Nāgārjuna’s central offering lies in his rigorous articulation of śūnyatā, or emptiness, as the heart of the Middle Way. He showed that all phenomena are devoid of svabhāva, any fixed or inherent existence, and that what is called “emptiness” is simply the dependently arisen nature of things. In this way, he drew a path that avoids both eternalism, which reifies things as ultimately real, and nihilism, which denies the meaningful functioning of the world. Emptiness, for him, does not erase conventional reality; rather, it reveals that things exist only in relation, through dependent origination.

To make this vision philosophically precise, Nāgārjuna employed a distinctive dialectical method, especially in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Through careful logical analysis and reductio arguments, he exposed the contradictions that arise whenever one posits inherent existence, whether in Buddhist or non-Buddhist doctrines. By systematically deconstructing all fixed views, he did not leave a void of meaning, but cleared the ground for seeing how concepts and phenomena function conventionally without any solid core. This method, often structured through exhaustive negation of possible positions, became a hallmark of the Madhyamaka approach.

Nāgārjuna also clarified the framework of the Two Truths, distinguishing conventional truth from ultimate truth. Conventional truth concerns the everyday world of language, concepts, and causal relations, which continues to operate effectively despite its lack of inherent essence. Ultimate truth, by contrast, is the insight that all such phenomena are empty of independent, self-sustaining nature. By holding these two levels together without collapsing one into the other, he offered a subtle vision in which emptiness itself is not a separate absolute, but the very way dependently arisen things are.

Through these intertwined contributions—his exposition of emptiness, his dialectical method, and his articulation of the Two Truths—Nāgārjuna effectively founded and shaped the Madhyamaka school. His writings provided a systematic philosophical framework that grounded the Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination in a precise and radical account of reality. In doing so, he transformed profound meditative insights into a coherent system of thought that has served as a touchstone for later Buddhist philosophy and practice.