https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0072-1556
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ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible to develop theoretical methods to reconcile absolute principles on the one hand and relative tenets on the other. I will look at this question through the lens of classical Chinese logic and, more concretely, through the elaborations of the Chinese logician Hui Shi on this relationship. The examination of this problem proceeds from a general introduction of the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, through an illumination of Hui Shi’s specific contributions to the field, to a tentative explanation of his conception of the nature of the relation between absoluteness and relativity, embedded in more general structures of his thought and illustrated by his interpretation of the possibility of unifying identity and difference.
Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) in the framework of the research core funding Asian Languages and Cultures (P6-0243) and in the scope of the research project J6-50208 New Theoretical Approaches in Comparative Transcultural Philosophy and the Method of Sublation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The reasons for the decline of the latter in early medieval China are multiple and linked mainly to complex historical events and processes that shaped specific social conditions that proved to be unfavorable for the evolution of scientific thought and methodologies.
2. 惠施多方, 其書五車 (Hui Shi duo fang, qi shu wu che). Unless stated otherwise, all translations from Chinese are my own.
3. In this context, Guthrie (Citation1969, p. 101) also highlights that ‘all Eleaticism depends on the uncompromising “either-or”. There is no hint in Zeno of a state which is neither motion nor rest’.
4. ‘The Spring and Autumn Annals of Mister Lü’ (Lü shi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋).
5. 以其所知諭其所不知而使人知.
6. Taken ‘objectively’, the State of Yan was in the north and the State of Yue in the south of the then Chinese territories.
7. The capital of the then State of Chu.
8. This, of course, is not the only possible interpretation of the paradox. Since we cannot ask Hui Shi himself for the key to understanding his sayings, we have no choice but to remain completely subjective and follow the interpretation that makes the most sense to us. As a contrast to our personal understanding of the paradox, we should at least here also look at Forke’s interpretation, which is as follows: ‘Of course, this does not mean that the chicken should actually have three legs; Hui Shi merely wants to destroy the illusion that it has two legs. In truth, chickens do not even really exist, just as there is no other individual being. The only being that exists is what we can call the Dao. This, of course, has no legs, or as many as you like, for all the variety is only the delusion of our senses’ (Forke, Citation1934a, p. 433). Personally, this interpretation does not seem to me to be very well chosen, firstly because in this way (which tells us basically nothing) we can interpret everything we do not understand, and secondly because Hui Shi was clearly among the most ‘realistic’ sympathizers of Daoism. (At this point, it is also worth noting that the categorization itself of the generally accepted naming of the various philosophical schools of the Zhou Dynasty originated in the Han Dynasty period; in most encyclopedias of the later periods, Hui Shi is cited as a Nomenalist, who drew on Daoist assumptions and positions.) And although we can find a number of apparent commonalities between Daoism and Buddhism, which include the conviction of the ultimate illusory nature of existence, as we find in Zhuangzi, for example, this very starting point is one of the major substantive differences that characterize the works of the two philosophers in question.
9. The dog, the hound, and the sheep, for example, all belong to the group of four-legged creatures (from the standpoint of greater identity). The dog and hound in their importance and value belong to different sets (from the standpoint of the lesser difference). Therefore, the dog and the hound differ to a greater degree from the latter point of view than the dog and the sheep, when this pair, which is certainly more different ‘objectively’, is considered from the former point of view.
10. These metaphysical foundations were often incompatible with formal logic, in which antagonisms such as that between static and dynamic qualities are not valid (see Vrhovski, Citation2021, p. 87).