The Buddhist school Madhyamika is one of the most important philosophical schools in India. It was founded by the great thinker Nagarjuna in the second century A.D. His doctrine is centered around the concept of sunyata or Voidness which metaphorically designates the absolute inexistence of an own being of any substance existing in se et per se.
Dragonetti and Tola explore five cases of thematic and methodological coincidences between Indian and Western philosophical thought, arguing for the existence of an Indian philosophy that shares the same expectations and weaknesses as its Western counterpart. This leads to the conclusion that there is no distinct “Western thought characterized by rationality and freedom” opposed to an “Indian thought marked by religiosity and irrationality,” but rather a “Universal philosophical thought.” Their method involves a parallel presentation of Indian and Western philosophical texts in their original languages, similar to their previous work, On the Myth of the Opposition between Indian Thought and Western Philosophy. The focus of these five essays is primarily on the Nyaya and Vaise? ika systems of Indian philosophy. Carmen Dragonetti, a research fellow at CONICET in Argentina, and Fernando Tola, a retired research fellow from the same institution, are both distinguished scholars. As president and vice-president of the Institute of Buddhist Studies Foundation in Argentina, they have conducted extensive research and authored numerous publications in both English and Spanish on Indian philosophy.
The authors here are trying to show that there is an essential identity between Indian and Western philosophies until the sixteenth century in regard to subjects, methods, results, presence of irrationality, lack of freedom of thought and absence of truth for its own sake. In support of this thesis the authors compare doctrines of the most ancient texts of India like the Vedas and Upanishads and of the Samkhya philosophical system with the doctrines of Western philosophers, indicating several points of contact.