"Autonomists," a subdivision of the Madhyamaka school of tenets, distinguished from the Prāsaṅgika. Inaugurated by Bhāviveka (fifth century C.E.), the Svātantrika represents an approach to the relative and absolute truth in which positive reasoning, or "autonomous" syllogisms, are employed, together with arguments and examples, in order to produce a (conceptual) understanding of emptiness in the mind of the opponent and to refute the true existence of phenomena. It is distinguished from the Prāsaṅgika approach, which confines itself exclusively to consequences or reductio ad absurdum arguments. [TPQ, 2010]