Nihilist arguments in Gorgias and Nāgārjuna

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with an important strand of nihilistic arguments to be found in the works of two philosophers who have so far never been studied comparatively: the sophist Gorgias and the Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna. After having reconstructed Gorgias' moves in the first section of On What is Not (Sections 1-4), the paper shows how the nihilist arguments Gorgias uses mostly feature, under a new light, in the philosophy of emptiness developed by Nāgārjuna (Sections 5-8). The paper ends with a hermeneutical suggestion: that is, to replace traditional ‘sceptical’ interpretations of Gorgias and Nāgārjuna with an alternative one, which takes them as possibly committed to nihilism.

KEYWORDS:

• Gorgias
• Nāgārjuna
• nihilism

This paper deals with an important strand of nihilistic arguments to be found in the works of two philosophers who have so far never been studied comparatively: the sophist Gorgias and the Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna.¹ The aim of the paper is mainly exegetical. First, the arguments Gorgias sets forth in the first section of his treatise On What is Not are carefully examined. In this way the reader is offered some help in untangling the intricacies of the first serious defence of metaphysical nihilism in the history of Greek thought, no matter what Gorgias’ original intents were. After having reconstructed Gorgias’ moves in the first section of On What is Not (Sections 1–4), the paper shows how the nihilist arguments Gorgias uses mostly feature, under a new light, in the philosophy of emptiness developed by Nāgārjuna (Sections 5–8). The paper ends with a hermeneutical suggestion: that is, to replace traditional ‘sceptical’ interpretations of Gorgias and Nāgārjuna with an alternative one, which takes them as possibly committed to nihilism.

Both Gorgias (475–380BC) and Nāgārjuna (most probably first/second century AD) are philosophers whose views are differently interpreted in the scholarship. Gorgias is often seen as the father of rhetoric who was mainly interested in showing, in the sophistication of his works, the power of persuasion while overall lacking a serious philosophical scope. When one is attributed to him, it has more to do with epistemology, not with metaphysics or metaphysical nihilism.² On the other hand, Nāgārjuna, the second Buddha, is indeed a central figure in Buddhist metaphysical debates and, more generally, in Buddhist philosophy tout court. Nāgārjuna insists that his philosophy of emptiness is to be read as a Middle Way between nihilism and eternalism.³ Overall, then, metaphysical nihilism (understood as the view that nihil est, i.e. that nothing is)⁴ is not a view that can be easily attributed to either Gorgias or Nāgārjuna. Yet, if we take the first section of Gorgias’ treatise on What is Not at face value, without speculating on the possible reasons for which Gorgias wrote it, we find compelling arguments that can be easily read as arguing for nihilism. At the same time, Gorgias’ (nihilist) arguments have remarkably close analogies with other arguments set forth by Nāgārjuna in some of his main works, arguments that, again, can well be read along nihilist lines. This makes neither Gorgias nor Nāgārjuna as philosophers per se immediately professing nihilist views; yet there seems to be an analogy of arguments in the main works of these two philosophers that is best understood as pointing towards nihilism. We now turn to the philosophical reconstruction and analysis of these arguments.

1. Gorgias’ On What Is Not: structure and argument

Gorgias’ On What Is Not or On Nature (Peri Tou Mē Ontos ē Peri Phuseōs: henceforth, PTMO) has not been preserved in its original form. We are, however, lucky enough to have two detailed accounts of Gorgias’ work, one provided by the sceptical philosopher Sextus Empiricus and another preserved in a treatise entitled On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias (henceforth, MXG). The author of the treatise is unknown (hence we use the general label ‘Anonymous’), but he is likely to be someone belonging to Aristotle’s school.⁵ Despite having two detailed accounts of Gorgias’ PTMO, we are further saddened by the bad state in which some part of MXG is preserved. Yet, thanks to Roberta Ioli, we now have a reliable critical edition of Gorgias’ work (see Ioli, Gorgia).⁶

Gorgias’ PTMO argues for three main theses: (1) nothing is; (2) even if it were, it could not be known; (3) if it were and could be known, it could not be communicated to anyone. Both Anonymous and Sextus begin their accounts by reporting these three theses (See MXG 979a11–13 and S.E., M. 7.65). They both move on to deal with Gorgias’ first claim that nothing is. Yet, they do so in diverse ways. Anonymous splits his dealing with Gorgias’ view that nothing is into two separate demonstrations, labelled respectively as Gorgias’ proper logos (idios apodeixis or prōton logos) and dialectical logos (sunthetikē apodeixis or deuteros logos). On the other hand, Sextus presents Gorgias’ claims by following the tripartite scheme (e.g. the trilemma, an argument with three different options on the table), which is typical of his (Sextus’) sceptical argumentations.⁷

To compare and deal with these two accounts of Gorgias’ PTMO is difficult enough even when one has both written down, but it becomes exhaustingly impossible when, as it often happens in scholarly articles, only short passages are given, with the bulk of the text summarized in different footnotes. For the sake of clarity, I shall provide the Anonymous’ and Sextus’ accounts in full, dividing them into a list of numbered Testimonies (T). For this paper's purposes, we shall focus on the dialectical logos of the PTMO.

2. Gorgias’ argument against generation and eternity

Gorgias’ dialectical logos puts forward four arguments that have played ever since a crucial role in the philosophical defence of nihilism. Both Anonymous and Sextus centre Gorgias’ dialectical argument around two main antinomies: Generated/Ungenerated (or Eternal); One/Many. Anonymous provides two further arguments about movement that are not to be found explicitly in Sextus.

