Honors Program
University Honors
Date of Award
5-2012
Thesis Professor(s)
Douglas Duckworth
Thesis Professor Department
Philosophy and Humanities
Thesis Reader(s)
William Burgess, Keith Green
Abstract
This paper addresses the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness as interpreted by the fourteenth-century Tibetan Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa’s emptiness maintains that all phenomena are “empty” of intrinsic existence, an idea which starkly contrasts common Western worldviews that rely of belief in self-enclosed identities or souls. Here I analyze Tsongkhapa’s arguments for emptiness and relate them to the reader using examples easily understood by Western undergraduate students. I also provide several critiques of Tsongkhapa’s position and attempt to answer them according to his philosophy. This paper is aimed to be a simple, yet thorough introduction to Tsongkhapa’s philosophy of emptiness.
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Shelton, Jesse, "On the Absence of Self: A Critical Analysis of Tsongkhapa’s Philosophy of Emptiness." (2012). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 33. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/33
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.