Paradox, Not Contradiction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the strategies and models Plotinus and Bhāviveka use to give its due to the claim that reality, conceived as the intelligible and the ultimate respectively, is non-discursive, while at the same time attempting to say something about it. Although the two authors offer contrasting models, they agree in distinguishing, not always explicitly, between ineffability, a characterization that keeps what it qualifies utterly out of the reach of language, and non-discursivity, which leaves room for things resistant to language to be amenable to language nonetheless. By providing a model to talk about the non-discursive, the two authors safeguard the practice of philosophical inquiry. But by qualifying the intelligible and the ultimate as non-discursive, they also retain a sense of the deficiency of language, in both metaphysical and soteriological terms, pointing at the necessity of transformation the philosopher should commit to if she is to attain the intelligible or the ultimate.