ABSTRACT
IT is usual to ask of a system of philosophy to give us its views about ultimate existences—God, soul and matter. Systems are labelled Monism, Dualism, Idealism, Realism, etc., according to the nature of the answers given. The Mādhyamika philosophy is no system in this sense. Nowhere is there any attempt to raise such problems on its own initiative. The Dialectic is not a body of doctrines, but their criticism. Philosophy, for the Mādhyamika, is not an explanation of things through conceptual patterns. That is the way of dogmatic speculation (dṛṣṭi); but this does not give us the truth. The Dialectic is intended as an effective antidote for this dogmatic procedure of reason; it is the criticism of theories (śūnyatā sarva-dṛṣṭīnām). The Dialectic itself is philosophy.
