Westerhoff Arguments Against Svabhaha

As a critique of the Abhidharma theory of dharmas, Nagarjuna argues that all things are empty of svabhava—that is, an essential nature. Emptiness, he considers as the founder of Mahayana’s first school the Madhyamaka, is an essential quality of all things. This is to say that all dharmas are empty, and there is no ontological rock bottom to our existence. While it may seem nihilistic, the purpose of his argument is to guide individuals to liberation from conceptual constructions. As Westerhoff argues, “The aim of Madhyamaka thought is…to bring about a cognitive change, a change in the way in which the world appears to us” (2). To craft his argument against svabhava, Nagarjuna seeks to prove that series of dependent relations do not come to an end. As Westerhoff explains, because of the nature of svabhava, no master argument can be made for the complete rejection of essential nature; instead, the Madhyamaka tradition must …show more content…
Here, Nagarjuna argues that all causal relationships are empty of svabhava, because everything is dependently arisen. To say that all things are dependently arisen is to say that nothing exists independently from conceptual dependence; that is, there can be no existential causes because they depend directly on the existence of the effect (Westerhoff 3.1.4a). Essentially, because of the nature of causality, neither a cause can exist without its effect nor can an effect exist without its cause. If things come about in any other way, as verse twenty alludes, then nothing could arise or cease. To say that something exists causally because of an essential nature is to say that the cause and the effect are always present, which would undermine the nature or arising and