Madhyamaka

Madhyamaka ("Middle Way") is the school of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy founded by Nagarjuna, whose systematic argument in the Mulamadhyamakakarika holds that all phenomena are empty (sunya) of inherent, independent existence (svabhava) because they arise only in dependence on other things. Nagarjuna's method proceeds largely by dialectical critique, showing that treating causation, motion, the self or even emptiness itself as independently existing leads to contradiction, so that the middle way is charted between the extremes of eternalism and nihilism rather than asserted as a further metaphysical position. The school split after Nagarjuna's successors Buddhapalita and Bhavaviveka disagreed over method, producing the Prasangika branch, which relies on reduction to absurdity, and the Svatantrika branch, which allows independent syllogistic proof. Madhyamaka became the dominant philosophical framework of Tibetan Buddhism through figures such as Chandrakirti and Tsongkhapa, and its analysis of emptiness and dependent origination remains one of the most closely studied positions in Buddhist philosophy.