Bhartṛhari (भर्तृहरि)
c. 450-510 · Hindu Darshanas · Known
Bhartrhari studied Sanskrit grammar and came out of it with a metaphysics, set down in the Vakyapadiya. Ultimate reality is Word, a beginningless speech that takes the shape of every object you call a world, and no thought anywhere arrives free of language. Meaning lives in the whole sentence, caught in one flash, never in its separate parts. He offered no politics and no ethics of conduct. Grammar is his road to liberation.
Signature
The position Bhartrhari is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity
- Language
- Logos
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Universals
- leans Realism (17 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (4 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (80 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Bhartrhari refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pantheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Other
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language?