Name and actuality in early Chinese thought / John Makeham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Makeham, John, 1955- author.

Series:

SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture

SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture Name and actuality in early Chinese thought

Language:

Efik

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, Chinese--221 B.C.-960 A.D.

Philosophy, Chinese.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 286 p. )

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : State University of New York Press, [1994]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is the first Western study of the philosophy of Xu Gan (170-217), a Confucian thinker who lived at a nodal point in the history of Chinese thought, when Han scholasticism had become ossified and the creative and independent quality that characterized Wei-Jin thought was just emerging. As the theme of his study, Makeham develops an original and richly detailed account of ming shi, 'name and actuality,' one of the key pairs of concepts in early Chinese thought. He shows how Xu Gan's understanding of the 'name and actuality' relationship was most immediately influenced by Xu Gan's understanding of why the Han dynasty had collapsed, yet had its roots in a tradition of discourse that spanned the classical period (circa 500-150 B.C.E.).In reconstructing the philosophical background of Xu Gan's understanding of the relationship between 'name and actuality,' Makeham identifies two antithetical theories of naming in early Chinese thought-nominalist and correlative-a distinction that is as great as the Realist-Nominalist distinction of Western thought. He shows how Xu Gan's views on the name and actuality relationship were animated, on the one hand, by a rejection of nominalist theories of naming, and on the other hand, by a novel appropriation of correlative theories of naming. The study also analyzes two of the more immediate social and intellectual issues in the late Eastern Han (25-220) period that had prompted Xu Gan to discuss the name and actuality relationship: the ethos of the scholar-gentry (ming jiao) and Han approaches to classical scholarship. Makeham demonstrates how Xu Gan's critique of these matters is valuable not only as a late Han philosophical account of what had led to the demise of the 400-year-old Han dynasty, but also as a mode of conceptualizing that contributed to the new direction that philosophical thinking took in the third century C.E.

Contents:

pt. 1. Xu Gan's Theory of Naming. 1. Xu Gan's Appropriation of the Name and Actuality Polarity

pt. 2. The Philosophical Background. 2. Confucius and the Correction of Names. 3. Nominalist Theories of Naming in the Neo-Mohist Summa and Xun Zi. 4. Han Fei's Xing Ming Thinking and Ming Shi. 5. The Emergence of Correlative Theories of Naming in Guan Zi and Chun Qiu Fan Lu

pt. 3. The Socio-intellectual Background. 6. Ming Jiao in the Eastern Han. 7. Word without a Message: Classical Scholarship in the Eastern Han

pt. 4. The Application of Xu Gan's Theory of Naming. 8. The Cosmological-cum-Ethical Implications of Name and Actuality Being in Accord or Disaccord

App. A History of the Text

App. B Zhuang Zi's Scepticism about Names and Naming

App. C Zheng Ming: A Legalist Interpolation?

App. D An Etymological Note on the Xing Graph

App. E On the Dating of the "Xin Shu Shang," "Xin Shu Xia," and "Bai Xin" Pian of Guan Zi

App. F The Meaning of Ming Jiao.

App. G An Outline of the Old Text School-New Text School Rivalry in the Han Dynasty

App. H Examples of Xu Gan's Classical Eclecticism

App. I From Names and Actualities to Names and Principles.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-282) and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438411743

143841174X

9780585044941

0585044945