Abstract

The presupposition strategy is a widely adopted approach to understanding the catus.kot.i or tetralemmas that appear in Nāgārjuna’s works. According to this strategy, the apparent contradictions between the statements in the tetralemmas can be resolved by viewing them as making the false presupposition that there are entities that have svabhāva, independent existence or intrinsic nature, and hence as semantically deficient. Contemporary discussions of the strategy, however, do not take into account recent work on presupposition in linguistics and philosophy, much of which claims either that presupposition is not a genuine linguistic phenomenon at all, or that it is pragmatic rather than semantic, thus threatening the presupposition strategy’s claim to resolve the contradictions in the tetralemmas. Based on a consideration of these critiques, this paper argues for three claims. First, the svabhāva presupposition is best viewed as pragmatic rather than semantic in nature. Second, viewing this presupposition as pragmatic rather than semantic does not in fact undermine the ability of the presupposition strategy to resolve the apparent inconsistencies. Finally, the best way of preserving the viability of the presupposition strategy is to adopt a model of the two truths that views emptiness not as interdependence, as is widely held, but as nonconceptuality.