As for the antinomy Generated/Ungenerated (Argument against Generation and Eternity), Anonymous and Sextus reconstruct Gorgias’ argument respectively as follows:

Anonymous:

T1 After this argument he says: if [scil. something] is, it is either ungenerated or generated. And if it is ungenerated, he accepts by Melissus’ axioms that it is unlimited. But the unlimited could not be anywhere.⁸ For it is neither in itself nor in something else: for in this way they would be two or more [scil. unlimiteds], the one within and the one within which. But nothing is that would be nowhere, according to Zeno’s argument about place. For this reason, it is not ungenerated, and yet it is not generated either.

(MXG 979b20–25)

T2 For nothing could come to be either out of what is or out of what is not. For if what is changed, it would no longer be what is, just as, if what is not came to be, it would no longer be something that is not. Nor certainly could it come to be from what is not.⁹ For if what is not is not, nothing would come to be from nothing. And if what is not is, it could not come to be from what is not, for precisely the same reason that it does not come to be from what is. If then it is necessary, if something is, that it be either ungenerated or generated, and these are both <Impossible>, then it is impossible too that anything be.

(MXG 979b26–34)

Sextus:

T3: And again: the existent is not either. For if what is is, it is either eternal, or generated, or at the same time eternal and generated. But it is neither eternal, nor generated, nor both, as we shall show. So what is is not.

(M. 7.68)

T4 For if what is is eternal (for this is where one must start from), it has no beginning. For everything that comes to be has some beginning, while what is eternal, being ungenerated, has not had a beginning. Not having a beginning, it is unlimited. And if it is unlimited, it is nowhere. For if it is somewhere, then what it is in is different from it, and in this way what is, being enclosed within something, will no longer be unlimited. For what encloses is larger than what is enclosed, while nothing is larger than the unlimited, so that the unlimited is not somewhere. And again: it is not enclosed within itself either. For the ‘in which’ and the ‘in it’ will be identical, and what is will become two, place and body (for the ‘in which’ is a place, and the ‘in it’ is a body). But this is quite absurd. Therefore what is is not in itself either. So that if what is is eternal, it is unlimited; if it is unlimited, it is nowhere; and if it is nowhere, it is not. Therefore if what is is eternal, it is absolutely not something that is.

(M. 7.68–70)

T5 And again: what is cannot come to be either. For if it has come to be, it has come to be generated either out of what is or out of what is not. But it has not come to be out of what is (for if it is something that is, it has not come to be but already is) nor out of what is not (for what is not is not able to generate anything because what is generative of something must necessarily have a share in existence). So what is is not generated either.

(M. 7.71)

T6 In the same way, it is not both, eternal and generated, at the same time. For these abolish each other, and if what is is eternal, it has not come to be, and if it has come to be, it is not eternal. Therefore, if what is is neither eternal nor generated nor both, what is could not be.

(M. 7.72)

If what is is ungenerated, it must be unlimited – on the ground of Melissus’ argument, who claimed that what is ungenerated is eternal, that is, it has no (temporal) beginning or end (see 21 D2 LM).¹⁰ Since the ungenerated is eternal, it is also infinite, i.e. it has no boundaries (in space) (see 21 D3–5 LM). If what is is thus unlimited (both in time and space), it must be one, since if there were two unlimited items, it would mean that one limits the other, which is not possible (21 D6 LM). So, the ungenerated is unlimited as well as infinite. But we cannot locate infinity anywhere around us; infinity is nowhere to be found. But, as Zeno seems to have claimed, what is not to be found anywhere is not.¹¹ So, nothing is.

By relying on a battery of arguments about generation, eternity, unlimitedness and infinity that Melissus set out to argue for the unity and existence of being, with the support of Zeno’s paradox on places Gorgias reverses Melissus’ arguments to show that after all nothing is. In his version of the same argument, without mentioning Melissus or Zeno, Sextus uses similar arguments to show that for Gorgias what is unlimited is not (compare T1 with T4). The same similarity of arguments between Anonymous and Sextus is to be found when they deal with the second horn of the dilemma, that is, generation (compare T2 and T5). What comes into existence can be generated either from what is or from what is not. In the former case, it would mean that to generate something different, what is should be by necessity modified and transformed into what is not – something that is not possible. On the other hand, generation from what is not is impossible, because nothing would originate from nothing. So again, nothing is.

3. Gorgias’ argument against monism and plurality

As for the antinomy One/Many (Argument against Monism and Plurality), both Anonymous and Sextus provide the same logical pattern in tackling the issue of monism and plurality. Here are the two versions of Gorgias’ argument:

Anonymous:

T7 Again, if [scil. something] is, he says, it is one or more. But if it is neither one nor many, then it would be nothing. And it [could not be] one because it would be incorporeal, and [what is incorporeal, not] possessing magnitude, [is nothing], as by Zeno’s argument. But if it is [not] one, it must [definitely] be nothing; for, if [there is no one], neither [can] many [be]. But if, [as Gorgias says], it is neither [one] nor many, then nothing is.

(MXG 979b35–980a1)

Sextus:

T8 And in a different way: if it is, it is either one or multiple. But it is neither one nor many, as will be proven; so what is is not. For if it is one, it is either a [scil. discrete] quantity, or continuous, or a magnitude, or a body. But whichever of these it is, it is not one: if it is constituted as a quantity, it will be divided; if it is continuous, it will be cut; in the same way, if it is thought as a magnitude, it will not be indivisible; and if it turns out to be a body, it will be triple, for it will have length, breadth, and depth. But it is absurd to say that what is is not any of these: so what is is not one. And again: it is not multiple either. For if it is not one, it is not multiple either: for a plurality is a composition of unities, and that is why, if the one is destroyed, the plurality is destroyed together with it. That neither what is is, nor what is not, is evident from these arguments.

