How should Nāgārjuna’s doctrine be understood in relation to the Buddha’s early teachings on dependent origination and non-self?

Nāgārjuna is often presented as systematizing or radicalizing insights already present in the Buddha’s early teachings, particularly pratītyasamutpāda and anattā.At the same time, his use of dialectical negation appears to go beyond anything explicitly stated in the early Nikāyas/Āgamas. In the early texts, dependent origination functions primarily as a causal and soteriological teaching aimed at the cessation of suffering, while ontological questions are frequently bracketed or treated pragmatically. Nāgārjuna, by contrast, seems to universalize dependent origination into a comprehensive critique of svabhāva (intrinsic existence), applying it not only to persons but to dharmas themselves. ---------- This raises several interpretive questions:- - To what extent can Nāgārjuna’s claim that “whatever is dependently arisen is empty” be grounded directly in the Buddha’s early teachings, rather than representing a later philosophical development responding to Abhidharma realism? - Does Nāgārjuna preserve the Buddha’s pragmatic and liberative intent, or does his systematic negation risk reifying emptiness into a metaphysical position precisely what the Buddha sought to avoid? - Is Nāgārjuna’s use of reductio arguments best understood as a philosophical method absent from the early canon, or can it be seen as a formalization of the Buddha’s dialogical strategies (e.g., the Kaccānagotta Sutta’s rejection of existence and non-existence)?