The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

in this discovery of the abstract as the emergence of paradoxes. Hui Shih’s
famous statements—“a brown horse and a dark ox make three”; “the wheel
never touches the ground” (Chan, 1963: 234–235)—may constitute an argu-
ment for the unreality of distinctions in physical time and space; some of his
paradoxes about motion are similar to those of Zeno of Elea. Hui Shih also
seems to have introduced the challenge of deducing a hidden object from the
definition of its name (Graham, 1978: 62). Kung-sun Lung a generation later
argued more explicitly about names, forms, and substances, though he still
made a splash with paradoxes such as “a white horse is not a horse.” Kung-sun
Lung appears to have been attempting to solve epistemological problems,
distinguishing whiteness from stone and the seeing of the mind from the seeing
of the eye (Chan, 1963: 242).^8
A new intellectual space opened up, and in keeping with the law of small
numbers it was soon filled with opposing positions. Tendencies toward soph-
istry and idealism were countered by defenses of empiricism and naturalism.
The formulators of the Mohist Canons in the generation after 300 b.c.e. came
close to a Western-style empiricism in natural science and to Euclidean methods
in mathematics (Needham, 1956: 171–184). They made use of new concepts
of “a priori knowable” (hsien, probably introduced by Hui Shih) and “neces-
sary” (pi), and went on to derive principles of ethics and geometry from strings
of definitions (Graham, 1978: 62–63). This constituted a certain parallel to
Plato’s school, with its use of mathematics as a standard for grounding a
non-relativistic ethics. From the Confucian camp, Mencius reacted to the
debaters, utilitarians, and anti-moralists by arguing for an objective ideal of
human nature and morality. Although his object was merely to preserve the
Confucian faith, he was forced to adopt the concepts of logical debate, and
thus was pushed into defending the conception of properties shared by concrete
objects (Schwartz, 1985: 258–265). Mencius’ intellectual tools could then be
turned to still other applications. His substantive stance became the foil for
yet another Confucian wing, no longer touting the intrinsic merit of ritualism
but making an explicit defense of naturalism in both ethics and logic, at the
hands of Hsün Tzu. His pupil Han Fei took this naturalism into open revolt
against the Confucian tradition.
In propounding the doctrines of legalism, Han Fei was not simply taking
advantage of an opportunity in the external political situation for legitimating
the centralizing policies of the rising power of Ch’in. Legalism also emerged
from the inner dynamics of the intellectual world. Both Confucianism and the
larger array of intellectuals were discovering the alternative poles of idealist
and naturalist standards from which to argue. Growing conceptual sophisti-
cation also stimulated and transformed cosmologies. Han Fei could take the
opposite tack from traditional Confucians, and from archaizing primitivists


Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China^ •^149
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