Nagarjuna stands firmly within the broad stream of Buddhist thought, sharing with other philosophers the foundational orientation toward liberation from suffering. He accepts the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Three Jewels, and he upholds dependent origination, impermanence, and non-self as basic features of existence. Like other Buddhist thinkers, he affirms karmic causality and rebirth, and he emphasizes the cessation of suffering through the elimination of attachment and ignorance. His work also resonates with Mahayana themes such as compassion, wisdom, and the bodhisattva ideal, and it aligns closely with the Perfection of Wisdom literature. In method, too, he participates in the common scholastic culture of debate, employing logic, reasoning, and systematic critique.

What distinguishes Nagarjuna is the radical way he develops the implications of these shared doctrines, especially the teaching of emptiness. Earlier Abhidharma systems often treat dharmas—the basic elements of experience—as ultimately real, even while denying a permanent self; Nagarjuna extends emptiness to all such dharmas, denying that anything possesses intrinsic nature or self-essence. In contrast to Yogacara tendencies to privilege consciousness or “mind-only,” he refuses to grant foundational status to either mind or matter, insisting that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence. This universalization of emptiness leads him to a particularly uncompromising Middle Way that rejects both eternalism and nihilism, not by positing a new metaphysical ground, but by undercutting every attempt at reification.

Nagarjuna’s articulation of the two truths—conventional and ultimate—also sets his thought apart. Conventional truth encompasses the everyday world of appearances, language, and practical distinctions, which he accepts as valid in their own sphere. Ultimate truth, however, is nothing other than the emptiness of all phenomena, including the very categories used to describe them. Even emptiness itself is said to be empty, preventing it from becoming a new absolute. This approach leads him to treat philosophical concepts as therapeutic tools rather than literal descriptions of an underlying reality, and it makes him wary of any positive ontological claims about nirvana, mind, or buddha-nature as ultimately existent entities.

Methodologically, Nagarjuna is notable for his reliance on prasaṅga, or consequentialist reasoning, and the use of fourfold negation to expose the contradictions in any fixed position. Rather than constructing a detailed ontological or epistemological system, as many Abhidharma and Yogacara philosophers do, he focuses on the careful dismantling of views. He subjects notions such as causality, motion, time, and the distinction between samsara and nirvana to this dialectical scrutiny, showing that when taken as possessing intrinsic nature they collapse into incoherence. In this way, his work exemplifies a rigorous yet liberating skepticism about the ultimate validity of all conceptual frameworks, while still honoring their conventional usefulness on the path to awakening.