Nāgārjunaism

The term Nāgārjunaism can be found in the English translation of the Lamotte’s French translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (p. 293, n. 580). Because Nāgārjuna’s philosophy is so enigmatic, it is perhaps best to just call it Nāgārjunaism. See the following statement (Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 2): “Over the past half-century the doctrine of the Madhyamaka school, and in particular that of Nāgārjuna, has been variously described as nihilism, monism, irrationalism, misology, agnosticism, skepticism, criticism, dialectic, mysticism, acosmism, absolutism, relativism, nominalism, and linguistic analysis with therapeutic value. With the exception of the first five which are hardly appropriate in any context und become quite misleading when taken in their usual senses, such descriptions no doubt correspond to some aspect of Madhyamaka thought.”