Ippolito Desideri and Madhyamaka: On the Interpretation of Giuseppe Toscano

The Xaverian priest Giuseppe Toscano (1911–2003) translated Desideri's Tibetan corpus almost in its entirety, wrote critical introductions to each of the Jesuit's works, and identified hundreds of quotations in his Tibetan manuscripts. He also remains the only scholar to have attempted a synthetic account of Ippolito Desideri's Thomism. Toscano identified seven principal loci in the Jesuit's Thomistic-Aristotelian interpretation of Madhyamaka, addressing Desideri's treatment of: 1) Madhyamaka denials of a First Cause; 2) the compatibility of emptiness with a First Cause; 3) the sense in which Christian philosophers may accept emptiness; 4) Tibetan descriptions of intrinsic being; 5) the principle of non-contradiction; 6) the analogy of being; and 7) the necessity of a refuge. The present article outlines Toscano's understanding (and misunderstanding) of these seven loci. It demonstrates that the Tibetan term dgag bya is not—as Toscano interprets it—merely something "opposed to the truth," but the object to be negated by Madhyamaka dialectic. Consequently, it argues that scholars of Desideri will be in a far better position to understand the way in which he thought emptiness acceptable when we restore the proper meaning of dgag bya to Desideri's texts. Indeed, Desideri's attempt to develop a Thomist logic of analogy in response to Tsongkhapa's Madhyamaka depends upon his understanding of the object to be negated and whether it can rightly apply to God.