(M. 7.73–4)

If something is, it must be incorporeal, since Gorgias seems here to follow Melissus in taking being as having no body (see 21 D8 LM).¹² But, following Zeno (see 20 D5 LM), if what is is incorporeal and has no magnitude (because it is not a body), it is nothing. Sextus adds spatial and temporal continuity as well as quantity to the list of the properties of the One being discussed, with the same outcome to be reached: nothing is. At the same time, both Anonymous and Sextus argue, if the one is not, many cannot be either. A plurality is the sum of unities; when the latter are not, the former is not either.

4. Gorgias’ argument against motion: against change and division

While the arguments about generation, eternity, monism, and plurality feature in both MXG and Sextus as the bulk of Gorgias’ dialectical argument, there is another argument that Gorgias put forward in the dialectical logos that is to be found in the MXG only. This is the Argument against Motion, which can be further divided into the Argument against Change and the Argument against Division.¹³ As for the former, Anonymous writes:

T9 He says that it could not move either. For if it [scil. the thing in question] moved, it would no longer be in the same way, but on the one hand it would not be, and on the other what is not would have come to be.

(MXG 980a1–4)

Gorgias’ argument starts off with an argument against motion understood as ontological ‘change’. For, as Gorgias says, if something moves from its condition of ontological stability to undergo a modification, that thing would no longer be the same thing as before: on the one hand, it would not be anymore, and on the other what is not would have come to be. So, motion, when it is understood as ontological change, is impossible.¹⁴

As for the Argument against Division, Anonymous writes:

T10 Moreover, if it moves and is transported, not being continuous, it is divided, and <where> what is <is divided,> it is not: so that if it moves everywhere, it is divided everywhere. But if this is so, then it is not in any place [or: nor at all]. For where there is division, there is lack of what is – he says “to be divided” instead of “void,” as is written in what are called the arguments of Leucippus.

(MXG 980a5–8)

Gorgias seems once again to rely on the Eleatic assumption that being cannot move because otherwise this would imply divisibility.¹⁵ Gorgias’ argument is hard to reconstruct in detail. It could run along these lines: if something moves, it is no longer continuous and is thus divided, which means it is not anymore – because what is cannot be divided. At the same time, what is divided is equivalent to void, which is equivalent to not being. If it moves everywhere, it will mean that it is divided, and so it is nowhere to be found. These last two arguments against motion give us a glimpse into an elaborate debate about motion, monism, plurality, being, and nothingness that involved the Atomists, the Eleatics (especially Zeno) and Gorgias. For the purposes of the present paper, we shall not delve into that debate (Ioli, “Against Motion”; Sattler, The Concept; below, Section 8). It is enough for us to highlight that the battery of nihilist arguments that Gorgias puts forward in his dialectical logos are to be found, revised, and redeveloped, in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of emptiness.

5. Nāgārjuna and nihilism

Let us now turn to Nāgārjuna, the founder and main figure of the Madhyamaka school (see Westerhoff, The Golden Age, 89–146). Nāgārjuna is the philosopher whose name has often been strongly associated with nihilism. Yet, there is no scholarly consensus on Nāgārjuna’s endorsement of nihilism. First, Nāgārjuna is taken to say that he has no view to offer, his philosophy mainly consisting in a sort of refutation of all views (see Garfield, “Emptiness”; Burton, Emptiness, 19–44). He also claims that his philosophy of emptiness is a Middle Way between the two extremes of annihilation and eternalism (see MMK ( = Mūlamadhymakakārikā) 15:6–11; 24:18a–b. See also below, Section 6). For Nāgārjuna, all things are empty (śūnya), that is, they are devoid of intrinsic essence (svabhāva). Some, indeed many interpreters have taken emptiness, although not equivalent to it, to lead naturally to nihilism. Since all (dependently arising) entities are devoid of intrinsic essence, nothing seems to exist.¹⁶ Nāgārjuna retorts that it is emptiness itself that explains the actual existence of all entities. Entities exist as dependently arising items (pratītyasamutpanna) and as such they are empty of independent existence. Yet, they exist as arising upon causes and conditions. If you deny emptiness, that is, the fact that entities arise upon causes and conditions, Nāgārjuna claims, you deny that dependent entities exist (see MMK 24:7, 36). Yet, the list of philosophers who both in antiquity as well as in more recent times take Nāgārjuna’ theory of emptiness as invariably leading to nihilism is long (see Wood, Disputations; Tola and Dragonetti, Voidness; Burton, Emptiness; Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna and “Interpretations”). As Burton has claimed, “Nāgārjuna might think that he treads the Middle Way, but perhaps in fact he has taken a wrong turning”, that is, Nāgārjuna is, consciously or not, a nihilist (Burton, Emptiness, 88).¹⁷

Of course, the millennial dispute about the real nature of Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way cannot be settled in the context of this paper. Yet for our own purposes here, it is enough to highlight that, despite Nāgārjuna’s own protests, some nihilist understandings of his philosophy seem possible and that such understanding has been popular both in ancient and more recent times. We now turn to some specific arguments in Nāgārjuna’s main works that can be read along nihilistic lines and that also show a great degree of analogy with Gorgias’ ‘nihilistic’ arguments (as these are illustrated in the dialectical section of the PTMO). I am not claiming that the nihilist interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s arguments that I am going to offer in the next sections is the only way to read his arguments. My claim is that a nihilist reading is, however, indeed possible, and this is even more the case when the close analogy between Gorgias’ ‘nihilist’ arguments and Nāgārjuna’s own ones is taken in due account.

