School of Names

First published Tue Oct 25, 2005; substantive revision Tue Sep 3, 2024

The “School of Names” (ming jia) is thetraditional Chinese label for a diverse group of Warring States(479–221 B.C.E.) thinkers who shared an interest in language,disputation, and metaphysics. They were notorious for logic-chopping,purportedly idle conceptual puzzles, and paradoxes such as“Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday” and “A whitehorse is not a horse.” Because reflection on language in ancientChina centered on “names” (ming, words) and theirrelation to “stuff” (shi, objects, events,situations), 2nd-century B.C.E. Han dynasty archivists dubbed thesethinkers the “School of Names,” one of six recognizedphilosophical movements. The “school” is a taxonomicalfiction, however. The varied figures assigned to it—Deng Xi, YinWen, Hui Shi, and Gongsun Long, among others—never formed adistinct circle or movement devoted to any particular doctrine or wayof life, and their intellectual interests overlapped extensively withthose of the laterMohists,Zhuangzi, andXunzi. Several of these men were active politically: Hui Shi was agovernment minister, Yin Wen and Gongsun Long political advisors andpeace activists. Still, in the eyes of Han historians, they devotedthemselves to no signature ethical or political doctrines. Hence theybecame known primarily for their interest in language and disputationand on that basis were deemed a “school.”

Before the Han dynasty, the social group of which these thinkers werea part was known as thebianzhe—“disputers” or“dialecticians”—because they spent much of theirtime in “disputation” (bian, also“discrimination” or “distinction drawing”), aform of dialectical persuasion and inquiry aimed fundamentally at“distinguishing” the proper semantic relations betweennames and the things or kinds of things to which they refer.“Disputers” is thus probably a more appropriate Englishlabel for Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, and the others than is the“School of Names,” though it refers not specifically tothese figures but to the broader class of scholars to which theybelonged. (“Name-distinguishers” or“distinction-disputers” would be even more accurate,though these terms are too clumsy to adopt as English equivalents.)The disputers flourished for about a century and a half as wanderingpolitical advisors, counseling rulers throughout pre-unificationChina. They disappeared with the onset of the Qin dynasty (221B.C.E.), partly because the political and intellectual climate of thenew empire was hostile to their purely theoretical, occasionallyflippant inquiries, and partly because with unification theirpolitical services became obsolete.

1. Background and Overview

Han dynasty archivists associated seven figures with the “Schoolof Names”: Deng Xi, Yin Wen, Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, Cheng-gongSheng, Huang Gong, and Mao Gong (Han History 30,“Bibliographical Treatise”). To these we can add onefurther figure, Huan Tuan, whom China’s earliest history ofthought, “Under Heaven,” Book 33 of theZhuangzi,pairs with Gongsun Long. About the last four of these men virtuallynothing is known.^[1] About the first four, we know more, but not much. There is littlefirst-hand evidence about what they thought, since nearly none of thewritings attributed to them by Han bibliographers survive. With theexception of a few brief texts attributed to Gongsun Long, everythingwe know comes from quotations or anecdotes in other texts, includingtheZhuangzi, Xunzi, Annals of Lü Buwei, Hanfeizi, andseveral Han dynasty anthologies. These second-hand accounts typicallydate from long after the lifetime of the figures they describe, andthey may be embellished or dramatized, warped to fit theirwriters’ agenda, or even fictional.

Contemporary studies sometimes treat these disputers together with thelater Mohists. Topics associated with them are addressed in Mohist texts, and“Under Heaven” depicts sects of Mohists engaged in“disputes about the hard and white and the same anddifferent,” two central themes of the disputers. The laterMohists probably respected the individuals identified with the Schoolof Names but were critical of them. Numerous passages in the MohistDialectics appear to be either rebuttals of their ideas ordefenses of Mohist doctrines against their arguments. On the otherhand, insofar as ‘the School of Names’ is simply a labelfor early thinkers interested in language and dialectics, the laterMohists themselves largely fit under this label.

Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, and the others have been described as Chinese“sophists,” and there are indeed superficial similaritiesbetween them and the Greek sophists, at least as the two groups werecharacterized by their respective enemies. Their social role and thesubject matter of their inquiries were generally quite different.^[2] But both were interested in language and philosophical issuesinspired by reflection on language. Both taught rhetoric and arguedlawsuits. Both were attacked for arguing purely to win, for beingwilling to argue either side of any issue, and for propoundingparadoxes, all without regard for the facts. Their inquiries led a fewthinkers in each tradition toward relativism. At least some members ofboth groups were itinerant, the Greeks moving from place to placegiving public exhibitions and offering instruction, the Chinesetypically seeking to win the ear of rulers and influence politicalpolicy.

The disputers’ focal activity appears to have been a form ofpublic debate or persuasion called “disputation” or“distinction drawing” (bian), which often tookplace in the court of a regional lord or a state sovereign.Disputation appears to have been rooted partly in the practice oflitigation, partly in the rhetoric used by court advisors in the“explanations” (shuo, also“persuasions”) through which they tried to influencepolitical policy. Primarily a type of analogical argumentation,disputation, like much legal rhetoric, often took the form of citing aprecedent, analogy, or model (fa, also “law”) andexplaining why the case at hand should be treated similarly or not.^[3]

Disputation could be pursued for a variety of ends, some extolled byancient writers, some condemned. Constructively, it could be a meansof clarifying and defending the right way (dao). Through it,one could lead others to distinguishshi/fei (this/not-this,right/wrong) correctly and thus obtain knowledge. Of disputation inthis sense, Xunzi says that “the gentleman must engage indisputation” andThe Annals of Lü Buwei remarksthat in the course of study, one must occasionally engage in“disputation and persuasion” (bian shuo) in orderto expound the Way (dao).^[4] This would also be the sense in whichMencius explains that he has no choice but to engage in disputation, since asa follower of the sages he must attempt to rectify people’shearts and refute the pernicious sayings of Yang Zhu andMo Di (Mencius, 3B:9).^[5]

But disputation could also degenerate into a superficial game oftrying to outtalk the opponent, an idle contest of wits aimed atdefending sophistries, or even a simple quarrel. This side ofdisputation explains Mencius’s chagrined response when told hehas a reputation for being “fond of disputation” (3B:9).Early texts are uniformly disparaging about such empty or flippantdisputation.The Annals of Lü Buwei complains that“Those in the world who study engage in much disputation. Theirsayings are facile and expressions are upside-down. They don’tseek the facts (shi, the actual things, what is real). Theystrive to demolish each other, with victory as their [sole]purpose” (15.8/368). “Under Heaven” says thatdisputers “exaggerate others’ hearts and changeothers’ intentions. They can defeat others’ mouths, butcannot persuade their hearts.” As to Hui Shi, “He tookopposing others as the substance of his activity and desired to make aname for himself by defeating others; that’s why hecouldn’t get along with people” (cf. Graham 1981:284–85). Sima Qian, the Han historian who may have coined thelabel “School of Names,” says in his account of the sixschools that the disputers “determine things only by names andneglect people’s feelings.” They twist words so“people cannot get back to the thought” they were tryingto express (Shi Ji, Book 130). Practitioners of this sort ofantagonistic or frivolous disputation cared only for victory, even atthe cost of distorting the opponent’s point, and they defendedbizarre claims without regard for the facts.

For further discussion of disputation in the context of early Chinesephilosophy, see the supplementary document:

Disputation in Context

The next section will briefly explore the general themes that earlytexts associate with the disputers. We will then look more closely atthe doctrines of the four known figures theHan Historyassigns to the School of Names.

2. Main Themes

Early texts regularly associate the disputers with four themes.“The same and different” (tong yi) and“hard and white” (jian bai) are mentioned almostinvariably. “Deeming so the not-so, admissible theinadmissible” (ran bu ran, ke bu ke) and “thedimensionless” (wu hou) appear slightly less often. Agood example is this excerpt from “Autumn Waters,” Book 17of the Daoist anthologyZhuangzi, in which Gongsun Longhimself is depicted mentioning three of these themes:

When young, I studied the way of the former kings. When I grew up, Iunderstood the practice of benevolence and righteousness. I united thesame and different, separated hard from white, made so the not-so andadmissible the inadmissible. I confounded the wits of the hundredschools and exhausted the eloquence of countless speakers. I tookmyself to have achieved the ultimate. (cf. Graham 1981: 154)

What are “uniting the same and different,”“separating hard from white,” and “making so thenot-so and admissible the inadmissible”? Given the limitedevidence, we cannot be completely sure what these phrases—alongwith “the dimensionless”—allude to. But most likelythey denotetypes of sophisms or paradoxes, not specificstatements or doctrines.^[6] And early texts, especially the MohistDialectics, do giveus enough information to make reasonable conjectures about the generalissues they involve. (See the entry on theMohist Canons.)

2.1 Same and Different

As we saw above, “same” (tong) and“different” (yi) are central concepts in ancientChinese theories of language, knowledge, and disputation, asrepresented by the Mohists and Xunzi. According to the Mohists,“sameness” can refer to at least four types of relations:identity; part-whole relations; being grouped together or co-located;and having some intrinsic similarity and thus being part of the same“kind”. This last variety of “sameness” isprobably most important for our purposes here. Names names for“kinds” (lei)—one type of generalterm— are regarded as denoting all things or stuff(shi) that is “the same” in one or more respects,such as all horses, which share the same shape (xing) and appearance(mao). Speakers can use language to communicate because they arefamiliar with the kinds of similar things that words refer to, andthus upon hearing a word know what the thing referred to “islike.” The relations of “same” and“different” determine what counts as correct matching ofnames and stuff and thus what knowledge is. Disputation isfundamentally a process of debating whether the thing in question is“this” (shi) or “not-this”(fei), the same as or different from some model, paradigm, oranalogy. The issue of how to distinguish “same” from“different” is thus pivotal to Chinese philosophy oflanguage, epistemology, and disputation.

Some references to the disputers’ interest in “the sameand different,” then, may allude to legitimate, if widelymisunderstood, inquiries into the foundations of language andknowledge. Gongsun Long’s “uniting the same anddifferent,” on the other hand, probably refers to manipulatingstandards for distinguishing different kinds in order to producesophisms. The disputer could cite features of different kinds ofthings by which they could be treated as the same or features ofthings of the same kind by which they could be treated as different.(This strategy is suggested by the fifth thesis of Hui Shi, to bediscussed below.) Such shifting of criteria for distinguishingsameness from difference is illustrated by many of thedisputers’ sophisms. Among other examples, Hui Shi’s“The sky is as low as earth, mountains are level withmarshes” deems different things similar; some of the argumentsfor Gongsun Long’s “A white horse is not a horse”treat things of the same kind—horses and white horses—asdifferent, playing largely on the ambiguity between “same”in the sense of being of the same kind and “same” in thesense of identity.

Manipulating the same and the different alters the distinctions thatground our use of words and thus our standards of knowledge. (In themost extreme case, uniting everything into a “Great One”would leave us unable to communicate linguistically and eliminate allconceptual or propositional knowledge.) The notion that we can realignthe boundaries of the same and different without limit signals aradical skepticism about the existence of natural kinds. Indeed, itthreatens to leave us without any knowledge at all, since thestandards by which to judge whether one knows something are neverfixed. It also provides an approach to winning any disputation:instead of seeking objective criteria that fix the correctdistinctions between things, disputers just redraw the distinctionsbetween things or kinds in whatever way needed to establish theirclaim.

2.2 Hard and White

In later Mohist thought, “hard-white” or “as hard towhite” (jian bai) is a technical term for the relationbetween two things or two features of a thing that are inseparable and“mutually pervasive”—that is, they completelycoincide throughout the same spatial location.^[7] The paradigm of such features is the hardness and whiteness of acompletely white stone. Another example is the length and breadth ofan object (B4). Features that are “as hard to white”“fill” or “pervade” each other (B15). Thusthey are in a sense “two,” but unlike a pair of shoes, onecannot be taken away from the other (B4). The relation of “ashard to white” contrasts with that between two measured lengths,which cannot everywhere overlap without merging to form only a singlelength, instead of the original two, and with that between any twomutually exclusive features, such as being an ox and being a horse. Nosingle object can be both an ox and a horse, but an object can be bothhard and white.

“Separating hard and white,” then, is treating mutuallypervasive features as if they were separable or detachable, like twospatially distinct objects or two removable physical parts of a whole.(As Graham points out (2003: 173), in contexts where “hard andwhite” is mentioned alone, with no reference to“separating” the two, the phrase may simply be a metaphorfor logic-chopping or hair-splitting debate in general.) A plausibleexample of “separating hard and white” is GongsunLong’s treating the color of a white horse as a thing separablefrom the shape, as when the text reads, “The white is not thehorse. A white horse is a horse together with white”(“White Horse Discourse”).

2.3 So and Not-So

“So” (ran) is frequently used to indicate that apredicate is true of a thing. It can also mean “the case”or “how things are.” According to Mohist Canon A71,something is “so” when its features are similar to a modelfor a certain kind of thing. “Admissible” (ke)refers to statements that are semantically or logically“possible”—that is, free of logical or pragmaticcontradiction. In contexts concerning action, “admissible”refers to what is permissible by moral, social, prudential, or otherstandards. So “making so the not-so, admissible theinadmissible” refers to collapsing or reversing conventionaldistinctions governing language use, judgment, morality, and courtesy.The practical upshot is roughly the same as that of “unitingsame and different,” but the latter refers to kind relationsbetween objects, “making so the not-so” to speech andaction. “Making admissible the inadmissible” was thetrademark of Deng Xi, the earliest figure associated with the Schoolof Names, who became famous for his doctrine of “both sidesadmissible” (liang ke).

Preventing the “not-so” from being treated as“so” is precisely the point of “correctingnames”:

If names are correct, order obtains; if names are misplaced, disorder.What cause names to be misplaced are dissolute explanations(shuo, also “persuasions” or“arguments”). If explanations are dissolute, then theinadmissible is deemed admissible and the not-so so, the not-right isdeemed right and not-wrong wrong. (The Annals of LüBuwei, 16.8/400)

Collapsing the distinction between so and not-so, admissible andinadmissible is a prominent topic in the famous “Discourse onEqualizing Things,” Book 2 of theZhuangzi. Though generally critical of the disputers (among whom its author maynevertheless once have numbered), the text agrees that suchdistinctions can be collapsed or reversed, depending on what standardsof judgment we choose to adopt. It is thus firmly opposed to theorthodoxy, represented by Analects (see the entry on theConfucius), the Mohists,Xunzi, and Lü Buwei, that clear, fixed public standards must be set forthe use of names, since without them, patterns of use will vary andsocial chaos is likely to ensue. TheZhuangzi suggests thatdisorder does not invariably follow from “linguisticliberalism,” and indeed that fixed standards are unattainableand unnecessary for communication.

2.4 The Dimensionless

The fourth theme, the dimensionless (wu hou, literally“lacking thickness”), is more obscure, mentioned only oncein theXunzi and once in theAnnals of LüBuwei. The dimensionless probably refers to a geometric point.According to the Mohists, the dimensionless does not“fill” anything (A65). A starting point (duan) isthe dimensionless tip of a solid object (A61). Allusions to thedisputers sometimes contrast the dimensionless with “thedimensioned” (you hou, “having thickness”),which the Mohists explain as having something it is bigger than (A55).The dimensionless is probably associated with the disputers because ofHui Shi’s paradox that “The dimensionless cannot beaccumulated, yet its size is a thousand miles.” (Points cannotbe accumulated, yet a great girth or length is the sum of the pointsthat constitute it.) In passages referring to the disputers and theirsophistries, “the dimensionless” probably alludes to anyparadox arising from the concept of a geometric point or aninfinitesimal.

3. Deng Xi

Deng Xi (d. 501 B.C.E.) was China’s earliest renowned lawyer andrhetorician. He has been called the “founding father of theChinese logical tradition” (Harbsmeier 1998: 286), though thisis probably an overstatement, since we lack evidence that he undertookany explicit study of argumentation or that he influenced the theoriesof the Mohists or Xunzi. As Harbsmeier (287) rightly points out,however, Deng Xi epitomizes the roots of Chinese disputation in legalrhetoric. He establishes a link between disputation and litigationthat continues throughout the classical period. Indeed, his reputationas a legal and political gadfly may have contributed to laterauthoritarian thinkers’ attitude that litigators disrupt socialorder and should be banned.

All of our very limited information about Deng Xi is second-hand,comprising a one-line entry in theZuo Commentary, curtattacks on him in theXunzi, three anecdotes inTheAnnals of Lü Buwei, and a few stories in texts of later date.^[8] According to theHan History, he was the author of twoscrolls (pian) of writings, neither of which survives. TheZuo Commentary (Duke Ding, Year 9), the earliest and mostreliable of our sources, reports that he composed a penal code onbamboo strips, perhaps drawn up as an alternative to the official codeof his home state of Zheng. By the time of the Han dynasty, however,the code had been lost.

Xunzi alludes to Deng Xi’s thought in three places, each timepairing him withHui Shi, though the men were from different states and lived about 200 yearsapart. This incongruity suggests that the pair are being usediconically to represent a certain general intellectual style ororientation. Thus the sophistries Xunzi ascribes to them may not betheir invention, or at least not Deng Xi’s. Xunzi describes themas “fond of dealing with strange doctrines and playing withbizarre expressions” (6.6), of which he gives these examples(3.1):

Mountains and abysses are level.
Heaven and earth are alongside each other.
Qi [on the east coast] and Qin [in the far west] areadjacent.
Enter through the ear.
Exit through the mouth.
Hooks have whiskers.
Eggs have feathers.

The first two of these are similar to paradoxes attributed to Hui Shiin “Under Heaven” (Zhuangzi, Book 33); we willdiscuss them in the section onHui Shi. The seventh is also listed in “Under Heaven,” but notattributed to Hui Shi there. This suggests that the list of paradoxesassociated with him was still fluid at the time of Xunzi’swriting. The third is similar to the spatial paradoxes of Hui Shi,also to be discussed below. The sixth is obscure; some commentatorsemend “hooks” to a similar graph for “oldwomen.” The fourth and fifth are puzzling, since they are notobviously paradoxes or sophisms. Commentators often combine them intoa single sentence, but in the text all seven seem to be independent,three-word sentences.

Xunzi’s fundamental complaint about Hui Shi and Deng Xi is thattheir “frivolous investigations” do not conform totraditional ritual propriety and righteousness (3.1), an unsurprisingcriticism given the Confucian’s commitment to ritualtraining—and thus conventional standards for the correct use ofnames—along with his general disdain for science andintellectual curiosity (12.3). They are “incisive” and“clever,” but their ideas are “useless,” yieldfew concrete results, and have no application to government (6.6).They have “no regard for the facts about right and wrong, so andnot-so” (8.3). In the eyes of a 3rd-century B.C.E. Confuciantraditionalist, then, the 6th-century Deng Xi was emblematic of abright, talented person who wastes his energy on pointlessintellectual games and sophistry, perhaps with a deliberate disregardfor the truth, instead of earnestly committing himself to moraltraining and political administration.

For an account of Deng Xi’s legal and political career, see thissupplementary document:

Deng Xi’s Exploits

4. Yin Wen

Little is known of Yin Wen (fl. late 4th century B.C.E.), and it isunclear why theHan History classifies him with the“School of Names.” Perhaps the one scroll of writings byhim mentioned in the “Bibliographical Treatise” was aboutlanguage. What little information we have about him comes mainly fromtwo sources, the “Under Heaven” essay andThe Annalsof Lü Buwei, both of which are considerably later than hislifetime and thus must be taken mainly to be reporting legend. Neithertext attributes to him views on language or disputation. “UnderHeaven” links him to Song Xing, his teacher or colleague, andthe pair were among the many scholars who gathered at Jixia in Qiunder the patronage of King Xuan (r. 319–301 B.C.E.).^[9] Xunzi rebuts several of Song Xing’s doctrines at length butdoes not mention Yin Wen.

“Under Heaven” portrays Yin Wen and Song Xing as tirelesscrusaders devoted to saving the world by advocating non-aggression, alife of few, easily satisfied desires, and a tolerant, unbiased frameof mind. To promote these doctrines, they “traveled the world,persuading the high and instructing the low.” In relations withothers, to save people from fighting they taught that “to beinsulted is no disgrace,” and to save the world from war, theytaught “forbid aggression and put troops to rest.” (As thename suggests, the Warring States era was marked by frequent,catastrophic wars.) Concerning the self, they held that the inherentdesires are few and shallow, a doctrine that, if true, would removemany potential reasons for conflict. “Their starting point indealing with things was avoiding enclosures,” or psychologicalbarriers due to prejudice or dogmatic commitment which tend to resultin biased or one-sided judgments. Such “enclosures” arefrequently also a source of conflict, since they may prevent one fromappreciating all relevant features of a situation or understandingothers’ point of view. Yin Wen and Song Xing emphasized that theheart itself has a kind of “conduct,” independent ofexternal conduct. In their anti-war stance and emphasis on benefit,they display affinities with Mohist thought: “If something wasof no advantage to the world, understanding it was not as good asabandoning it.” But the doctrines of tolerance and avoiding biasare genuinely novel, and are probably the reason Song Xing is singledout for praise in theZhuangzi (Book 1).

The Annals of Lü Buwei depicts Yin Wen in an audiencewith King Min of Qi (r. 300–284 B.C.E.), defending the doctrinethat to be insulted is not disgraceful. (Again, we should keep in mindthat the details of the story may be mostly later invention.) Theanecdote vividly illustrates several of the main techniques by whichthe disputers conducted their craft. Yin Wen identifies distinguishingfeatures for calling things by a certain name and employs models andanalogies to persuade the king. The context of the passage is adiscussion of “correcting names.” Because he failed tocorrect his own use of names, King Min knew enough to be fond of“officers” but not how to distinguish the sort of peopleproperly referred to as “officers.” (Shi,“officer,” was a social rank similar to“knight,” but by this era it had lost most of its martialconnotation.) Yin Wen proposes that “officers” aredistinguished by four types of conduct: they are filial in servingtheir parents, loyal in serving their ruler, trustworthy towardfriends, and brotherly toward neighbors. The king agrees, indicatingalso that this is just the sort of person he would appoint as agovernment official. Yin Wen asks whether the king would still appointsuch a person supposing that, on being insulted in public, he did notfight. The king replies that to be insulted is a disgrace; he wouldnot appoint a disgraced person.

Yin Wen said: “Though when insulted he does not fight, he hasnot strayed from the four types of conduct. Not straying from the fourtypes of conduct, this is not losing that by which he is an officer.If, not losing that by which he is an officer, in the one case theKing would appoint him an official, in the other case not, then iswhat we earlier called an ‘officer’ indeed an‘officer’?”
The King had no response.
Yin Wen said, “Suppose there is a man here, when governing hisstate, if people do wrong he condemns them, if people do no wrong hecondemns them; if people commit a crime he punishes them, if peoplecommit no crime he punishes them. Then would it be admissible for himto despise the people for being hard to govern?”
The King said, “Not admissible.”
Yin Wen said, “…The King’s command says: ‘Onewho kills another dies, one who injures another is maimed.’ Thepeople, fearing the King’s command, dare not fight even whendeeply insulted; this is fulfilling the King’s command. Yet theKing says, ‘Not daring to fight when insulted, this is adisgrace.’ Now to call it a disgrace, it’s thisthat’s called ‘condemning it’. In the one case toappoint a person as an official, in the other not, this is deeming ita crime. This is the King punishing someone when he has committed nocrime.”
The King had no response. (16.8/402)

King Min is presented as an example of someone whose use of names,such as ‘officer’, is incorrect: name and form do not“fit.” As a result, “those he calls worthy areunworthy, what he calls good is depraved, and what he calls admissibleis perverse.” Interestingly, the text employs terminology thatdovetails with later Mohist semantic theory and epistemology. Itexplains that the King did not know the “reason” or“basis” for deeming people “officers,” usingthe same term as the Mohists—gu—and alludes tohis poor ability to classify or “sort” (lun)things into kinds, which in later Mohist epistemology is the mark ofunderstanding. Though theAnnals story does not make thispoint explicitly, we can link the King’s erroneous“sorting” to Yin Wen’s doctrine of “avoidingenclosures.” The King’s judgments about officers are“enclosed” by his dogmatic conviction that to be insultedis a disgrace and that an officer must answer challenges to his honorwith violence.

5. Hui Shi

Hui Shi (fl. 313 B.C.E.) is a complex figure, familiar and indistinctby turns. He is mentioned in at least eight early texts. Only two, theXunzi and theZhuangzi “Under Heaven”essay, give any information about his philosophical views, and theymerely attribute a series of theses to him without recording hisarguments. For a review of biographical information about him, see thesupplementary document:

Life of Hui Shi

We have no direct evidence of Hui Shi’s views on language andmeaning. But as Graham points out (1989: 81), a story preserved in aHan dynasty text suggests that he may have held a view similar to thatof the Mohists (Canon B70) (see the entries onMohism and theMohist Canons). Language enables us to communicate by indicating that the objectsreferred to are similar to things we already know, the kinds ofobjects conventionally denoted by those words.

A client said to the King of Liang, “In talking about things,Hui Shi is fond of using analogies. If you don’t let him useanalogies, he won’t be able to speak.” The King said,“Agreed.” The next day he saw Hui Shi and said, “Iwish that when you speak about things, you speak directly, withoutusing analogies.” Hui Shi said, “Suppose there’s aman here who doesn’t know what adan is. If he says,‘What are the features of adan like?’ and weanswer, saying, ‘The features of adan are like adan,’ then would that communicate it?” The Kingsaid, “It would not.” “Then if we instead answered,‘The features of adan are like a bow, but with abamboo string,’ then would he know?” The King said,“It can be known.” Hui Shi said, “Explanations areinherently a matter of using what a person knows to communicate whathe doesn’t know, thereby causing him to know it. Now if you say,‘No analogies,’ that’s inadmissible.” The Kingsaid, “Good!” (Shuo Yuan, Ch. 11; cf. Graham1989: 81)

As we would expect from mainstream Chinese theories of language anddisputation, Hui Shi is accustomed to explaining things by appeal toanalogies. Indeed, his answer to the king is itself an analogy, or atleast an illustrative example (the Chinese word for“analogy,”pi, refers to both). We can alsonotice from the story that in seeking to learn about somethingunknown, one does not ask for adefinition of the object, butfor a description of what its features “are like.” Thestandard response is to cite a familiar analogue and then point outthe differences between the unknown object and the familiar one.Communication proceeds not by knowing “meanings,” but byknowing how to distinguish similar from different kinds of things.^[10]

“Under Heaven” is overwhelmingly critical of Hui Shi:

Hui Shi daily applied his wits in disputation with the others, butonly in comparison with the disputers of the world was he exceptional,that’s the bottom of it.…Weak in virtue, strong onexternal things, his path was crooked. Viewed from the perspective ofthe Way (dao) of Heaven and Earth, Hui Shi’s abilitieswere like the labors of a mosquito or gnat. Even with respect toexternal things, what use were they? (cf. Graham 1981: 285)

The text concludes that he wasted his talents “chasing after themyriad things,” in his many directions of inquiry, instead ofconcentrating on a single path. As a result, he only “ended witha name for being good at disputation.” This dismissal is less anobjective evaluation of Hui Shi’s inquiries than an expressionof the intellectual orientation of the essay’s Han dynastyauthor, who values only moral cultivation and commitment to an ethicaland politicaldao (way), not inquiry for inquiry’ssake. It seems likely that we would have considered Hui Shi’sexplanations of “the myriad things” to be of greatinterest.

5.1 The Ten Theses

Our only detailed information about Hui Shi’s doctrines comesfrom two sources: the seven statements attributed jointly to him andDeng Xi in theXunzi (3.1), which we looked at briefly above, andthe “Under Heaven” essay, which attributes ten theses tohim, some paradoxical. “Under Heaven” was probably writtenlong after Hui Shi’s death, and only one of its ten thesesappears in the much earlierXunzi list. Hence we cannot besure the ten theses were indeed Hui Shi’s; some or all may havebeen the work of anonymous followers who adopted him as theirfigurehead. Fortunately, this historical issue is irrelevant to theirphilosophical interest. Either way, the theses are intriguing ideasformulated by one or more Chinese thinkers probably sometime duringthe late 4th or the 3rd century B.C.E. The arguments for the theseshave been lost, and as a result some are extremely obscure. But othersare reasonably clear or at least open to educated conjecture.

The ten theses revolve around the theme that distinctions are notinherently fixed, but relative to a perspective, and thus can beredrawn or collapsed as we like simply by shifting perspectives.Several of the paradoxes focus on negating commonsense distinctions,in particular spatial and temporal ones, partly by appeal to therelativity of comparisons and partly by appeal to indexicals (Hansen1992: 262). (A high mountain is not high when seen from space; if Iwalk southward, a spot that is south of me now will in seconds benorth of me.) The fifth thesis, on “the same” and“different,” seems to provide a key to several, perhapsall of the others. It indicates that on some scale or another,anything can be deemed “the same” or“different.”

The theses are presented in “Under Heaven” as follows:

Hui Shi had many directions (fang, also“methods”). His books filled five carts; hisdao(way) was contrary; his sayings did not hit the mark. Intending totabulate things, he said:
The ultimately great has no outside, call it the Great One. Theultimately small has no inside, call it the Small One.
The dimensionless cannot be accumulated, its size is a thousandmiles.
Heaven is as low as earth, mountains are level with marshes.
Just as the sun is at noon, it is declining. Just as things arealive, they are dying.
The same on a large scale but different from what is the same on asmall scale, this is called “same and different on a smallscale.” The myriad things all being the same or all beingdifferent, this is called “same and different on a largescale.”
The south has no limit yet has a limit.
Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday.
Linked rings can be disconnected.
I know the center of the world. It is north of Yan [thenorthernmost state] and south of Yue [the southernmost].
Universally care for the myriad things. Heaven and earth are oneunit.
Hui Shi took these to be of great significance. He displayed them tothe world to let the disputers know of them, and the disputers of theworld enjoyed them with him.

It is unclear whether the order of the sequence is deliberate, butthis seems unlikely, since the temporal paradoxes are not placedtogether, and it is hard to see how thesis 8, about the rings, fitsinto a deliberate, argumentative sequence. On the other hand, the lastthesis, the only one with ethical import, reads like a grandconclusion and so probably belongs in the final position. The firstforms a natural opening, with the “Great One” portendingthe “one unit” of the tenth, and the second may about oneof the notions introduced in the first, the “Small One” orinfinitesimal. The fifth is among the clearest and is probably thebasis for several of the others. Some scholars have suggested that thelist breaks into two parts, with the fifth thesis summarizing thefirst half, but this interpretation seems forced. The first, fifth,and tenth are of course neither paradoxes nor sophistries, butrelatively straightforward philosophical theses. Thesis 3 is a variantof the first two paradoxes attributed to Hui Shi and Deng Xi inXunzi (3.1), listed above in the section onDeng Xi. With those two exceptions, the paradoxes attributed to Hui Shi hereare considerably more interesting philosophically than those Xunzimentions.

The theses are obscure enough that, especially without knowing HuiShi’s original arguments, any close interpretation must bepartly speculative. Different readers are bound to arrive at differentconclusions. With the possible exception of theses 1, 5, and 10, thereis simply not enough contextual information to offer an authoritativeargument for any interpretation, though at least some readings can beruled out for failing to cohere with any recognized issues or theoriesin early Chinese philosophical discourse. Here we will offer atentative explanation of each thesis grounded in the philosophicalcontext sketched in “Background and Overview” above.^[11] The theses divide fairly naturallyinto four groups, which we will discuss one by one.

Group 1: Basic Principles

The first group comprises theses 1, 5, and 10, which statephilosophical doctrines about ontology and ethics, not paradoxes, andwhich are relatively easy to understand. All three deal with theplurality of possible ways to distinguish things, either as “thesame” or “different” or as parts of a whole, rangingfrom the smallest possible part—the infinitesimal—to thelargest possible whole, the “Great One,” which includeseverything in the cosmos. How we distinguish things is relative to thescale or perspective we adopt. Thesis 5 is slightly obscure, but itseems to describe the relative or perspectival nature of relations ofsimilarity and difference. Two things can be the same on a largescale, or in some general respect, while at the same time beingdifferent on a smaller scale, or in some more specific respect. Forexample, two animals can be the same in being of the kindhorse, yet be different in color. Anything can be similar ordifferent on some scale or other. If we distinguish finely, everyindividual horse is different, while if we distinguish coarsely,horses are no different from other animals, or even from all otherthings. There seems to be an unlimited range of levels on which we candistinguish relations of sameness and difference, including deemingevery individual different or the myriad kinds of things the same.

Because the same/different relation comprises both kind relations andpart-whole relations, Thesis 5 can also be taken to include part-wholerelations. Deeming all things “the same” is deeming themall parts of the same whole. Deeming them “different” canbe understood as separating them off as individual parts of thatwhole. To the extent that the other theses are based on relations ofsameness versus difference and part versus whole, then, thesis 5 mayexplain them all.

Thesis 1 is nearly self-explanatory. How we distinguishthings—in this case, how we even count “1”—isrelative to some standard of division. The thesis concerns summing anddividing. The whole cosmos can be summed into a whole to form theGreat One. Or it can be divided down to the smallest possible unit,the Small One, probably a geometric point.

Thesis 10 presents an ethical principle tied together with anontological one, which presumably is meant to justify it. Sinceeverything can be summed into a whole—the Great One—heavenand earth and the myriad things contained therein can be considered asingle “body” or “unit.”^[12] (In classical texts, the expression ‘heaven and earth’refers to the cosmos, including not only the sky and earth but theentire natural world.) The ethical principle follows intuitively. Ifeverything is one unit, then any care (ai, also“love”) we have for ourselves should also be directed atall of the other myriad things (wu, “things,” or,perhaps more specifically, “creatures”), sincefundamentally we are all parts of the same vast “unit” or“body.” This ethical stance takes the ideal ofimpartiality even farther than the Mohists. Their position is that wemust care inclusively for every person in the world. Thesis 10advocates caring for everything as well.

Group 2: Infinitesimals and Part-whole

The second group concerns infinitesimals and part-whole relations.Like all seven of the remaining theses, these are paradoxes. Thesis 2is fairly clear. Geometrical points are dimensionless. The sum of twopoints is still a point; hence points cannot be added one to anotherto form an object with thickness or length. Yet anything withdimensions is somehow constituted by points and divisible into them.^[13]

In this group we can also include thesis 8, though with much lessconfidence, as it is the most obscure of the ten. We will tentativelysuppose—following Harbsmeier (1998: 296) and Graham (1989:79)—that this thesis too is based on infinitesimals. The paradoxmight then be explained in one of two ways. First, if the linked ringsare thought of as circles, formed by points on a plane, then they haveno thickness. They appear linked when viewed from above, but on thesurface of the plane nothing blocks them from being pulled apart. Thesecond explanation extends the same idea to three dimensions. If, asthesis 2 suggests, two three-dimensional rings are constituted bydimensionless points, then they can be pulled apart: since each pointtakes up no space, there is nothing preventing the rings from passingthrough each other. These interpretations are highly speculative,however. Without further contextual information, even if this sort ofexplanation makes sense of the paradox, we have no particular reasonto believe it is correct.

Group 3: Spatial Relations

The third group are based on spatial relations, including comparisonsof size. Thesis 3, the only one also attributed to Hui Shi in theXunzi, can be taken to illustrate the idea that things deemeddifferent on one scale can be deemed the same on another. By someperspective or standard, such as that of the infinitely vast GreatOne, the difference between the height of the sky and the earth ormountains and marshes may be insignificant. From that perspective, thedifferences between mountains and marshes may be only what thesis 5calls “differences on a small scale,” while the two countas “the same” on a large scale. Thesis 6 is especiallyobscure. Thematically, we can point out that like several of the othertheses, it attempts to collapse a distinction, in this case betweenthe finite and infinite. As Hansen (1992: 262) points out, thesis 6,along with 7 and 9, all focus on indexicals. Since the referents ofindexicals shift from context to context, they are a vivid example ofthe fluidity of the language-world relation and the distinctionbetween “this” (shi) and “not”(fei). This suggests at least two ways to understand thethesis, both too speculative to be considered justified, but perhapsat least roughly indicative of its point. One is that if a particulardirection is to besouth, it must have a limit, or else thefour directions all merge into one and south is no longer south, sinceit is not distinguished from the other three. Another possibility isthat since the directions of the compass are all indexical, relativeto our point of reference, south always has a limit: the point atwhich we stand.

Thesis 9 is another of those involving indexicals, in this case“center,” and is also very obscure. The thesis claims thatthe center of the world is north of the northernmost state and southof the southernmost. Possibly the thesis is a variant of thesis 3,that the sky is as low as the earth. The point there was that from theperspective of the infinitely vast whole, the difference between theheight of the sky and earth may be insignificant. Thesis 9 could bemaking the analogous point that the distance between Yan and Yue isinsignificant. Another possibility is that if space is infinitelylarge, then every standpoint can count as the center (Graham 1989: 79,after the 3rd-century Sima Biao). Possibly this thesis is a variant ofthe same idea as the third thesis in theXunzi list, whichwas that the far west and far east are “adjacent.”

Group 4: Temporal Relations

The fourth group deal with temporal relations. Thesis 4 is paradoxicalbut easily intelligible. Just as from one perspective the sun is atits highest, from another perspective it is beginning to set. Just asthings are living and growing, they are also coming closer to death.Again, the plurality of perspectives threatens to collapse thedistinction between two apparent opposites, living and dying. Incomparison with thesis 4, thesis 7 is extremely obscure. Clearly, itattempts to collapse the difference between today and yesterday orpresent and past. Interestingly, this paradox combines spatial andtemporal relations, since in addition to the distinction between todayand yesterday, there is the spatial movement from here to Yue (a statein the south). Hence Harbsmeier (298) and Graham (79) both propose tointerpret the paradox in terms of the infinite divisibility of spaceand time, suggesting that if I cross the border into Yue precisely atthe instant when today turns into tomorrow, the result is that I amsimultaneously leaving one state today and arriving in the othertomorrow. Another possibility is to point out thatxi, theword rendered “yesterday,” is also commonly used to meansimply “the past” or “previously.” So thesis 7can be restated, “Today I go to Yue, but I arrive in thepast.” The import of the paradox could be that all“arriving” is always in the past: whenever we arrivesomewhere, our journey is completed, or “past.”

General Theme

Are the ten theses merely a loose collection, or are they intended tosupport a particular conclusion? Clearly, several of them can be takento follow from thesis 5, about the relativity of sameness anddifference. Thesis 5 can thus be treated as a premise or guidingprinciple and might be the main theme. Another possibility is that theten are intended to culminate in the final thesis, the only one withmoral import, which is not relativistic. It states that heaven andearth—all of the natural world—form a monistic unit, andso our moral caring should extend to all things. The question of theoverall significance of the set in effect boils down to the questionof whether, given the overall context, thesis 10 has a privilegedstatus over thesis 5 and the others. From Hu Shih (1922) on, manyinterpreters have suggested it does.^[14] Clearly, the textual evidence is so sparse that there is no questionof deciding the issue conclusively. However, there are at least threegood reasons for favoring the monistic interpretation. First, theplacement of thesis 10 at the end makes it natural to read it as theconclusion or main theme. Second, not only is thesis 10 placed last,it is the only thesis with ethical significance. A plausibleexplanation is that whoever arranged the ten theses saw the ethicalview as emerging out of the others. Third, and most important, unliketheses 1 and 5, thesis 10 seems to make an absolutist claim. If itwere parallel to theses 1 and 5, we might expect it to present aperspectival claim, such as that heaven and earth are in one respectone body and in another respect many. But instead it simply assertsthat they are one.

Tentatively adopting the monistic interpretation, then, we canreconstruct the basic “Hui Shi view” roughly asfollows:

The relations of sameness and difference that underlie all use oflanguage can be redrawn in indefinitely many ways, all of which may bejustified relative to one standard or another.
So no single way of drawing distinctions is fixed by natureitself.
Hence the world in itself draws no distinctions at all.Distinctions are established by human convention, in which weestablish norms for distinguishing the same and different one way oranother. Apart from these norms, there are no absolute, privilegednatural kinds or distinctions.
Therefore, in itself, all of nature forms a single whole. (And asparts of this whole, we should care for all things.)

Several comments about this view are in order. First, the thrust ofthe view is not that distinctions are “unreal,” in thesense of being illusory, false, or merely an aspect of appearance, notunderlying reality. It is just the opposite: countless differentschemes of distinctions areall real, with the result thatnone are privileged. Since no scheme is privileged, the“neutral” or “default” view—that of theworld in itself—is monistic, drawing no distinctions at all. Onthe other hand, another way of understanding “real” is asmeaning “fixed by nature itself.” If we take“real” this way, we can agree with Hansen (262) that theHui Shi position adopts a “non-realist” attitude towarddistinctions: it holds that no single scheme of distinctions is fixedby the world. However, if the monistic interpretation is correct, thenthe Hui Shi positionis realist in this sense with respect tothe “one unit” or “Great One,” the “nullscheme” consisting of the absence of any distinctions. Thatschemeis fixed by nature itself.

Second, the Hui Shi view does not hold that, as Graham proposes,“Since division leads to contradiction don’t divide atall” (1989: 79). Far from regarding contradictions as a problem,it embraces them. It explains them by appeal to constantly shiftingperspectives or standards for distinguishing same and different.

Since Hui Shi’s monism might recall that of the Eleatics (cf. Hu1922, Graham 1989), it is worth clarifying the similarities anddifferences between the two. The similarities are superficial: bothdevelop a form of absolute monism grounded in reflection aboutlanguage or thought and its relation to reality. But the arguments forand consequences of the two views are fundamentally different. Thestarting point for Parmenides’s monism is reflection on theconcept of ‘being’ or ‘the real’, specificallythe claim that what is real must necessarily be. From this he drawsthe conclusion that what is real must be ungenerable, imperishable,indivisible, and unchanging. Thus, in contrast to the eternal,unchanging world intelligible through reason, the inconstant, changingworld of everyday perceptual experience is in some sense not“real.” By contrast, the Hui Shi view starts from a kindof radical perspectivalism about distinctions. It argues that since nostandard for drawing distinctions has a privileged, absolute status,the only way to draw distinctions given by reality itself is not todraw any at all. Reality is not regarded as indivisible andunchanging, nor is the changing world of sense experience in any sense“unreal.” Rather, reality is divisible in indefinitelymany ways. All of the resulting distinctions are “real” inthe sense that the features of things on which they are based indeedexist. The distinctions are not delusory. The problem is that neitherare they privileged or fixed: they can be replaced by alternativeschemes of distinctions. The only privileged scheme is monism, drawingno distinctions at all.^[15]

Is this move from perspectivalism about distinctions to a kind ofmonism justified? Hansen argues that it is not. His interpretation ofthe argument is that it moves from the claim that we cannot know whatdistinctions are ultimately real to the conclusion that nodistinctions are real (262). The move is via the hidden,verificationist premise that a distinction exists only if we can knowthat it does. Hence Hansen suggests that the Hui Shi view is based ona form of “verification fallacy,” which confuses what wecan know with what is real (263).

Hansen is probably right to hold that monism does not follow validlyfrom Hui Shi’s premises. All that follows is that no one schemefor drawing distinctions can be justified absolutely: Justificationmust always be contextual. But it seems unlikely that the text commitsthe fallacy he describes. The ten theses do not mention epistemicissues. Certainly there is no explicit skeptical claim that we cannotknow which distinctions are ultimately real. Rather, there is only thesuggestion, in thesis 5, that there may be uncountably many ways ofdrawing distinctions, set alongside a series of examples that collapseconventional distinctions. So, rather than committing averificationist fallacy, it may be that the Hui Shi view is simplyinconsistent. On the basis of thesis 5, Hui Shi should hold any schemeof distinctions may be deemed “admissible” or“inadmissible,” by reference to some standard or other,yet no scheme is privileged,including the scheme thatconsists in drawing no distinctions at all. Instead, if the monisticinterpretation is correct, he mistakenly takes the “GreatOne” or “one unit” view to be an exception to this rule.^[16] The mistake is understandable, since drawing no distinctions at allmight seem to be a way of circumventing the perspectival nature ofdistinctions. It is not, however, since strictly speaking it remainsone among other ways of drawing distinctions.

“Under Heaven” lists 21 more paradoxes, which “thedisputers used to respond to Hui Shi without end for their wholelives.” All lack explanations, making some impenetrably obscure.For interpretations of a handful of the relatively tractable ones,along with speculations about a few of the others, see the followingsupplementary document:

Miscellaneous Paradoxes

Despite their obscurity, at least some of the theses attributed to HuiShi and a few of the other paradoxes and sophistries collected in“Under Heaven” probably grow out of legitimate theoreticalissues and are of genuine philosophical interest. By contrast, when weturn to Gongsun Long, we encounter a disputer who may have beendevoted to sophistry purely for sophistry’s sake. We cannot besure of this, of course, but what we can say is that Gongsun Long wonfame by advocating a claim that any competent speaker of his languagewould have judged obviously false, namely that “a white horse isnot a horse.”

6. Gongsun Long

Gongsun Long (c. 320–250 B.C.E.) was a retainer to the Lord ofPingyuan (d. 252 B.C.E.) in the northern state of Zhao. Anecdotesabout him are found in theZhuangzi andThe Annals ofLü Buwei, in which he is depicted advising King Hui of Zhao(r. 298–266 B.C.E.) against war (18.1, 18.7) and in disputationwith Kong Chuan, a descendent of Confucius, at the home of the Lord ofPingyuan (18.5). He is mentioned in “Under Heaven” as aleading disputer and in the Han dynastyRecords of the GrandHistorian (Book 74) as undertaking disputation about the hard andwhite and the same and different. Intriguingly, theAnnalsdepicts him citing the Mohist principle of “all-inclusivecare” (jian ai) to King Hui. Together with his anti-warstance, this suggests that he was influenced by and may once havenumbered among the Mohists. TheXunzi does not criticize himby name but does cite a version of his white horse sophism in a listof incorrect uses of names (22.3).

In one anecdote, Gongsun Long is shown applying his cleverness to helprescue a state from attack. Zhao, his state, had formed a treaty withQin to assist each other in anything either wished to do. Qinproceeded to attack Wei, Zhao’s neighbor. Zhao wished to rescueWei, but Qin sent an envoy to the king of Zhao to complain.

The King of Qin was displeased and sent an envoy to reproach the Kingof Zhao, saying, “The treaty says, ‘Whatever Qin wishes todo, Zhao will assist it; whatever Zhao wishes to do, Qin will assistit.’ Now Qin wishes to attack Wei, yet Zhao wishes to rescue it.This is not what we agreed on.” The King of Zhao told the Lordof Pingyuan about it. The Lord of Pingyuan told Gongsun Long about it.Gongsun Long said, “We too can dispatch an envoy to reproach theKing of Qin, saying, ‘Zhao wishes to rescue Wei, but now theKing of Qin alone does not assist Zhao. This is not what we agreedon.’” (The Annals of Lü Buwei, 18.5/457)

Another anecdote is valuable for what it suggests about the nature ofGongsun Long’s disputations. Gongsun Long debates with anopponent, Kong Chuan, at the residence of the Lord of Pingyuan. Withgreat cleverness, he argues for the claim that “John Doe hasthree ears.” (In Chinese, plurals are unmarked, so the sophistcan assert of any normal two-eared person, such as John Doe, that he“has ear(s),” and also that he has a left ear and a rightear. Therefore he has “three ears.”) Eventually, KongChuan is unable to reply.

The next day, Kong Chuan came to court. The Lord of Pingyuan said tohim, “Yesterday, Gongsun Long’s speech was extremelyclever.” Kong Chuan said, “That’s so. He was nearlyable to make John Doe have three ears. Although he could do so,it’s a difficult claim to accept. May I ask a question of you,your Lordship? Claiming that John Doe has three ears is extremelydifficult and in reality is wrong. Claiming that John Doe has two earsis extremely easy and in reality is right. I wonder whether yourLordship will follow what is easy and right, or what is difficult andwrong?” (Annals, 18.5/457)

Gongsun Long’s disputation is perceived as plainly not fitting“reality” (shi, also the “stuff”spoken of). It is an exercise in cleverness, a kind of trickperformance in which the disputer attempts to make a case for a claimthat everyone knows does not fit its object. Harbsmeier has rightlyemphasized this point in arguing that further attention to GongsunLong’s social and historical context is needed if we are tounderstand the white horse sophism properly (1998: 300–301). Hesuggests that Gongsun Long probably belonged to a class ofentertainers at Chinese courts who performed various skills or tricks.His was to prove, over any and all objections, that a white horse isnot a horse. His sophistries may have been intended primarily as akind of light entertainment, not as expressions of a principledphilosophical position. They touch on philosophical issues, such asdiscriminating the same and different, but there is no reason toexpect them to demonstrate cogent reasoning based on a coherentsemantic or logical theory. The truth may be just the opposite: Theycould have been intended to be whimsical and amusing, even comical.The “White Horse” dialogue may be a record of the sort ofarguments Gongsun Long would offer in his performances.

TheHan History lists Gongsun Long as the author of fourteenscrolls of writings. The extant text calledGongsun Longzicomprises only five short dialogues and an introduction, which isobviously of relatively late date. A. C. Graham argued persuasivelythat three of the dialogues are not Warring States texts, but muchlater forgeries pieced together partly from misunderstood bits of theMohistDialectics. Probably only the “WhiteHorse,” the essay “Indicating Things,” and a bit ofanother dialogue are genuine pre-Han texts.^[17] We will look at the first of these below (the second is treated in asupplement at the end of this section).

TheGongsun Longzi has inspired a vast exegetical literaturein both Asian and European languages, with no consensus in sight as tothe significance and theoretical basis of its arguments. Theinterpretation proposed here must be considered only one of severalpotentially defensible approaches (others are noted below). In thecase of the “White Horse” dialogue, the text is generallyclear enough. (“Indicating Things,” on the other hand,appears to be intentionally obscure.) The scholarly controversyconcerns what theory and implicit premises to ascribe to the text sothat the arguments come out as cogent defenses of a reasonableposition. As Graham says, the interpretive obstacle is “thedifficulty of finding an angle of approach from which the argumentswill make sense.…The arguments are clear, yet the first seemsan obviousnon sequitur…and the rest seem to assume anelementary confusion of identity and class membership” (1989:82). Introducing his own interpretation, he says, “No one hasyet proposed a reading of the dialogue as a consecutive demonstrationwhich does not turn it into an improbable medley of gross fallaciesand logical subtleties” (1990: 193). Building onHarbsmeier’s insight that the historical context of GongsunLong’s disputations has been insufficiently appreciated, we maysuspect Graham’s remarks signal interpretive charity gone toofar. Given what information we have about GongsunLong—Harbsmeier’s considerations, the general reputationof the disputers for flippant wordplay, the denunciation of GongsunLong in the “Under Heaven” essay, and most important, thefact that his contemporaries took his most famous claim to be patentlyfalse—we shouldexpect the text to be a “medleyof gross fallacies and logical subtleties,” roughly a Chineseanalogue to the subtle, fallacious, and deeply amusing arguments ofLewis Carroll.

None of this means that interpreting “White Horse” ispointless. We can learn about the serious practice of disputation bystudying what is in effect a spoof of disputation, just as ananthropologist can learn about a culture by studying its humor. But weshould not expect theGongsun Longzi to present rigorousarguments or defend well-developed theses of philosophical substance.In this case, interpretive charity may direct us to look not for trueclaims supported by sound reasoning, but for whimsical claims defendedby bewildering, even madcap arguments.

6.1 “White Horse is Not Horse”

The “White Horse Discourse” has spawned nearly as manyinterpretations as there are interpreters. One early, influentialinterpretation took its theme to be denying the identity of theuniversals ‘horse’ and ‘white horse’ (Fung1958, Cheng 1983). There is now a fairly broad consensus, at leastamong European and American scholars, that the text is unlikely toconcern universals, since no ancient Chinese philosopher held arealist doctrine of universals. Other interpretations have taken it todeal with kind and identity relations (Cikoski 1975, Harbsmeier 1998),part-whole relations (Hansen 1983, Graham 1989), how the extensions ofphrases vary from those of their constituent terms (Hansen 1992), andeven the use/mention distinction (Thompson 1995). For examples ofother recent approaches, see Indraccolo (2017), Fung (2020b), Jiang(2020), and Zhou (2020).

A satisfactory interpretation must fit into the discursive contextestablished by the Mohists, Xunzi, andThe Annals of LüBuwei, cohere with the concerns we identified in discussing thebackground (Section 1) and main themes (Section 2) of the disputers’ inquiries, and take into account what otherearly texts tell us about Gongsun Long. Since we know he was anintellectual prankster, we cannot assume the texts will present cogentarguments for a well-reasoned philosophical position. If we find thempresenting plainly intelligible but specious arguments, we should takethese at face value, rather than seek esoteric explanations. Given thecontext of pre-Han thought, we should expect the text to toy with theproblem of distinguishing “same” from“different,” potentially touching on identity, part-whole,and kind relations. And given the disputers’ association withthe theme of “hard and white,” we should expect that thetext might attempt to treat inseparable features of things as if theywere separable parts. A number of interpretations have the potentialto meet these requirements, including interpretations involvingpart-whole relations, scope ambiguity, kind relations, and identityrelations. To decide between them, then, we need to look at thedetails of the text. “White Horse” contains five argumentsfor its thesis that “White horse is not horse.” We mayfind that some interpretive approaches work better for some of thefive, some for others.

One further anecdote about Gongsun Long—found in two texts fromlater eras, the introductory chapter of theGongsun Longziand theKong Congzi—provides useful context for thedialogue. In response to a request from Kong Chuan that he abandon histhesis that a white horse is not a horse, Gongsun Long defends it byclaiming that Confucius himself accepted the same thesis. He cites aversion of a story also found inThe Annals of Lü Buwei(1.4), in which the King of Chu loses his bow.

The King’s attendants asked to look for it, but the King said,“Stop. The King of Chu lost a bow. A Chu person will find it.Why bother to look for it?” Confucius heard about it and said:“The King of Chu is benevolent and righteous but hasn’tyet reached the ultimate. He should simply have said, ‘A personlost a bow, a person will find it,’ that’s all. Why mustit be ‘Chu’?” In this way, Confucius took Chu peopleto be different from what’s called “people.” Now toapprove of Confucius’s taking Chu people to be different fromwhat’s called “people” but disapprove of my takingwhite horse to be different from what’s called“horse” is contradictory. (Gongsun Longzi, Book 1)^[18]

In one version of the story, Kong Chuan replies that when Confuciusomits the ‘Chu’, he is broadening the scope of thereferent, not claiming that Chu people are not people.

Whenever we say “person,” we refer to persons in general,just as whenever we say “horse,” we refer to horses ingeneral. ‘Chu’ by itself is the state; ‘white’by itself is the color. Wishing to broaden the referent of‘person’, it’s appropriate to omit the‘Chu’; wishing to fix the name of the color, it’snot appropriate to omit the ‘white’. (KongCongzi, Book 11; cf. Graham 1989: 84)

As Harbsmeier points out (302), since this story appears in theintroduction to theGongsun Longzi, it suggests that thebook’s ancient editors themselves took the theme to be how thescope of the extension of a noun such as ‘person’ or‘horse’ varies when modified by an adjective such as‘Chu’ or ‘white’. The main theme is unlikelyto be part-whole relations, since it is unlikely that the noun phrase‘Chu person’ was construed as referring to a wholecomprising two parts, the state of Chu and a person.

This preparatory discussion in hand, let’s look at the argumentsin the “White Horse Discourse.” The text consists of aseries of exchanges between a sophist and an objector, who defends thecommonsense view that white horses are horses. For brevity, we willtranslate and discuss only the sophist’s arguments, not theobjector’s. To capture the flavor of the Chinese, we will rendercertain phrases in pidgin English, omitting articles and plurals. Sowe will translate the main thesis as “White horse is nothorse,” variously interpretable as “a white horse is not ahorse,” “white horses are not horses,” “awhite horse is not an exemplar of the kindhorse,” or“the kindwhite horse is not identical with the kindhorse.”^[19]

Argument 1.
‘Horse’ is that by which we name the shape.‘White’ is that by which we name the color. Naming thecolor is not naming the shape. So white horse is not horse.

At first glance, it is not at all clear how the premises are expectedto support the conclusion. Here we should recall that the argument isprobably intended to be perplexing and open to variousinterpretations, the better to confuse and mystify the audience. Withthis caveat in mind, one plausible reading is that ‘whitehorse’ names both the color and the shape of white horses, notonly the shape. So ‘white horse’ names something differentfrom what ‘horse’ names. Hence white horse, the extensionof ‘white horse’, is not the same as (identical to) horse,the extension of ‘horse’.

This argument can also be understood as “separating hard andwhite,” in that the shape and color of white horses, which arein fact inseparable, are treated as two separate things. If we grantthe sophist that naming the color isn’t naming the shape, wehave already allowed him to separate shape from color. Referring tothe color is of course different from referring to the shape. Butnaming the object with the color is just naming the object with theshape. Hence we should reject the third premise and insist that namingthe coloris naming the shape.^[20]

Argument 2.
If someone seeks a horse, then it’s admissible to deliver abrown or a black horse. If someone seeks a white horse, thenit’s inadmissible to deliver a brown or a black horse. Supposewhite horse were indeed horse. In that case, what the person seeks inthose two cases would be one and the same. What he seeks being one andthe same is the white one not being different from horse. If what heseeks is not different, then how is it that the brown or black horseare in the one case admissible and in the other inadmissible?Admissible and inadmissible, that they contradict each other is clear.So brown and black horses are one and the same in being able to answerto “having horse” but not to “having whitehorse.” This confirms that white horse is not horse.

This argument is fairly clearly not about part-whole relations, norabout separating hard from white. The sophist plainly construes“white horse is horse” as “white horse is identicalto horse.” In Chinese as in English, the sentence ‘Whitehorses are horses’ can be interpreted as predicating‘horse’ of white horses, making the true claim that thethings picked out by ‘white horse’ are all among thosepicked out by ‘horse’, or it can be interpreted asexpressing an identity, making the false claim that exactly the samethings are picked out by ‘white horse’ as by‘horse’. The argument trades on this ambiguity. Because weknow that modifying a noun narrows the scope of its extension, when wehear “white horses are horses,” we naturally apply theprinciple of charity, assume the speaker is not saying somethingobviously false, and take the relation in question to be predication,not identity. But the sophist insists on interpreting the sentence asan identity. Notice that the sophist implicitly applies a principleroughly like Leibniz’s law of indiscernibility of identicals. Heassumes that if two things are identical, they will share all theirfeatures, and one can be substituted for the other in any context.Since what can be “delivered” in answer to a request for“white horse” is different from what can be“delivered” for “horse,” white horse is not horse.^[21]

Argument 3.
Horses indeed have color; thus there are white horses. Supposinghorses had no color, and there were simply horses and that’sall, how could we pick out the white horses? So white is not horse.White horse is horse combined with white. Is horse combined with whitethe same as horse?^[22] So I say: White horse is not horse.

“White” is not “horse” because‘horse’ alone doesn’t pick out the white ones; only‘white’ does. The sophist takes it as obvious that“horse” combined with “white” is not simply“horse.” Here he is “separating hard andwhite,” in that he explicitly treats “white” and“horse” (that is, the shape of the animal) as two thingsthat are combined to form something more than, and different from, ahorse. The argument again turns on construing “White horse ishorse” as the claim that the kindwhite horse isidentical to the kindhorse.

Argument 4.
“Since you take having white horse to be having horse, we cansay having horse is having brown horse, is that admissible?”“Not admissible.” “Taking having horse to bedifferent from having brown horse, this is taking brown horse to bedifferent from horse. Taking brown horse to be different from horse,this is taking brown horse to be not horse. Taking brown horse to benot horse while taking white horse to be having horse, this is flyingthings entering a pond, inner and outer coffins in different places.These are the most contradictory sayings and confused expressions inthe world.”

Here again the argument is based on construing “White/brownhorse is horse” as an identity claim. Recall that in earlyChinese thought the same/different relation may refer to eitheridentity or kind relations. Moreover, in classical Chinese, both typesof relations are expressed in the same syntactic form, the Chineseanalogue of ‘A is (not)B’. So when thecontext is unambiguous, it is perfectly legitimate to express the factthatA is different fromB by saying“A is notB.” Taking advantage of thisgrammatical feature, the sophist can move legitimately from theuncontroversial claim that having a horse is different from (that is,not identical to) having a brown horse to the intermediate claim thatbrown horse is different from (not identical to) horse and then not solegitimately to the conclusion that brown horse is not horse. Theconclusion indeed follows, but only if we allow the sophist toconstrue “is not” as “is not identical to.”Notice that this argument seems to involve neither part-wholerelations nor separating hard from white (that is, shape from color).Analogy plays a central role, however, as the argument is based on theanalogy between brown and white horses.

The rhetorical flourish at the end of the argument is typical ofWarring States disputation. To emphasize that a claim is inconsistentor contradictory, disputers would habitually cite contradictory orimpossible things as analogies (Leslie 1964).

Argument 5.
“White” does not fix what is white.… As to“white horse,” saying it fixes what is white. What fixeswhat is white is not white. “Horse” selects or excludesnone of the colors, so brown or black horses can all answer.“White horse” selects some color and excludes others;brown and black horses are all excluded on the basis of color, and soonly white horse alone can answer. Excluding none is not excludingsome. Therefore white horse is not horse.

The sophist first “separates hard and white,” establishingthat the shape “horse” is not the same thing as the color“white.” The color alone does not specify the locationthat is white; saying “white horse” does. Therefore horse,the shape, is not white, the color. Indeed, horse specifies no colorat all. White horse, on the other hand, does specify a color. So againthe sophist has shown that white horse and horse have distinctfeatures. Thus white horse is not (identical to) horse.

To sum up, the most natural way to read the text is as repeatedlyequivocating between a statement of identity and one that predicates amore general term of the objects denoted by a less general term. Thesophist refuses to distinguish the true statement that “[thekind] white horse is not [identical to the kind] horse” from thefalse “white horse is not [of the kind] horse.” Thenatural way to interpret “White horse is horse” is as thelatter, but the sophist insists on interpreting it as the former. In afew places, the sophist distinguishes the shape of the horse from thecolor in a way that probably corresponds to “separating hard andwhite.”

A related explanation of the sophist’s view is that he confusesterms that refer at different levels of generality, or, equivalently,simply refuses to recognize that terms can refer at different levelsof generality. Xunzi, whose career largely overlapped with GongsunLong’s, introduced the concept of a “common name”(gong ming), or general term, which may refer to things atdifferent levels of generality (22.2f). Xunzi pointed out thatsometimes we refer to things by a single name, such as‘horse’, and sometimes, to communicate more precisely, weuse a “compound” name (what we would think of as a nounphrase), such as ‘white horse’. Provided one of these twokinds of names is more general, we can use both without theirinterfering with each other. This is roughly the same point Kong Chuanmade in insisting that ‘horse’ always refers to all horsesand that adding ‘white’ to it merely narrows its referenceby specifying the horses’ color. In each case, the animalsdenoted by ‘horse’ are still horses. “WhiteHorse” deliberately ignores this point.

Hansen (1983, 1992) has proposed an interesting account of thephilosophical significance of the “White Horse” dialogue.The simplest early Chinese model of the language-world relation was“one name, one thing,” according to which all names referat the same level of generality. Given the Chinese concern with“correcting names,” so that communication can proceedeffectively and language can guide action reliably, a natural viewwould be that ideally each name or phrase should consistently denoteone and only one sort of thing. But as the Mohists noticed, when namesare joined to form phrases, their reference may shift in unexpectedways. In Chinese, the phrases ‘oxen-and-horses’ (niuma) and ‘white horse’ (bai ma) appear tohave the same syntax. But in compounds of the first type, theextension of the component nouns remains exactly the same as when thenouns are used singly: the extension of ‘oxen-and-horses’is simply the sum of the extensions of ‘oxen’ and‘horses’. In compounds of the second type—the“as hard to white” type—on the other hand, theextension of the component words changes. The extension of‘white horse’ is the intersection, not the sum, of whitethings and horses. The extension of the words ‘white’ and‘horse’ as used in the compound is thus different fromwhat it is when they are used alone. This raises a serious problem forthe one-name-one-thing view. The Mohists discovered the problem andtook steps toward a solution. Xunzi finally solved it by explicitlyrejecting the one-name-one-thing principle and recognizing that termsrefer at different levels of generality. The approach implied by“White Horse,” Hansen suggests, would address the problemby retaining the one-name-one-thing principle and reforming ourlanguage use, so that all names pick out exactly the same portion ofreality in all contexts, whether used singly or compounded intophrases. Since the extension of names changes when they are combinedto form compounds of the “as hard to white” type, aproponent of this view must insist that the objects denoted by suchcompounds be treated as distinct from the objects denoted by either oftheir constituent names: white horses are neither white nor horse, buta distinct sort of thing. This “solution” is absurd, ofcourse. But moving beyond the one-name-one-thing model and explainingexactlywhy this is absurd was a legitimate philosophicalpuzzle at the time.^[23]

The other complete, genuine essay attributed to Gongsun Long is thenear-impenetrable “Discourse on Indicating Things.” For adiscussion of this text, see the supplementary document:

Indicating and Things

7. A Daoist Critique

Among Warring States texts, only two show any familiarity with thedetails of Hui Shi’s and Gongsun Long’s theses. (The“Under Heaven” book of theZhuangzi, the majorsource for our discussion of Hui Shi, dates probably from the firstfew decades of the Han dynasty.) One is theXunzi, which aswe saw ascribes a list of seven paradoxes to Hui Shi and Deng Xi, aswell as alluding elsewhere (22.3) to the white horse sophism. Theother is the famous “Discourse on Equalizing Things,” Book2 of theZhuangzi, though the text does not attribute thetheses to Hui Shi or Gongsun Long by name. “EqualizingThings” is critical of the disputers’ ideas and in onepassage explicitly criticizes Hui Shi.^[24] But it also praises his intelligence and is not downright hostiletoward him, as Xunzi is.

“Equalizing Things” alludes to versions of at least fourof Hui Shi’s theses and to both the white horse and the“indicating” sophisms. “Today go to Yue and arriveyesterday” is cited as an analogy for something impossible orcontradictory. “Just as it is alive, it is dying” is usedfor rhetorical effect to support the point that judgments of what is“this” (shi) and “not this”(fei) arise together, are relative to each other, and can bereversed or shifted. After arguing that anything can be deemed“this” or “not this,” the text critiquesGongsun Long:

Using indicating to show that indicating is not indicating is not asgood as using not-indicating to show that to indicating is notindicating. Using a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is notas good as using what is not a horse to show that a horse is not ahorse. Heaven and earth are one “indicated”; the myriadthings are one horse. (cf. Graham 1981: 53)

Instead of using a white horse as an example to show that it’spossible to treat some horses as not of the kindhorse, itwould be simpler and clearer to use something of another kind, such asan ox, and show that some horses can be treated as “thesame” as that thing and different from other horses. Forinstance, draft horses could be deemed “the same” as oxen,grouped together with them as draft animals, and distinguished asdifferent from riding horses or racehorses. For that matter, anythingand everything can be summed into a whole and deemed a single“indicated” or “horse.” The text’s pointis to trivialize Gongsun Long’s theses. For some purpose orother, by some standard or other, white horse can indeed be considereddifferent from horse. But in light of the pragmatic stance adopted by“Equalizing Things,” there is nothing puzzling orremarkable about this.

These allusions place “Equalizing Things” firmly withinthe intellectual milieu of the disputers. Indeed, the text arguesexplicitly for a view closely related to one of their signaturethemes—“deeming so the not-so, admissible theinadmissible.”

Admissible? Admissible. Inadmissible? Inadmissible. Adao(way) is formed by walking it, things are made so by calling them so.How are they so? They are so in respects where they are so. How arethey not so? They are not so in respects where they are not so. Thingsinherently have respects in which they are so; things inherently haverespects in which they are admissible. No thing is not so; no thing isnot admissible. (cf. Graham 1981: 53)

Still, the text’s stance is fundamentally critical of Hui Shiand Gongsun Long. In a trenchant critique, the writer mocks severalHui Shi-style theses, including spatial and temporal paradoxes and aversion of the “one unit” view:

“In the world, nothing is bigger than the tip of an autumn hair,yet Mount Tai is small; nothing outlives a dead child, yet Pengzu [theChinese Methulesah] died young. Heaven and earth were born togetherwith me, and the myriad things and I are one.”
Having already become one, can you still say anything? Having alreadycalled it “one,” can you succeed innot sayinganything? One and the saying make two; two and the one make three.Going on from here, even an expert calculator can’t get to theend of it, much less an ordinary person! So in moving from nothing tosomething, we arrive at three; how much worse in moving from somethingto something! Better not to move any particular way at all, but simplyadapt what we deemshi (right) to the particular situation.(cf. Graham 1981: 56)

The text questions the coherence of the “everything isone” view. To treat the myriad things and oneself as“one” is already to distinguish them from nothing, on theone hand, and from what is not one, on the other. Indeed, theproponent of the “one unit” view cannot even state hisposition consistently. Merely to say that everything is“one” is to recognize something else besides the one,namely our statement pointing it out. The one and the name we give itor what we say about it already make two. And as soon as we noticethat we’ve got two, we’ve already got three—the one,what we said about it, and the “two” comprising the oneand what we said. The playful mockery has an underlying point. The“all is one” view is not more “real” or morejustified than other schemes of distinctions, and it is useless as asolution to the problem of what scheme of distinctions to adopt inguiding life and action. It yields no normative guidance—noteven Hui Shi’s “comprehensively care for allthings.” Instead of attempting to find the“absolute” or “real” scheme of action-guidingdistinctions, our energy would be better spent simply by guiding andjustifying our actions contextually, responding to the needs of eachparticular situation as it arises.

Like Hui Shi, then, the writer of “Equalizing Things”agrees that distinctions can be drawn in indefinitely many ways. It isalso true that if no distinctions are drawn, things in themselves“connect into one.” Yet focusing one’s attentioneither on establishing some particular scheme of distinctions or onthe “one” shows an equal lack of insight.Disputation—whether in defense of Confucian ritual, Mohistinclusive care, the Great One, or sophistical paradoxes—isbeside the point. Issues addressed in disputation cannot and need notbe settled in order to live well. In fact, they may even interferewith the conduct of a good life. When we perform activities at whichwe genuinely excel—those whose performance engenders the deeplysatisfying experience of feeling fully at home in the world—whatguides us is not knowledge of fixed, explicit standards ofshi/fei, nor identification with the “one.” It isa combination of skill and a kind of uncodifiable knack for adaptingto the particular situation.

So in deeming things “this” (shi), whether youbring up a stalk or a pillar, a hag or a beauty, the odd or bizarre,Dao (the Way) connects them as one.…Only one who hasarrived knows to connect things as one. Deeming things“this” he does not use; instead he accommodates things inthe ordinary. He adapts his “this” to the situation,that’s all. Adapting without knowing things are so is called“Dao.” (cf. Graham 53)

By contrast, wearing out one’s wits deliberately deeming thingsone, as Hui Shi does, instead of simply seeing and making use of theinnumerable ways they can be taken to be the “same,” islike forcefully affirming that seven equals four plus three withoutalso allowing that it equals three plus four (cf. Graham 54). It is away of grasping part of the right view, but darkly, withoutinsight.

As for Hui Shi, “Equalizing Things” concludes, “Hisknow-how almost reached the pinnacle, so his reputation carried onuntil later years. It was only in that he was good at it [disputation]that he was different from other people. Because he was good at it, hedesired to clarify it. It was not the sort of thing that can beclarified, yet he tried to clarify it. Thus he spent his whole life inthe obscurity of hard and white.”^[25]

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