公孫龍子

Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ 公孫龍子

The Master Gōngsūn Lóng

by 公孫龍 (Gōngsūn Lóng, c. 320 – c. 250 BCE; foremost dialectician of the Míngjiā 名家); with the commentary of 謝希深 (Xiè Xīshēn = Xiè Jiàng 謝絳, 994–1039, Northern Sòng)

About the work

The principal surviving treatise of the School of Names (Míngjiā 名家) of pre-Qín thought, in one juan and six surviving piān: Jīfǔ 跡府 (a biographical preface, almost certainly post-Hàn), Báimǎ 白馬 (“On the White Horse”), Zhǐwù 指物 (“On the Pointing of Things”), Tōngbiàn 通變 (“On Comprehensive Change”), Jiānbái 堅白 (“On Hardness and Whiteness”), Míngshí 名實 (“On Names and Actualities”). The Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì listed the original work in fourteen piān under the Míngjiā; eight piān had already been lost by the Sòng. The Báimǎ paradox (bái mǎ fēi mǎ 白馬非馬, “a white horse is not a horse”) is the most-cited single text from this entire intellectual current. The transmitted commentary is that of Xiè Xīshēn 謝希深 (= Xiè Jiàng 謝絳, 994–1039), a Northern-Sòng official; earlier annotations by Chén Sìgǔ 陳嗣古 and Jiǎ Shìyǐn 賈士隱 (recorded in the Tōngzhì lüè 通志畧) are now lost.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ in one juan, composed by Gōngsūn Lóng of the Zhōu, is examined as follows. The Shǐjì records “Zhào had a Gōngsūn Lóng who made the dispute on hardness-and-whiteness and identity-and-difference”; the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì says Lóng and Máo Gōng 毛公 and others all frequented the gate of Lord Píngyuán 平原君; the Lièzǐ shìwén gives Lóng’s zì as Zǐbǐng 子秉; the Zhuāngzǐ has Huì zǐ 惠子 saying “Confucian, Mohist, Yáng, [Zǐ-]Bǐng — four; with the master, five” — Bǐng here is Lóng. By this evidence Lóng must be a Warring-States man. Sīmǎ Zhēn’s 司馬貞 Suǒyǐn taking him to be a disciple of Confucius is wrong.

His book is recorded by the Hàn zhì in fourteen piān; by the Sòng eight piān were already lost. Today only six survive: Jīfǔ 跡府, Báimǎ 白馬, Zhǐwù 指物, Tōngbiàn 通變, Jiānbái 堅白, Míngshí 名實. The opening chapter records his disputation with Kǒng Chuān 孔穿, an episode the Kǒng cóngzǐ 孔叢子 also has, but which says Lóng was bested by Chuān, while this book says Chuān asked to become Lóng’s disciple — a flat contradiction. In the Warring States rival schools were sharply ranged, each wishing to honour its own teaching, hence such inconsistencies.

The general purport of his book is to deplore the divorce of name from substance — using “the pointing of things” to confound right-and-wrong, and “the white horse” to equalize self-and-other — in the hope that the rulers of his day would awaken and rectify names and actualities. Hence all the standard histories list him among the Míngjiā. The Huáinán hónglièjiě 淮南鴻烈解 says “Gōngsūn Lóng was lustrous in disputation but exchanged names”; Yáng Xióng’s 楊雄 Fǎyán 法言 says “Gōngsūn Lóng’s tricky speeches numbered tens of thousands”: his disputational positions were spirited and prolific, dazzling and unrestrained — sufficient to stir the world. Hence his contemporaries Zhuāngzǐ, Lièzǐ, and Xún Qīng 荀卿 all record his sayings as one product of the learned arts. Only — among nomenclatural categories and naming, he set up rules in such tangled multiplicity that to make every one tally with truth would defeat reason itself, and the more elaborate his disputation the less recoverable is the true alignment of names and things. Yet his book comes from the pre-Qín, the doctrine though wild, the prose decidedly arresting and delightful. Chén Zhènsūn’s blanket dismissal of it as “shallow and obstinate” goes too far.

The Míng Zhōng Xīng 鍾惺 imprint of this book changes the title to Biànyán 辯言 — wild and untextual; we follow the Hàn zhì’s title Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ. Furthermore, Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì lüè 通志畧 records this work under the names of Chén Sìgǔ 陳嗣古 and Jiǎ Shìyǐn 賈士隱, each in one juan; both are lost. The commentary of this recension is that of Xiè Xīshēn 謝希深 of the Sòng. The exegesis is rather shallow and accessible; we retain it as it stands.

[The tiyao of Guǐgǔzǐ (KR3j0008) follows in the source file; see that entry.]

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-seventh year of Qiánlóng [1782].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Gōngsūn Lóng 公孫龍 (zì Zǐbǐng 子秉; c. 320 – c. 250 BCE) was a Zhào 趙 sophist, retainer at the court of Lord Píngyuán 平原君, and the foremost figure of the Míngjiā 名家 (“School of Names”) of the late Warring States — celebrated then and ever since for the paradoxes of bái mǎ fēi mǎ 白馬非馬 (“a white horse is not a horse”) and jiān bái 堅白 (the dissociability of hardness and whiteness in a hard white stone). The Shǐjì and Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì both record him; the Zhuāngzǐ and Lièzǐ engage his arguments; the Lǚshì chūnqiū, Xúnzǐ (in the Zhèngmíng 正名 chapter), and Hán Fēi zǐ all cite him by name. The Hàn zhì lists his book in fourteen piān. By the Sòng only six piān remained.

