Bhartrhari’s Paradox

There are some things that are unnameable. But it seems impossible to verify this by giving positive instances, because this would require us to name that which we have declared to be unnameable. From an observation by the fifth-century Indian grammarian and philosopher Bhartrhari. “[E]very argument advanced to support any instance of the unnameability thesis drives one still more firmly into the paradox,” note philosophers Hans and Radhika Herzberger, “for they naturally tend to involve repeated reference to the very things whose unnameability they undertake to establish.” (Hans G. Herzberger and Radhika Herzberger, “Bhartrhari’s Paradox,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 9:1 [March 1981], 1-17.)