The Pratyabhijñā provides the non-dual Tantric Shaivism of Kashmir with a ‘philosophy’, which ended up being ‘the’ philosophy of Hindu Tantrism as a whole.  The main aim of the Pratyabhijñā philosophers was to cause the Tantric Śaiva sects to emerge from the dimension of restricted circles, often devoted to transgressive practices, and establish themselves in the stratum of social normality, by internalizing, or in any case circumscribing, their own specific differences. Their addressees are not the ascetics, but, typically, the householders.  As a consequence, the Pratyabhijñā engages in a far-reaching dialogue with Indian philosophy of his time, accepting its modalities and rules. While Somānanda is considered the founder of the Pratyabhijñā, its full-fledged elaboration is due to Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. The works of the latter are well-known, and his Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vimarśinī (a commentary on the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā) and, particularly, the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti-vimarśinī (a commentary on Utpaladeva’s vivṛti on his own Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā and vṛtti) are generally considered the standard works on Pratyabhijñā. However, the role of Utpaladeva’s vivṛti as the real centre of gravity of Pratyabhijñā philosophy has become more and more evident, since the discovery of a long fragment of the vivṛti by R. Torella, who has edited and partly translated it in a series of articles. Torella’s studies show that most of Abhinavagupta’s ideas are just the development of what Utpaladeva had already expounded in his vivṛti.

Highly interesting is Utpaladeva’s philosophical strategy. Instead of dispersing its philosophical energies against an indifferentiated multiplicity of opponents, he very lucidly selects just one, the most prestigious philosophical and religious tradition of the Kashmir of that time. For various reasons (the principal one probably being the will to present the new Pratyabhijñā philosophers as the champions of the entire Śaiva tradition against the main common antagonist), these privileged opponents are the Buddhists, especially those belonging to the so-called logical-epistemological school. While for Somānanda the Buddhists are opponents just like many others, they are given a special status in the work of Utpaladeva, for whom they, admired and attacked in an equally strong way, are so to speak the most intimate enemies. The criticism of their positions is to Utpaladeva of a substantial help in building and refining the Pratyabhijñā philosophy.

Also very interesting is Utpaladeva’s choice of the main ally, the grammarian-philosopher Bhartṛhari, though the latter had been fiercely attacked precisely by Utpaladeva’s guru Somānanda. Such a change of attitude, which in a broader sense is also a paradigme change proper, does invest the problematic aspects of the taking distance from one’s own guru, and, at the same time, shows how the choice of the opponents and allies may be the outcome of a definite plan rather than a fact of mere liking or disliking some world view. In order to undermine the discontinuous universe of the Buddhists, Utpaladeva decides to avail himself precisely of Bhartṛhari’s doctrine, the language-imbued nature of knowledge, which is meant to demolish Buddhism’s main foundation stone, i.e. the unsurpassable gulf between the moment of sensation and that of conceptual elaboration, representing, as it were, the very archetype of the Buddhist segmented reality. Thus, the omnipervadence of language is the epistemological version of the omnipervadence of Śiva, and at the same time calls for the integration into the spiritually dynamic Śaiva universe. Moreover, this allowed Utpaladeva to connect himself with the speculations on vāc and the phonemes found in the Kula and Trika tantras. The supreme Consciousness is the supreme Word, Paśyantī becomes a power of the supreme Lord. 

The philosophy of Utpaladeva is characterised by this unique blend of epistemology, metaphysics, religious experience, linguistic philosophy and aesthetical speculation. Last but not least, it is a most conspicuous example of an essential feature of Indian philosophy as a whole, which, however, has hardly been duly highlighted: ceaseless interchange among the different schools, lively confrontation with the opposite theories, tireless capacity of self-reshaping accordingly.