The Living Word and the Whole Sentence
✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ The Living Word and the Whole Sentence Bhartแนhari’s Philosophy of Language in Dialogue with the Infinite Logos ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Most English speakers are taught to imagine language as a collection of labels. The world contains objects, actions, and qualities; the mind notices them; and words are attached to them like name tags. On this familiar picture, reality comes first and language arrives later. Bhartแนhari, one of ancient India’s greatest philosophers of language, begins from a radically different possibility. Language is not merely a tool used to describe an already finished world. It is involved in the very way a world becomes intelligible to consciousness. Human beings do not first receive a completely formed, wordless reality and only afterward give it names. Recognition, thought, interpretation, and speech are woven together from the beginning. This claim leads Bhartแนhari from grammar into metaphysics. The d...