prasangika in general can be seen as a rejection of the notion that all things and phenomena possess some kind of inherent, self-existing identity or essence (not unlike the Platonic idea of forms) without at the same promoting or being forced to accept the notion that things and phenomena are inherently nonexistent.

Just something I found interesting and worth sharing.

sova

Thank you for sharing that

It is really exciting and fascinating to see that many aspects of Life (relativity, language) were explored in their depth by the masters of the past -- and these days most of these materials are being translated for the very first time -- beautiful potential for us in this life! ^.^ May we act on it wisely, and accomplish depth of heart swiftly.

Jason

Yeah, and the way the internet has helped to spread information like this is simply amazing.

music

Am I the only one who keeps nodding but doesn't understand what these wankers (Chandra and witt) are saying?

Enigma

Since reading Wittgenstein's On Certainty a number of years ago, which was around the same time I first read Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, I couldn't help but marvel at the parallels between logical positivism and Prasangika Madhyamaka. Thank you for bringing this up.

Songhill

Maybe we can lump up W and C by saying that all metaphysical assertions are just hypotheses— not that much different from hypotheses in religion. But this easily becomes a form of skepticism which means that we might never realize Buddha-nature since it can be regarded as merely another religious hypothesis.

Florian

The way I see it, logical positivism states that metaphysical questions are meaningless, while Madhyamika states that such questions have only wrong answers. These are similar positions up to a point but very different in the end. If we treat the two positions as hypotheses then they are wildly different interpretations of metaphysics.

What they have in common is that they both concede the indusputable fact that all positive answers to questions about the world as a whole do not survive logical analysis. This leaves just one irrefutable position, which is Nagarjuna's.

But It is debateable whether W was a logical positivist. He was one of its inspirations, but I seem to remember that he never did join the club.