Let me give some brief details on those works by Nāgārjuna that are to be dealt with in the following sections. Much is taken from Nāgārjuna’s main work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (The Treatise on the Middle Way = MMK), the fundamental text of the Madyhamaka school. It consists of twenty-seven chapters in verses in Sanskrit. Given its importance, MMK has been widely commentated in both Indian and Tibetan traditions.¹⁸ I shall also rely on Śūnyatāsaptakārikā (The Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness = ŚS), which is extant only in its Tibetan text, the Sanskrit version being lost and with no available Chinese translation of it. The Seventy Stanzas consists of seventy-three stanzas (in verses).¹⁹ I also quote a passage from the first part of Nāgārjuna’s Ratnāvalī (The Precious Garland = RA), an important work where Nāgārjuna places the main tenets of his philosophy into a broader, also practical context.²⁰

6. Nāgārjuna’s arguments against causation and eternalism

In close dialogue and contrast with rival Abhidharma schools, Nāgārjuna aims at showing that all things are empty (śūnya) or devoid of intrinsic nature (svabhāva).²¹ Since Nāgārjuna aims for comprehensiveness in his attempt to demonstrate that all is devoid of svabhāva, he produces a substantial number of arguments in support of his claim, some of them mirroring closely the sort of arguments that Gorgias employs in the dialectical logos of the PTMO.

Let us start with the Argument against Generation and Eternity. While Gorgias spoke of generation, Nāgārjuna refers to causation, a central concept of his philosophy.²² Nāgārjuna sees causation and existence by svabhāva as truly incompatible.²³ What is understood as being caused by something else has no intrinsic existence on its own – Nāgārjuna claims. As he puts it:

T11 It is not correct to say that intrinsic nature is produced

by means of causes and conditions.

An intrinsic nature that was produced by causes and conditions would be a product.

But how could there ever be an intrinsic nature that is a product?

For intrinsic nature is not adventitious, not is it dependent

on something else.

(MMK 15:1–2)

The svabhāva of something that has been newly caused cannot already be present in the causes and conditions that produced the new thing. If this were the case, causation would be pointless: why start a fire to obtain heat if there were already heat in the fuel? It does seem that when we have svabhāva, there can be no causation whatsoever. Causation and intrinsic nature are mutually exclusive. Because causation cannot bring about true existence and since causation is everywhere to be found around us, nothing with intrinsic nature seems to exist for Nāgārjuna. He begins MMK by declaring:

T12 Not from itself, not from another, not from both, nor

without cause:

Never in any way is there any existing thing that has arisen.

(MMK 1:1) (see also MMK 1:10; 24:16; ŚS 3–5)

According to these celebrated verses, there are four possible logical ways in which existing things may be thought to be caused/arisen: (1) by itself; (2) by something else; (3) by both itself and something else; (4) by nothing at all.²⁴ Nāgārjuna rejects all these four possibilities, arguing that anything that exists by svabhāva cannot originate from anything (see the whole of MMK 1). While Nāgārjuna’s Argument against Causation can be read as reshaping Gorgias’ Argument against Generation (see TT 2&5) by highlighting the close linkage between the fundamental category of intrinsic essence and (the lack of) causation, there are other arguments by Nāgārjuna that can be read in parallel with Gorgias’ argument against eternity.

The Argument against Eternity that Gorgias advances in the dialectical logos rests on the idea that since we cannot locate the infinite (which is also ungenerated, unlimited, and eternal) anywhere, nothing is (see TT 1&4). It is now to be shown that Gorgias’ argument has close analogies with Nāgārjuna’s Argument against Eternalism. More in particular, Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way can be understood as a Middle Path between annihilationism and eternalism – indeed this is what he claims his philosophy to be (see MMK 21: 13&14; 15:7). While as seen it is widely disputed in the scholarship how we could take Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of emptiness as a middle way between the two extremes of annihilationism and eternalism, one thing can be said with no danger to be refuted: Nāgārjuna does argue against eternalism.²⁵ There are plenty of places in the MMK in which he does that (see MMK 17:10; 18:10). Let us focus briefly on the final section of MMK 15, the chapter where he deals most extensively with intrinsic essence. After having shown that both intrinsic nature and extrinsic (i.e. borrowed: parabhāva) nature are nowhere to be found, Nāgārjuna writes:

T13 If something existed by essential nature, then there

would not be the nonexistence of such a thing.

For it never holds that there is the alteration of essential nature.

(MMK 15:8)

With the proviso to take ‘essential nature’ as equivalent to ‘intrinsic nature’, the argument here is something along the following lines: if there is something that exists intrinsically (because of its svabhāva), this would mean that it could not stop existing under any circumstance. This, in turn, will mean that it is eternal. Considering the Buddha’s teaching, we must however reject eternalism because it is not true of things. There is nothing in the world that does not undergo any change. Wherever we look at, we find things such as material objects and selves as permanently undergoing ontological changes (see Section 8 below). This means that nothing is eternal. Given the strict linkage Nāgārjuna draws between eternalism and existence, if nothing is eternal, nothing with intrinsic essence seems to exist:

T14 If there were existence in itself of things, there would be eternalism; if there is non-being, there is necessarily annihilation.

When there is being, these two [dogmas] occur. Therefore

[one should] not accept being.

(ŚS 21)

In both Nāgārjuna’s Argument against Eternalism and in Gorgias’ Argument against Eternity, intrinsic/true existence and eternity are linked, together with unchangeability. Since we cannot locate (the) infinity (of eternity) anywhere, Gorgias claimed that we should conclude that nothing is. As for Nāgārjuna, eternalism implies intrinsic essence. Eternalism is not true, as the Buddha taught. We can thus legitimately conclude that nothing exists by svabhāva.

7. Nāgārjuna’s arguments against plurality and atomism

While they diverge on the role of causation in the ontological process, both Abhidharma and Madhyamaka agree that composite material objects do not have intrinsic nature because they borrow their existence from that of the parts composing them. The traditional example is that of the chariot, whose existence is such that it is temporarily borrowed from the parts that compose it (see Siderits, Personal Identity, 28–30). On the basis of this argument, then, composite objects do not have svabhāva – in short, they are conceptual fictions. This argument about composition seems to be implicit in Gorgias’ Arguments against Plurality and Monism too: the existence of composite objects rests upon the real existence of the parts composing them. If the latter are not, Gorgias argues, also the former are not (see TT 7&8).

