Panel: UNITY AND DIFFERENTIATION. INQUIRING NON-DUALISM AS INTERDISCIPLINARY PARADIGM



644.5 - FROM UNITY TO DIFFERENTIATION: BHARTṚHARI ON LANGUAGE AND REALITY

AUTHORS:
Ferrante M. (Austrian Academy of Sciences ~ Wien ~ Austria)
Text:
This paper examines Bhartṛhari's philosophy of language as a distinctive form of non dualism. For Bhartṛhari, reality is grounded in an immanent, self manifesting principle (śabdabrahman), from which subjects, objects, and linguistic units arise as differentiations within a single process. These are not separate ontological domains but functional articulations of one continuous field. Drawing on key passages from the Vākyapadīya, the paper reconstructs how linguistic cognition, sentence meaning, and self recognition illustrate a dynamic logic of articulation: unity expresses itself through internal self differentiation, contraction, and re articulation. Phenomenal reality is thus not external to this ground but its unfolding modality. Rather than a static monism, Bhartṛhari offers a processual non dualism, in which unity and multiplicity are mutually dependent expressions of an immanent power of manifestation. This framework, I suggest, provides a compelling lens for interpreting how metaphysical coherence and experiential plurality belong to the same ongoing movement of language and consciousness.