By the Light of the Moon

Abstract This book is a study of Candrakīrti’s (c. 600–660 CE) philosophy and of his place in the history of the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school of Buddhist philosophy as it has developed in India, in Tibet, and in modernity. This book explains how the structure of Candrakīrti’s epistemology, ontology, and ethical theory hang together. We do so with attention to how his thought might inform contemporary philosophical debates. We want to understand how Candrakīrti takes things to hang together, and how the various projects he undertakes themselves hang together to the extent that he offers us a single, coherent Madhyamaka vision, and we achieve this understanding by attention to all of Candrakīrti’s principal philosophical texts. We argue that canonical and contemporary readings of Candrakīrti according to which he is a nihilist are incorrect, and that his program takes conventional truth seriously and presupposes the reality of the world.