Gorgias draws this conclusion after having shown that nothing is one, that is, after having shown that also the atomic components of reality (when understood as partless unities) are not. How does Nāgārjuna conceive of partless entities? Nāgārjuna’s strategy is to show that existing things are neither many nor one.²⁶ He writes:

T15 Composite and non-composite are not many, are not one, are not being, are not non-being [and] are not being-non-being (ŚS 32).

(See also ŚS 7)

There is also a debated verse from the Precious Garland, which goes like this:

T16 No [atom] is simple, being many-sided; no atom is sideless (nāpradeśaś) [in so far as its connection with other atoms would, then, be impossible]; on the other hand, the idea of plurality is inconceivable without that of unity nor that of non-existence without that of existence.

(RA 1:17; Tucci’s translation)

Not only does Nāgārjuna here reiterate the point about plurality being pointless without unity – the same view that Gorgias highlights in his Argument against Plurality; Nāgārjuna also constructs an argument against partless entities aimed to show that unity is not either. The crucial term in T16 is ‘pradeśa’, which can mean ‘part’ – so that a most natural translation of nāpradeśaś (line 1 in T16) is ‘partless’. Tucci, however, translates is as ‘sideless’ because, quite correctly I think, he takes Nāgārjuna’s argument in these verses as anticipating a well-known argument against atomism that Vasubandhu and the Yogācārins employed.²⁷ The argument goes along these lines: atomic unities must aggregate to form bigger, macroscopic objects. If this is the case, individual atoms can touch one another in two possible ways: if they touch on their respective side (pradeśa), this will mean that all the aggregates of atoms purported to form a new, macroscopic object will collapse into a single spatial point, which will not be an atom anymore. Alternatively, when they touch to form a new object, if they do not share a side, they should – by necessity – be spatially distinct, hence spatially extended, so that they cannot be seen as being atoms anymore. In both cases, we are shown that the notion of atomic unity is problematic and cannot account for how macroscopic objects arise from atomic entities. By relying on the notion of partless entities, we cannot show how plurality arises from unity. Both plurality and unity are best dispensed of.²⁸ If things are neither one nor many, well, they are empty of intrinsic essence:

T17 Since all things all together lack svabhāva, either in causes or conditions [or their] totality or separately, they are therefore empty (śūnya) (ŚS3).

(See also MMK 13: 1&2)

Again, one conceivable way to read the emptiness of things (when arising from totality or separation) is to think of them as non-existent: if things are neither one nor many (with the options of unicity and multiplicity to exhaust the logical space of all possibilities for one thing to be something under composition), we are left with one logical possibility: that arising things are nothing with intrinsic essence.

8. Nāgārjuna’s argument against change

Remarkably close similarities, then, are to be found between Gorgias’ and Nāgārjuna’s arguments. Let us move to the final argument of Gorgias’ dialectical logos, that is, the Argument against Motion, which is further divided into the Argument against Change and the Argument against Division. Gorgias’ Argument against Change was the following one (see T9): if something moves from its condition of ontological stability to undergo a modification, it would no longer be the same thing as before: on the one hand, it would not be anymore, and on the other what is not would have come to be, which is not possible. So, nothing really is.

As we have seen, Gorgias’ argument rests on an assumption that being is fully and completely homogeneous, that is, always identical to itself and undergoing no ontological change whatsoever. This view of being is shared by Nāgārjuna, who claims that what has svabhāva is ontologically unmodifiable. As he puts it:

T18 The world would be unproduced, unceased, and unchangeable,

it would be devoid of its manifold appearances, if there were

intrinsic nature (MMK 24:38).

(See also MMK 23:24; 21:17)

What exists by intrinsic essence – Nāgārjuna claims – cannot change in any respect and at any time; if age is something to be had by svabhāva, a young man could never become old:

T19 It is not correct to say that change pertains to the thing itself that is said to change or to what is distinct. For a youth does not age, nor does the aged one age.

(MMK 13:5)

But we do grow old. So, one may well conclude, nothing exists by svabhāva, because everything keeps changing around us. The actual implication of nihilism about existing things seems to be explicit in the objection posed to Nāgārjuna by his opponent exactly in these verses of MMK:

[Objection]: By the observation of change [it is to be inferred] the lack of intrinsic nature of things. There is no ultimately real existent that is without intrinsic nature, due to the emptiness of existents.

(MMK 13:3a–4b)²⁹

It could not be true, the opponent argues, that all things are empty. If this were the case, there would be nothing that is empty, that is, nihilism would be true. To which objection Nāgārjuna replies that there could not be any change if there were things with intrinsic nature (MMK 13:4c–d). Again, the tension between a possibly nihilist reading of Nāgārjuna’s arguments that seems natural for his opponents and his subsequent rebuttal of the charge of nihilism is well present in these sections of the MMK. This shows, once again, that to take Nāgārjuna’s arguments on change as ultimately leading to nihilism can be a plausible reading of what he seems to be saying.

While there is a close parallelism between Gorgias’ and Nāgārjuna’s Argument against Change, much can be said about the last argument Gorgias brings out in the dialectical logos, that is, the Argument against Division. While it can be claimed that this argument is a variation of the previous argument against monism and plurality, it is also true that Gorgias’ arguments against divisibility and motion do refer to some arguments on space and time (most likely to be attributed to Zeno) that are still in need to be clarified. Most importantly, I think it could be shown how Zeno’s arguments on motion, space, and time played a significant role in the actual formulation of a nihilist trend in ancient philosophy – if indeed there was one, as this paper claims. And once this is done, I suspect that close similarities will be found between those arguments and Nāgārjuna’s Argument against Motion in MMK 2. This is the chapter of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā in which by showing that there is no going, no goer and no destination whatsoever, Nāgārjuna argues against the very possibility of motion.

