Abstract

Madhyamaka Buddhism is famously centered on the doctrine of emptiness, often glossed as the view that there are no essences. This chapter addresses two interrelated questions about that doctrine. First, is the Madhyamaka doctrine of essencelessness more plausibly to be regarded as a necessary or a contingent truth? Second, is the doctrine of essencelessness in contradiction with the views of those prominent Mādhyamikas who also claim that essencelessness is the essence of all things? The chapter argues that the Madhyamaka doctrine of essencelessness is most plausibly to be regarded as a necessary truth, but that a modern Mādhyamika can safely affirm without contradiction the apparently paradoxical claim that emptiness is the essence of all entities.