뿌드갈라 비판과 존재론적 은유: 『입중론』 인무아 논증을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal that viewed through the lens of ontological metaphor, the gap between language and daily experience accounts for category errors, and suggests that ‘the denying a self of persons’ (pudgalanairātmya) argument, in the Madhyamakāvatāra, is itself a category error. Candrakīrti, in the Madhyamakāvatāra, redefines the pudgala as a fictional self by referring to the ‘parable of carts’ in Questions of Milinda, in which the self is understood to be a collective concept. This collective concept is considered to be a ‘category error’ because it attempts to quantify and hold non-existent objects as real. Category errors are actually a type of cognitive error, and the reason we have trouble with this error is because we believe that verbal expressions are real. Candrakīrti analyzes the five aggregates of clinging of self, as language expressions, in his criticism of the pudgala, by considering the relationship between carts and their accessories. This analysis reveals the non-substantial characteristics of self, but still does not systematically present the process of how cognitive errors come to be constructed. Therefore, the path of cognitive error is structured, according to Candrakīrti, through the process of denying that the self is a person. This structuralization draws on the theory of ‘metaphor’ which is based on a philosophical position called ‘experientialism’ and they explain it as a feature of our own understanding of self-concept as reality. In this case, metaphor is not used as a rhetorical device, but as a way of understanding oneself and the world in which we are forced to experience mental phenomena in relation to our understanding of general objects. This understanding reveals our general tendency to project our perception of physical objects onto abstract concepts and mental phenomena. This means that abstracted concepts and mental phenomena can only be conceived and experienced from the perspective of understanding physical objects.