There is no scholarly consensus on how to take the main arguments against motion Nāgārjuna develops in MMK 2: some commentators understand those arguments as Zenonian in style, content and inspiration, while others seem to provide an interpretation of them as arguments against ontological instantiation and change.³⁰ In both cases, there is scope for a closer look between Gorgias’ Argument against Motion in the dialectical logos and Nāgārjuna’s discussion of motion in MMK 2, to understand how they can be read as arguments that can have a nihilist interpretation.

9. Retrospect and conclusion

In this paper it has been shown that in the dialectical logos of PTMO Gorgias develops four arguments that can be read as nihilist arguments: the Arguments against Generation and Eternity, against Monism and Plurality, against Motion (further divided in the Argument against Change and the Argument against Division). On his part, in his own works Nāgārjuna offers some other arguments that closely resemble Gorgias’ four arguments. Nāgārjuna’s arguments have been labelled, respectively, as Arguments against Causation and Eternalism, against Plurality and Atomism, against Change. All these arguments can be read along nihilist lines.

What does this analogy of arguments between Gorgias and Nāgārjuna show? First, it tells us that nihilist arguments were present in both ancient Greek and Buddhist philosophy, thus linking more closely the two philosophical traditions on a topic that has been often neglected in the history of ancient thought.³¹ Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it invites us to rethink the ways we can look at both Gorgias and Nāgārjuna. In this paper, I have just stopped short of claiming that, although with different approaches, Gorgias and Nāgārjuna endorsed metaphysical nihilism. After all, the still dominant way to interpret Gorgias’ works is to take them as skillful exhibitions of rhetorical display or as the crafted efforts of someone not primarily interested in philosophy, even less in metaphysics. But this approach is more prejudicial than one may think at first, because it makes us not fully appreciate, from a philosophical point of view, the sophisticated defence of nihilism that Gorgias does provide in the PTMO. It also makes us wrongly assume that metaphysical nihilism is somehow absent from the scene of ancient Greek philosophy. On the contrary, recent studies have shown that thinkers such as Democritus and the early atomists, Protagoras (as depicted in Plato’s Theaetetus), the Cyrenaics and Pyrrho could be inscribed into a general tendency present in ancient philosophy that eliminated material objects (as we usually conceive of them) from the metaphysical apparatus of the world.³² In other words, what hermeneutical revision could we make to the history of Greek philosophy if we took Gorgias not only as a simple proposer of nihilist arguments for rhetorical or dialectical purposes but also as a believer in them too? In this way, Gorgias could profitably join a nihilist/eliminativist strand in ancient Greek metaphysics whose story is yet to be told (see Zilioli, Eliminativism for a forthcoming attempt).

The same refreshing perspective on Buddhist philosophy may be gained when we take a new ‘nihilist' approach to Nāgārjuna. It is true, as we have briefly seen in the context of this paper, that despite his own protests nihilist readings of Nāgārjuna are well present in the history of Buddhist philosophy, either ancient or contemporary. But it is also true that sceptical or dialectical interpretations of Nāgārjuna’s thought remain popular: these interpretations take his arguments, including the ‘nihilist’ ones this paper is concerned about, as a single part of wider two-part arguments aimed at showing that also the opposite position is to be rejected.³³ While the reading of Nāgārjuna as a thinker who directly or indirectly, consciously or less consciously, endorsed nihilism may have its own problems, the rival sceptical reading is still at odds at explaining how Nāgārjuna could have motivated his philosophy of emptiness in a coherent way. After all, Nāgārjuna says he has no views to defend. It is also true that, in a sort of (proto-)Wittgensteinian fashion, Nāgārjuna attempts to defend the special status of his statement about emptiness in a crucial section of the Vigrahavyāvartanī, hence throwing away the ladder after climbing on it (see Vigrahavyāvartanī 24). But I am not sure that his attempt is successful and cannot be charged with circularity.

If we still want to take Nāgārjuna as a sceptic despite these reservations, why don't we look at Pyrrho, the founder of ancient scepticism? Like Nāgārjuna, Pyrrho refused to endorse any view, the tradition after him generating a full web of opposite arguments that were taken as invalidating each other. But as recent perceptive studies have amply shown, Pyrrho committed himself to at least one metaphysical position about things in the world, namely that things (ta pragmata) are “undifferentiated, unstable and indeterminate (adiáphora kaì astáthmēta kaì anepíkrita)”.³⁴ Pyrrho’s indeterminacy thesis is not nihilism, but it is something remarkably close to it. If things are undifferentiated, unstable, and indeterminate, things do not exist as ontologically determinate items (see Conche, Pyrrho). Nietzsche too labelled Pyrrho as ‘nihilist’. He also called him “a Buddhist for Greece” (see Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Book 2, Section 437). Although with different motivations, Nietzsche anticipates the views of Christopher Beckwith, who has recently detailed a remarkably close correspondence between Pyrrho’s statement about things being undifferentiated, unstable and indeterminate and a famous statement of the Buddha preserved in canonical texts. The statement goes like this: “All dharmas are anitya ‘impermanent’ … All dharmas are duhkha ‘unsatisfactory, imperfect, unstable’ … All dharmas are anātman ‘without an innate self-identity’” (see Beckwith, The Greek Buddha, 29).³⁵

We cannot follow this lead any further at this point, but there seem to be some important connections between Pyrrho (as well as the nihilist/eliminativist tradition in ancient Greek metaphysics that, at least on some interpretations, includes Democritus and the early atomists, Protagoras and the Cyrenaics), early Buddhism and nihilism. These connections are still largely unexplored in the scholarship. What unexpected perspective could we gain if we looked at the second Buddha, Nāgārjuna, as a philosopher whose ‘nihilist’ views are understood not as the results of a sceptical strategy but as (hidden) philosophical beliefs about the world? What if behind the theory of emptiness that Nāgārjuna endorses there is really nihilism?³⁶ The answers to these questions and to those about Gorgias’ actual commitment to nihilism are still in need of a fuller answer. I invite the reader to take this paper as a first step in a new appraisal of ancient nihilism, both Greek and Buddhist.

