ABSTRACT
In our article, we shall make a brief exposition of the chapter XXIV ("Examination of the Four Noble Truths") of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā ("The Fundamental Wisdom of The Middle Way"), and we shall attempt to offer a defense of our own interpretation of his philosophy, comparing it to the semantic and pedagogic interpretations proposed, respectively, by Garfield and Siderits, on the one hand, and Ferraro, on the other. In our exposition, we shall discuss the relationship between emptiness, dependent co-origination and truth, pointing to the intimate connection between those terms within Nāgārjuna's philosophy and attempting to indicate in what sense the four noble truths of Buddhism, according to the philosopher, can only be true if they are empty. Through this analysis, we hope to be able to establish a relation between conventional truth and ultimate truth according to which both conventional and ultimate truth are empty, distinguishing themselves only insofar as the first one concerns the conventional existence of things, while the second one concerns the absence of essence of the very same things. With this in mind, we shall analyze how could it be possible, for Nāgārjuna, to have a comprehension on truth that seems to be so counter-intuitive, to wit, that truth is only possible if it's relative (meaning that it is given within the dependent co-origination of all things and is empty of essence or a nature of its own). We hope thus to make a small contribution to the discussion of some of the most important concepts of this important Buddhist philosopher, especially with regard to the relation between ultimate truth and emptiness.
Keywords
Truth; emptiness; dependent co-origination; conventional truth; ultimate truth