Negative Certainties: Nāgārjuna’s Challenge to Kant on the “Togetherness” of Intuition and Concepts

The classical Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (150–250 C.E.) had an account of “negative certainties” that directly challenges the traditional Kantian notion of the “togetherness” of intuition and concepts. Viewing this “togetherness principle” from the perspective of Madhyāmika Buddhism, via Nāgārjuna’s arguments on the relationship between intuitions and concepts, as well as on the twofold nature of truth (i.e., “conventional truth” [samvrtisatya] and “ultimate truth” [paramārthasatya]), I explicate Nāgārjuna’s skeptical view of the semantic dependence of intuition on concepts in light of his notion of “conceptual proliferation” (prapañca). I then argue that the “togetherness principle” fails to distinguish conceptual and non-conceptual intuitions, as Kant himself seems to do when he defends “pure intuition”, identifying consciousness with objectively representational content that is essentially independent of concepts. I conclude by appropriating Kant’s notion of non-conceptual intuitions in conjunction with his Critical position on mystical experience, thus bringing Kant into conversation with Nāgārjuna and post-Nāgārjuna Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. I contend that we need to draw a line between “intuitive experiences” and discursive, “post-experiential interpretations”; the latter, as maintained by Nāgārjuna, belongs to conventional truth—i.e., they are always conceptually dependent.