This article examines how the philosophical works of the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (ca. 150-250) made their way to the cultural space of Europe. Altogether over a hundred works have been ascribed to Nagarjuna, yet he actually wrote less than ten of them. On top of a few letters and texts on morals, four philosophical treatises appear to be authentic: /Madhyamakasastra/, /Vigrahavyavartani/, /Sunyatasaptati/ and /Yukti//s//ast//ika/. The Buddhist school of philosophy took shape in India, consisting of followers of Nagarjuna and his student Aryadeva. The initial name of this school of philosophy was madhjamaka, which comes from /Madhyamakasastra/, the title of Nagarjuna's main work consisting of 27 chapters. Its second name, suunjavaada, however, comes from the idea of Nagarjuna's philosophy, which holds that all objects are empty by their nature (/sunya/ in Sanskrit). Since Nagarjuna's original works in Sanskrit have not survived, their authenticity relies on their translations into Chinese, which were made in the 5th-6th centuries and on translations of those works into Tibetan that were made independently in the 8th-9th centuries. In China, Nagarjuna's views influenced the Buddhism of the /chan/ (/zen/ in Japanese) school particularly significantly. Yet in the 14th century in Tibet, Tsongkhapa propagated Nagarjuna's philosophy to the extent that when the school of thought that he founded started ruling Tibet by way of the institution of the Dalai Lama, /m//a//dhyamika-//prasa//n//gika/was declared the official philosophical position. /Prasa//n//ga/ is a method that was developed out of Nagarjuna's philosophy for using an opponent's claims against the opponent himself and to further develop all conceptions to the point of absurdity in order to liberate the mind from biases. Nagarjuna's philosophy has been translated into European languages starting from the last quarter of the 19th century. The boom in its translation began in the 1960s since Nagarjuna's teaching of emptiness fit in well with the spiritual foundations of the hippie movement that started in the USA and which Japanese zen Buddhism had helped to shape. At precisely the same time, thousands of intellectuals who had fled from Tibet due to China's invasion of that country appeared in the West. Their philosophical views were to a great extent based on Nagarjuna. The translation of Nagarjuna's philosophical works gained lasting momentum at the end of the 1970s. Now there are already several hundred translations of his works into European languages. Even though he has long since left his worldly body, Nagarjuna appears to participate ever more actively in philosophical disputes.
