The self is neither identical to the aggregates nor different from them

Nagarjuna c. 150 · c. 250All things are empty of inherent existence.

What it claims

There is no self with an own-nature, neither identical to the aggregates nor separate from them. (The text does not conclude that the person is nothing: what depends on something else is "neither identical nor different", 18.10.)

Why

A self identical to the aggregates would vanish with them, and none is ever found apart from them.

In short

"The self is neither identical to the aggregates nor different from them" is an argument by Nagarjuna (Fundamental Verses 18, 22 and 27) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: no fixed self). Its claim: There is no self with an own-nature, neither identical to the aggregates nor separate from them. (The text does not conclude that the person is nothing: what depends on something else is "neither identical nor different", 18.10.). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Fundamental Verses 18, 22 and 27

Valid with an implicit premise

Who am I? Buddhism teaches that the person is made of five "aggregates" (form, feeling, perception, dispositions, consciousness) which arise and cease. The question remains: is there, in addition, someone who owns them, a self (ātman) that stays the same? Nagarjuna examines the only two possibilities: this self would be the aggregates, or it would be something other than them, and he shows that neither holds. Note that he does not simply conclude "the self does not exist". The text says that the Buddhas spoke of a self, then of a non-self, then taught that there is neither self nor non-self (18.6). We reconstruct only the "no self with an own-nature" part; the form P1…C does not render this "neither… nor…".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where the self exists, is identical to the aggregates, arises and ceases with them, and is never found apart from them.

With P3, the conclusion follows. P3 is not written as such in the text: we draw it from the definition of own-nature (unmade, 15.2); it is an implicit premise, and it is the very definition of the targeted "self" (the ātman of Indian traditions, eternal and independent). Without it, nothing prevents the self from being the aggregates and arising and ceasing with them. P5 is a claim of observation, and that is where the objectors attack: Descartes and Avicenna claim that one grasps oneself without body or sensations.

Analogy. Look for a club's "team": you will see players, a coach, a shirt, matches. It is not one more player, and it does not exist apart from all that either. Nagarjuna says the "self" is like the team: real enough in practice, impossible to find as a separate thing.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Descartes 1641 · attacks premise 5

I find in myself, with certainty, that I think, and thought alone cannot be detached from me. So I am a thinking thing: a self is grasped directly, without body or sensations.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1641, after the author's death (250).

The debate goes on (our summary) Nagarjuna could not answer Descartes. A defender of the Middle Way would note that what Descartes grasps is a thought, that is, one of the five aggregates (consciousness), not an owner of thoughts distinct from them; and that Descartes himself says he exists "as long as" he thinks. Descartes would answer that thought requires someone who thinks. The debate remains open. (Our summary.)

Avicenna (the flying man) 1027 · attacks premise 5

Imagine a man created all at once, his eyes veiled, floating in the void, feeling nothing of his body. He cannot doubt that he exists, and yet he affirms none of his limbs nor his brain. So his self is grasped directly, apart from the bodily aggregates.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1027, after the author's death (250).

The debate goes on (our summary) Avicenna lived about eight centuries after Nagarjuna. The answer is the same as for Descartes: what the flying man grasps may be an act of consciousness, one of the aggregates. Avicenna holds on the contrary that the self is grasped wholly and directly, and that this shows itself to whoever is attentive. Neither can prove his testimony to the other. (Our summary.)

The Nyāya school (Vātsyāyana) 450 · attacks premise 5

I recognise by touch the object I saw, and today I remember what I lived through yesterday. If the person were only a flow of aggregates arising and ceasing, the one who saw would not be the one who touches, nor the one who remembers. So a lasting self, distinct from the aggregates, is needed: it is not seen apart, but it is known through these effects.

no reply

summary: their text is not yet in our corpus

No reply possible: objection raised in 450, after the author's death (250).

The debate goes on (our summary) This is the classic objection of the Hindu philosophers of the Nyāya school (Nyāyasūtra III, 1, 1 and Vātsyāyana's commentary, around the 5th century); their texts are not in our corpus. Nagarjuna does not answer it directly, but his chapter 27 rejects both branches: saying "it is the same self as before" does not hold (27.3), and saying "it is another" would mean that one acts and another reaps the fruit (27.11). What depends on something else is "neither identical nor different" (18.10), like seed and sprout. Nyāya answers that a continuity without a subject does not explain who remembers. (Our summary.)