Nagarjuna is one of the finest philosophers who ever lived. This second century Buddhist philosopher from south India is known for his criticism on speculative theories and viewpoints. But his name is better known for introducing the idea of emptiness (sunyata), a philosophical concept that had hugely influenced the discourses of Eastern philosophy, religion, and culture for about 2000 years. Nagarjuna cleverly introduced emptiness (sunyata), into Buddhist discourses to explain its central philosophy: the philosophy of Middle Path. Through the negative mode of argumentation, he taught how we naturally get trapped into extreme viewpoints and speculate on them. His philosophy of Middle Path (Madhyamika) explains the progress of human reasoning moving in its natural course avoiding extreme viewpoints for finding harmony and freedom.

Exploring the Structure of Emptiness: Philosophical Hermeneutics of the text Catusstava of Nagarjuna, Mathew Varghese, Sanctum Books, 2012, Hardcover, 367 pages, $30.00

Mathew Varghese is a scholar who works on classical philosophy, mainly, on the works of Nagarjuna, the second century Middle Path (Madhyamika) Buddhist philosopher. He shows keen interesting in then discussing contemporary philosophical issues and interpreting them in classical philosophical framework. He has published two text-based interpretational works on Madhyamika philosophy: Principles of Buddhist Tantra (2008), and Exploring the Structure of Emptiness (2012); and also, several papers on Buddhist and comparative philosophy. He is a research fellow at The Nakamura Hajime Eastern Institute, Tokyo; and also teaches at Aoyama Gakuin University, Kanagawa University and Wako University, in and around Tokyo, offering courses on classical philosophy from a comparative perspective. As a researcher, he is keenly interested in researching the classical conception of Negation and its application possibilities.