Acknowledgements

I thank Amber Carpenter and Jan Westerhoff for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Two anonymous referees for the journal and the editor have also provided extremely helpful feedback that has greatly benefited the paper. I also thank Cristiana Zilioli, Roberta Ioli, Joachim Aufderheide, and Diego Zucca for their perceptive comments, both oral and written. I warmly thank the Leverhulme Trust for its generous support.

Additional information

Funding

This paper has been written under the auspices of a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant [RPG-2021-204].

Notes

1 As far as I am aware, there is only a brief account (one page) on Gorgias and Mādhyamika in McEvilley, The Shape, 427–8. McEvilley’s interpretation is very different from the one argued for in this paper: see Section 9.

2 I champion Di Iulio, Gorgias’ Thought as the most recent attempt to discharge Gorgias’ nihilism as a serious philosophical position. Alternatively, see Sedley “Zenonian Strategies”, especially 5–6; 17; 24–5, for an interesting attempt to take Zeno and Gorgias as thinkers endorsing nihilism. On Gorgias as mainly a rhetor, see Wardy, The Birth, especially Part I.

3 See below, Section 5.

4 Metaphysical nihilism is a view that has recently gained some traction in analytic philosophy: see e.g. Turner, “Nihilism”; Benovsky, Eliminativism; and Westerhoff, “Nihilism”. Westerhoff takes metaphysical nihilism as the combination of ontological eliminativism (as he puts it, “only the fundamental exists”: “Nihilism” 1) and non-foundationalism (“it’s dependence all the way down”, 1).

5 Sedley, “Zenonian Strategies”, 24 suggests with good reasons Eudemus of Rhodes as the possible author of MXG exactly in light of the nihilist lineage in ancient thought that the MXG seems to be addressing.

6 Since Ioli’s edition provides an Italian translation of Gorgias’ treatise, I shall use the English translation of PTMO that Laks and Most have prepared in their 2016 Loeb Collection (Early Greek Philosophy. Sophists. Part 1, vol. VIII, pages 218–25, henceforth LM). I will rely on Ioli’s own English translation for those key passages of Gorgias’ dialectical logos that as a locus deperditus Laks and Most do not translate (see Ioli, “Against Motion”).

7 The fact that Sextus uses the trilemma in his presentation of Gorgias’ arguments has often been taken as evidence that he moulded Gorgias’ original arguments into the favourite sceptical way of argumentation, thus distorting Gorgias’ original views. On the basis of this argument, the Anonymous’ version has been preferred, because it was allegedly closer to Gorgias’ PTMO. This view has been recently challenged by Rodriguez, “Untying”. I am not going to address the long-standing dispute about which is to be preferred between the two accounts of Gorgias’ PTMO, since it is the actual combination of them that allows us to get a good understanding of Gorgias’ views (Bett, “Gorgias”, 190–4).

8 Following Ioli, “Against Motion”, 6, note 2, I replace the LM translation: ‘the unlimited could not ever be’ with: ‘the unlimited could not be anywhere’.

9 Following Ioli, “Against Motion”, 8, note 7, I replace the LM translation: ‘and certainly it could not come to be from what is either’ with the more cogent: ‘Nor certainly could it come to be from what is not’.

10 It is worth highlighting that in the reconstruction of Gorgias’ arguments in the dialectical logos some references to other arguments originally put forward by Zeno and Melissus are often made. In the context of the present paper, it is impossible, if not only briefly, to show how Gorgias originally modified or indeed reinvented Eleatic arguments for his own philosophical scopes: on the topic, see Rossetti, “Trilemmi”, and Ioli, “Against Motion”. On Zeno and Nagārjunā, see also McEvilley, The Shape, 422–6.

11 We do not know much about Zeno’s argument about place (see 20 D 13a&b LM), which seems to be closely related to his famous argument against motion (20 D17 LM; see also 20 D14,15, 16, 18 and 19LM). Relying on Eudemus of Rhodes’ reconstruction (to be found in Simplicius), Sedley has thus reconstructed and widened Zeno’s argument on place along nihilist lines that are very suitable for Gorgias’ move here. Here is Sedley’s reconstruction: “Since whatever exists must be in a place, if place itself existed it would be in a place, and that place in a further place, and so on and so forth, which is absurd. Therefore place does not exist. But if anything existed it would be in a place. Therefore nothing exists” (Sedley, “Zenonian Strategies”, 23–5).

12 I add: ‘and if it had thickness, it would have parts, and would no longer be one’ as the final line of the fragment, which is missing in LM. The attribution to Melissus of this fragment is still dubious, some claiming that it could reflect Zeno’s views: Palmer, “Incorporeality”.

13 Bett, “Gorgias”, 194 writes that “one could also regard the argument against motion as an additional element in the case its being one or many”. This is certainly the case; yet the two arguments against motion that Gorgias is reported to have used in his dialectical logos do have a philosophical life on their own.

14 This argument rests on the Eleatic assumption that being is fully and completely homogeneous, that is, always identical to itself and undergoing no ontological change whatsoever. On Melissus and being as homogeneous, see 21 D19 LM ( = MXG 974a12–14).

15 On Melissus on motion and divisibility, see 21 D9 LM.

16 See VV( = Vigrahavyāvartanī) 11–12; 61–4 and ŚS 15 (spoken by an opponent). For Nāgārjuna as denying any commitment to nihilism, see MMK 5:6–8; 8:12–13; 15:6–7.

