The Birth of Fire, Indescribable Light, and the Limits of Philosophy’s Violence: Nāgārjuna and Plato Seeing and Speaking of Nothing

ABSTRACT This study places Nāgārjuna and Plato in dialogue regarding how both seek to orient philosophy in the face of indeterminacy observed at the elemental level of existence, specifically, the indeterminacy of fire’s light. Looking to the elemental within Chōra and Śūnyatā, a directive becomes discernible for calibrating philosophy to this indeterminacy, and crucial limitations are disclosed, which expand philosophy by enabling a productive relation to the non-philosophical. What emerges are directives for language, which serve to modify philosophy’s violence towards the world by striking a middle way between the binaries of reification and nihilism, speech and silence.