%0 Journal Article
%T Some (critical) remarks on Priest¡¯s dialetheist reading of Nagarjuna
%A Karda£¿
%A Goran
%J -
%D 2015
%X Sa£¿etak Graham Priest in collaboration with J. Garfield and Y. Deguchi (henceforth: DGP) wrote several articles and responses arguing that the Buddhist philosopher N £¿ag £¿arjuna was a dialetheist thinker, i.e. that he not just identified and exposed certain contradictions but that he embraced it. These contradictions, according to DGP, always occur ¡°at the limits of thought¡± i.e. when a certain view at the same time transcends the limit (¡°transcendence¡±) and is within that limit (¡°clo- sure¡±). In N £¿ag £¿arjuna¡¯s case, these limital contradic- tions arise at the boundary between ¡°conventional reality/truth¡± (sam. vr.ti-sat/satya) and ¡°ultimate real- ity/truth¡± (param £¿artha-sat/satya). Ultimate truth is that things lack intrinsic nature (svabh £¿ava), i.e. that they are empty ( £¿su £¿nya) of intrinsic nature. This empti- ness is universal and it includes emptiness itself (empti- ness of emptiness). But that means that being empty is intrinsic property of all things so it comes out that things both have (conventional truth) and lack (ul- timate truth) intrinsic nature. This is ontological paradox. DGP identify also semantic and express- ibility paradoxes in N £¿ag £¿arjuna. Although logically coherent and philosophically intriguing, I think that DGP¡¯s interpretation nevertheless overlooks a spe- cial kind of semantics that, presumably, works be- hind N £¿ag £¿arjuna¡¯s reasoning and that would be best described in terms of difference between first and sec- ond order statements, i.e. between terms referring to the world (primary system) and terms referring to the primary system (meta-system, comprising the ¡°meta¡± concept of emptiness). Working in these two seman- tic levels N £¿ag £¿arjuna, I believe, escapes contradictions ¡ª and N £¿ag £¿arjuna is aware of them ¡ª that arise ¡°at the limits of thought¡±
%K Nagarjuna
%K Candrakirti
%K emptiness
%K semantics
%K contradiction
%K paradox
%U https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=238610