1. Neither-one-nor-many Argument for Emptiness The Madhyamaka central commitment to universal emptiness denies that anything possesses an intrinsic nature. According to Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka, whatever has an intrinsic nature both (i) exists and (ii) is the kind of thing that it is independently of anything else. Possessing an intrinsic nature, then, involves a sort of essential independence, that is, a kind of ontological self-sufficiency that belongs to something by its very nature—a status commonly attributed to the ontological category of substance. If everything is empty and nothing lays claim to an intrinsic nature, then whatever there is necessarily depends on other things both (i) for its existence and (ii) for being the kind of thing that it is.…