A brief note on Mādhyamika method
Madhyamika texts critically analyse the claims made by other traditions that something exists with svabhāva and hence (it is argued) exists intrinsically or inherently. They themselves do not put forward any such independently real (i.e. svabhāva-type) existence of anything. The broad approach, therefore (at least in Prasaṅgika Madhyamika), is to take the claim made by an opponent that something really exists and show to the opponent, through reasoning using principles acceptable to the opponent, that this cannot be the case. Candrakīrti deals with this at length in his Prasannapadā commentary to Madhyamakakārikā 1:
There is the setting-forward and proving of his own thesis only insofar as there is the drawing-out of the conclusion of the opponent’s thesis. . . . This is the best possible refutation, in that the opponent is incapable of establishing his thesis.
(Vaidya 1960: 6, on MK 1: 1)