17 Some passages of the MMK can indeed be read as pointing towards nihilism: 15:1–4; 5:5; 23:8; see also ŚS 58 and 67. On Nāgārjuna as a philosopher well aware of the kind of nihilism that is implicit in his theory of emptiness, see Wood, Disputations; on Nāgārjuna as unaware of this, see Burton, Emptiness.

18 For MMK, I mainly rely on the excellent translation by Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura (Middle Way).

19 For ŚS, I usually rely on the transition of either Tola and Dragonetti (in Voidness) or Lindtner (in Nagarjuniana), which remains fundamental for a detailed overview of all the works by Nāgārjuna (with very useful notes on editions and manuscripts).

20 I take all these works to be genuine works by Nāgārjuna: on the question of authenticity, see Lindtner, Nagarjuniana.

21 On the Abhidharma schools, see Westerhoff, Golden Age, 35–83; on the notion of svabhāva as substance, see Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna, 29–40; Burton, Emptiness, 90–4 and 213–20. The Sanskrit term ‘svabhāva’ is a compound term, with ‘sva’ meaning ‘one’s own’ or ‘oneself’ and ‘bhāva’ referring to a thing, the actual nature of a thing or, more generally, to the existence of a thing. The idea behind all this is that to exist, a thing must have ‘bhāva’ on its own, that is, without depending ontologically on anything else.

22 It is true that generation and causation are two different concepts. It can however be argued that what ‘generation’ does in the philosophical arguments of the PTMO can well be compared to what ‘causation’ does in Nāgārjuna’s works. I am also ready to admit that the role Nāgārjuna recognizes to causation in his philosophy is much greater than the one Gorgias gives to generation in the PTMO; yet this does not prevent us from comparing the two ideas fruitfully, at least in the context of the kind of comparison I am drawing in this paper.

23 On causation as conceptually constructed for Nāgārjuna, see Siderits, “Causation”. See also Garfield, “Co-Origination” and “Sacred and Profane”.

24 On Nāgārjuna’s use of the tetralemma, see Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna, Chapter 4.

25 For Abhidharmikas, the dispute between eternalism and annihilationism mainly concerns persons and selves, while Nāgārjuna widens it to material things too: see Siderits and Katsura, Middle Way, 203–5; 235–9.

26 On the One-Many argument in both Ancient Greek and Buddhism, see McEvilley, The Shape, Chapter 2.

27 On this argument, see Carpenter, “Atoms”, with an Appendix offering a fresh translation on the relevant passage from Abhidharmakośabhāsya. See also Kapstein, “Considerations”; Tola and Dragonetti, Consciousness, 127–9; 142–5 (where the relevant stanzas and sections of Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses are translated and commented on).

28 Similar argument against atomism and partless entities are to be found in a short treatise, likely to be by Nāgārjuna’s disciple, Āryadeva, which often goes under the Tibetan title of Treatise on the division of parts: see Tola and Dragonetti, Voidness, 1–17, especially 11–13.

29 I thank the anonymous reviewers for helping me reshape my main argument here.

30 See, respectively, Siderits and O’Brien, “Zeno”; Mabbett, “Motion” and Galloway, “Notes” for the first kind of reading and Westerhoff, “Motion” and Nāgārjuna, Chapter 4 for the second reading. More recently, see Arnold, “Simplicity”.

31 This paper falls short of any pretence about historical transmission. Much has been done in recent years to show that East and West were much linked that we thought of decades ago – and this is especially true when we refer to Greek and Buddhist thought: for a start, see McEvilley, The Shape, Chapters 1, 14 and all the four Appendixes and Stoneman, Experience; see also Beckwith, The Greek Buddha, and Halkias, “The Greeks” on Pyrrho and the Buddhists. But to speculate on the possible ways Gorgias’ arguments may have reached East goes well beyond this contribution’s limits. On the point, see McEvilley, The Shape, Chapter 18.

32 On Democritus’ ontological eliminativism, see Kechagia, Colotes, 180–212; on Protagoras’ ontological relativism in the Theaetetus, see Buckels, “The Secret Doctrine”; on the possible metaphysical commitments of the Cyrenaics, see Zilioli, “Indeterminists”. On Pyrrho’s indeterminacy thesis, see the next paragraph.

33 For a reading of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy as mainly sceptical or dialectical, see Burton, Emptiness, Part I and McEvilley, The Shape, Chapters 17 and 18. On the main reasons for which the sceptical reading is to be refuted, see Burton, Emptiness, 30–44.

34 The first lines of Aristocles’ passage on Pyrrho ( = Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 14.18.3–4 = Chiesara F4 = T53 Decleva Caizzi) go like this: “He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] says that things are equally undifferentiated and unstable and indeterminate (tà mèn oûn prágmatá phēsin apophaínein ep’ísēs tòn adiáphora kaì astáthmēta kaì anepíkrita)”. For a full analysis of what Bett calls the indeterminacy thesis as well as of Aristocles’ passage, see Bett, Pyrrho, Chapter 1, especially 18–29.

35 The statement Beckwith refers to is known as the Trilaksana, the ‘Three Characteristics’. It is worth noticing that Beckwith reverses the order of correspondence between the three adjectives on the nature of things in the Aristocles’ passage on Pyrrho and those in the Trilaksana. According to Beckwith, the list of pairing adjectives are the following ones: anitya with anepíkrita; duhkha with astáthmēta; anātman with adiáphora.

36 As Tola and Dragonetti put it: “Even if the Mādhyamika does not affirm nothingness, anyhow its conception of reality as ‘void’, the emphasis it lays on universal contingency, the affirmation of the unreality of all and the analytical-abolishing method in order to reach truth, have led us to the conclusion that the Mādhyamika philosophy represents the most radical degree of philosophical nihilism” (Tola and Dragonetti, Voidness, Preface).