Bhāviveka, also called Bhāvaviveka (; ), and Bhavya was a sixth-century (c. 500 – c. 570) madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher. Alternative names for this figure also include Bhavyaviveka, Bhāvin, Bhāviviveka, Bhagavadviveka and Bhavya. Bhāviveka is the author of the Madhyamakahrdaya (Heart of the Middle), its auto-commentary the Tarkajvālā (Blaze of Reasoning) and the Prajñāpradīpa (Lamp for Wisdom).
In Tibetan Buddhism Bhāviveka is regarded as the founder of the svātantrika tradition of mādhyamaka, as opposed to the prāsaṅgika madhyamaka of Chandrakirti.
There is also another later author called Bhāvaviveka who wrote another set of madhyamaka texts. He is sometimes called Bhāvaviveka II by modern scholars.
Background
The life details of Bhāviveka are unclear. The earliest source is Xuanzang's 7th century The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions. According to Xuanzang, Bhāviveka was a 6th-century scholar from south India (Andhra Pradesh) who traveled north in an attempt to engage in debate with the Yogacara master Dharmapāla (who refused to meet him). Malcolm Eckel states that the sixth century was a period of "unusual creativity and ferment in the history of Indian Buddhist philosophy", when the Mahayana Buddhism movement was emerging as a "vigorous and self-conscious intellectual force" while early Buddhist traditions from the eighteen (Nikaya) schools opposed this Mahayana movement.
Eckel states that Bhāviveka may have been one of the many itinerant scholars at the time who traveled the country engaging their opponents in debate. During this time, formal debate was a high stakes endeavor which played a central role in Indian monastic life and could determine the support monasteries received from kings who attended the debates. In some cases, one was not even allowed to enter an elite institution like Nālānda unless one demonstrated a certain amount of knowledge to the gatekeeper scholar. Because of this, an effective debater like Bhāviveka needed to be conversant with the doctrines of their opponents, and this need is reflected in the writing of doxographical works like Bhāviveka's.
According to Olle Qvarnström, Bhavya developed and revised some of the methods and ideas of the Mādhyamaka philosophy first established by Nāgārjuna. Qvarnström argues that the need for this revision was that Madhyamaka was in danger of "being absorbed or overshadowed by the Yogacara school" and was also coming under pressure from various Brahmanical systems of philosophy. Qvarnström writes that "in order to avert these threats and to bring Madhyamaka philosophy into conformity with the prevalent philosophical requirements of the intellectual milieu in the sixth century, Bhavya used logical devices originally formulated by Dignaga and others."
Philosophy
Mādhyamaka and Pramāṇa
Unlike previous mādhyamaka authors, Bhāviveka adopted Indian pramāṇa reasoning (as developed by the earlier Buddhist logician Dignaga) and applied it to the development of madhyamaka arguments in order to show that phenomena (dharmas) have no self-nature (svabhāva), and to establish that the true nature of all phenomena is emptiness. According to Ames (1993: p. 210), Bhāviveka was one of the first Buddhist logicians to employ the "formal syllogism" (, ) of Indian logic in expounding mādhyamaka. He employed these to considerable effect in his commentary to Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, entitled the Wisdom Lamp.
Qvarnström outlines Bhāviveka's development of madhyamaka as follows:According to Bhavya, the refutation of a system by depicting its inherent contradictions without stating a positive thesis of one's own was not sufficient to settle a debate. This "reductio ad absurdum" (prāsaṇgika) argumentation had to be supplemented by independent propositions (svatantra), sometimes incorporated in formal syllogisms (prayogavākya). By means of independent inferences (svatantrānumāna) and proper syllogisms, Bhavya considered himself capable of both proving the validity of his own propositions and of refuting any upcoming counterposition, Buddhist or Hindu.Bhāviveka held that even though Nagarjuna himself had only relied on prāsaṇgika style reductios which do not put forth any positive thesis (and only refutes the arguments of the opponent), it was the responsibility of the commentator to make explicit the implications and logical consequences of Nagarjuna's text. This was to be done by making use of pramāṇa reasoning in order to establish logical arguments that proved the truth of mādhyamaka in a positive sense. That is to say, Bhavya sought to prove madhyamaka by arguing for the truth of independent theses (pratijñā) which did not rely on refuting the theses of others.