BENEATH THE BODHI: NAGARJUNA AND HUME IN CONVERSATION

Abstract

This thesis is intended primarily as a comparative dialogue between Nagarjuna and Hume. The Nagarjunian programme has generally been cast as a sceptical enterprise, due in no small part to the surface-level similarities it shares with Hume’s sceptical programme. The central aim of this thesis will be to distance Nagarjuna from scepticism, and to contend that he should be considered an anti-realist instead. I begin with the ground-clearing task of identifying the markers by which Hume is considered a sceptic, and attempt to establish how Nagarjuna does not fulfil these criteria. I then introduce an anti-realist reading of Nagarjuna. This interpretation will be concerned primarily with Nagarjuna’s employment of the catuskoti (tetralemma). In the final chapter, I close by placing Hume and Nagarjuna (interpreted now as an anti-realist) back into dialogical space, with conventions serving as the fulcrum of the comparison.