TIME, SPACE, AND IDENTITY IN NĀGĀRJUNA’S KĀLAPARĪKṢĀ: WHERE ‘ME’ PERCEIVES AND ‘ME’ IS CONCEIVED

Abstract

This thesis provides a philosophical analysis and reconstruction of Nāgārjuna’s Kālaparīkṣā (Chapter 19 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), with special attention to his treatment of Time, Space, and Identity. Two central interpretive difficulties in §19:4.2 are addressed: first, the apparent inapplicability of Nāgārjuna’s temporal critique (§19:1-3) to spatial categories (upper, middle, lower); second, the semantic ambiguity and grammatical anomaly associated with the term ekatvādi. The thesis proposes novel solutions to these difficulties by demonstrating that spatial relations differ fundamentally from temporal phases due to simultaneity, and by offering a rigorous grammatical and philosophical investigation of ekatvādi, clarifying its intended conceptual scope.

Furthermore, the analysis introduces an innovative distinction between two dimensions of subjectivity: the schematic agent ("Me"), which actively conceptualises and structures experience, and the constructed self ("me"), which mistakenly regards these conceptual constructs as independent realities. This distinction sheds new light on Nāgārjuna’s method, revealing Time, Space, and Identity not as intrinsic ontological realities but as cognitive schemata generated through the mind’s own conceptualising activity (prajñapti). Thus, the thesis ultimately argues that Nāgārjuna’s Kālaparīkṣā provides a sophisticated critique not merely of temporal phenomena but of the cognitive processes that underlie our very construction of reality.

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