 Kumārila’s charge of circularity in apoha theory is one of the most critical for its defenders to answer. The main thrust of the argument was already found in Uddyotakara’s Nyāyavārttika, where he argues that apoha entails the problems of circularity and denotationism (which apoha theorists consider it is imperative to avoid). This is the case because there must be an affirmative denotation between words and particulars since the negation of an object implies that one first have a positive understanding of the object. One must first have an affirmative understanding before one can negate its exclusion. Dreyfus summarizes Kumārila’s presentation of the argument succinctly as follows: