413 Pages
by
Routledge
The present study on ancient Chinese philosophy invites us to meet a challenging task in philosophical understanding. The so-called "School of Names" ( mingjia 名家) is a label for a diverse group of thinkers in the Warring States period (479–221 B.C.) that has sometimes been accused of dabbling in flippant linguistic and conceptual puzzles, paradoxes, or sophistries. Bernard Solomon analyzes the... Read more
Chapter One deals with the ten "paradoxes" of Huizi as recorded in the Zhuangzi 莊子. Chapters Two to Six are devoted to five texts attributed to Gongsun Long that have been called cryptic or even a mixture of banality and nonsense. Among them is also found the "White-Horse Dialogue" with its famous dictum "A white horse is not a horse."
Biography
Bernard Solomon
