Central to Mādhyamika philosophy is śūnyatā, "Emptiness", and this refers to the central idea that dharmas are empty of svabhāva. Nāgārjuna’s critique of the notion of own-nature (Mk. ch. 15) argues that anything which arises according to conditions, as all phenomena do, can have no inherent nature, for what it depends on what conditions it. An important element of Mādhyamika refutation is Dependent Arising.

The Mādhyamika School is usually considered to have been founded by Nāgārjuna, though it may have existed earlier. Various scholars have noted that some of themes in the work of Nāgārjuna can also be found in earlier Buddhist sources. It is well known that the only sūtra that Nāgārjuna explicitly cites in his Mūla-Mādhyamika-kārikā is the "Advice to Katyāyana". Mādhyamika is also related to Mahāyāna

While Nāgārjuna is one of the greatest thinkers in the history of Asian philosophy... contemporary scholars agree on hardly any details concerning him: This includes exactly when he lived, where he lived and what constitutes his written corpus. Because of his philosophical work, Nāgārjuna is seen as restoring the Middle Way of the Buddha. Nāgārjuna's pupil Āryadeva (3rd century CE) wrote various works on Mādhyamika,

Mādhyamika philosophy obtained a central position in all the main Tibetan Buddhist schools, all whom consider themselves to be Mādhyamikas. Mādhyamika thought has been categorized in various ways in India and Tibet. In Tibetan Buddhist scholarship, a distinction began to be made between: Autonomist (Svātantrika) and Consequentialist (Prāsaṅgika), approaches to Mādhyamika reasoning. The distinction was invented by Tibetans, and not made by classical Indian Mādhyamikas.

Chinese Mādhyamika (known as Sānlun, or the 3 Treatise School) began with the work of Kumārajīva (344–413 CE) who translated the works of Nāgārjuna (including MMK, also known in China as the Chung lun, "Mādhyamika-śāstra"; Sānlun figures like Kumārajīva's pupil Sengzhao (384–414), and the later Jizang (549–623) were influential in restoring a more orthodox and non-essentialist interpretation of Emptiness to Chinese Buddhism.

Asaṅga critiqued Mādhyamika because he held that it could lead to a laxity in the following of ethical precepts. The Saṁdhi-nirmocana sūtra, perhaps the earliest Yogācāra text, proclaims itself as being above the doctrine of Emptiness taught in other sūtras. The Saṁdhi-nirmocana claims that other sūtras that teach Emptiness as well as Mādhyamika teachings on Emptiness are merely skilful means and thus are not definitive.