For our Nagarjuna episode, in addition to the works by Nagarjuna that we provided links to, we discussed two additional works that you may want to look into:
First, Jan Westerhoff‘s Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka covers the philosophical concepts of the core Nagarjuana texts, not only clarifying N’s view within the tradition (i.e. clarifying what position he’s arguing against at any given point, which is often hard to tell), but relating his views to modern philosophy. Whole chapters are devoted to arguments about causality, N’s view of the self, of language, epistemology, and what this notion of “svabhava” or inherent existence that N argues against amounts to. Westerhoff gives a charitable but rigorous interpretation of N’s theories, filling in the gaps with extrapolations and information from other Buddhist schools when necessary to thoroughly explore a problem.
Second, David Ross Komito‘s translation of Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas, which is quite different than the one we provided the link to. Both the translation and the accompanying lengthy commentary draw on the Tibetan Buddhist oral tradition, so this serves the purpose not only of making the text clearer, but of stating how some Buddhists living today understand it. In addition, Komito’s introductory chapters present “a Buddhist psychology,” which lays out their view of how one’s perceptual habits can be changed to no longer impute objective existence and objecthood to phenomena. Plus, it explains many Buddhist terms used by N. like “the twelve constituents” and “the five factors.” On the downside, this account is not particularly critical and doesn’t display much knowledge of philosophy or psychology.
[…] else; this is what Nagarjuna is arguing against as svabhāva, or substance. Here’s what Westerhoff (in the summary section of his book), p. 203-205, has to say about this: Another difficulty arising […]