The text catalogued here preserves those six piān: an introductory pseudo-biographical Jīfǔ (post-Hàn, on the evidence of the contradictory account it gives versus the Kǒng cóngzǐ), and the five core dialectical chapters Báimǎ, Zhǐwù, Tōngbiàn, Jiānbái, Míngshí. The first three are most often translated and discussed; the Zhǐwù in particular is one of the most vexed pieces of philosophical Chinese prose, with no scholarly consensus on its central thesis (whether zhǐ is “pointing,” “designation,” or “attribute”). Modern philological scholarship from Hú Shì 胡適 (1922) and Féng Yǒulán 馮友蘭 (1934) onward has treated the surviving text as substantially genuine pre-Qín Míngjiā doctrine, although the Jīfǔ preface and possibly portions of Tōngbiàn are post-Hàn editorial additions.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore −320, notAfter −250) corresponds to Gōngsūn Lóng’s own conventional floruit. The Jīfǔ chapter is later (probably Hàn or WèiJìn) but does not affect the date of the textual core.

The transmitted commentary is that of Xiè Xīshēn 謝希深 — the zì of Xiè Jiàng 謝絳 (994–1039, Northern Sòng official, jìnshì of 1015, son-in-law of Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣’s father, brother-in-law of Méi Yáochén himself). The catalog meta gives no dates for him; CBDB (id 727) gives 994–1039, followed here. Earlier SòngYuán catalogues (Tōngzhì lüè) record commentaries by Chén Sìgǔ 陳嗣古 and Jiǎ Shìyǐn 賈士隱, both lost. The Míng booksellers’ renaming of the work to Biànyán 辯言 (in Zhōng Xīng’s 鍾惺 imprint) is rejected by the Sìkù. The work is included in 《漢書·藝文志》, 《隋書·經籍志》, the Sìkù, and the Dàozàng (parallel recension at KR5f0006).

Translations and research

This is one of the most translated and studied pre-Qín texts in modern philosophy.

• A. C. Graham, “The Composition of the Gongsuen Long Tzyy,” Asia Major n.s. 5 (1955): 147–183. The fundamental modern stratigraphy of the text; argues that Tōngbiàn and Jiānbái were displaced from a lost Mòzǐ “Later Mohist” canon and incorporated late.
• A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Chinese University Press, 1978). The further development of the same thesis.
• Ian Johnston (tr.), The Mozi: A Complete Translation (Chinese University Press / Columbia, 2010), Appendix on the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ text-history.
• Yiu-ming Fung, “On the Logical Way of Gongsun Long’s ‘White Horse Is Not Horse’,” Dao 6.1 (2007): 47–73; and various follow-up papers.
• Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (Hackett, 2011), with Báimǎ translation and analysis.
• Mou Bo, “A Reexamination of the Structure and Content of Gongsun Long’s White Horse Discourse,” Philosophy East and West 57.4 (2007): 492–526.
• Chad Hansen, Language and Logic in Ancient China (University of Michigan Press, 1983); and A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought (Oxford, 1992) — the principal sustained Western philosophical interpretation of Chinese sophistic texts.
• Kurtis Hagen, “The Concepts of Zhi and Wu in the Gongsun Longzi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34.4 (2007): 553–562.
• Chris Fraser, “School of Names,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online, regularly updated).
• Páng Pú 龐樸, Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ yánjiū 公孫龍子研究 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1979). Standard modern Chinese monograph.
• Wáng Wǎn 王琯, Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ xuánjiě 公孫龍子懸解 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1958). Critical recension and commentary.
• Hú Shì 胡適, “Xiānqín míngxué shǐ” 先秦名學史 (Shanghai, 1922). The foundational modern Chinese treatment.
• Féng Yǒulán 馮友蘭, Zhōngguó zhéxué shǐ 中國哲學史, vol. 1 (1934), with the chapter on the Míngjiā.
• French: Ignace Kou-Pao-Koh (= Gǔ Bǎogǔ 顧保鵠), Deux sophistes chinois: Houei Che et Kong-souen Long (Paris: PUF, 1953). German: A. Forke, “Die chinesischen Sophisten,” Mitteilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens 10 (1901–1902).

Other points of interest

The Báimǎ paradox is one of the few Chinese-philosophy items that has had a sustained influence on twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language, principally through Graham, Hansen, and Fung. The thesis of “a white horse is not a horse” is now usually read either (a) as a thesis about classes vs. substances (Graham), (b) as a thesis about the syntax of mass nouns (Hansen), or (c) as a thesis about restricted vs. unrestricted reference (Fung) — none of which would have been recognizable to the Sìkù editors, but each of which throws light back onto the surviving Chinese text.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ entry.
• Wikipedia: Gongsun Longzi; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “School of Names” (Chris Fraser).
• Wikidata: Q955021 (Gongsun Long).
• Parallel recension: KR5f0006 (Dàozàng).