THE SCHOOL OF NAMES

Abstract

As indicated by many scholars of Chinese history, the pre-Qin (先秦) period was a gloomy age of chaos in politics and social order, but it was also a golden age of creativity in philosophy and humanistic thinking. Most modern historians regard the rise of various trends or streams of thought in this period as different proposals in response to the problem of political and social change. The exponents of these various trends or streams of thought have exposed vigor, original, rich, and far-reaching ideas in Chinese intellectual history. Historians in the Han (漢) dynasty have attempted to make a classification for these trends or streams of thought. The first such attempt to classify them as distinct schools was by Sima Tan (司馬談 ?–110 BCE), an official historian and thinker of the former Han and the father of Sima Qian (司馬遷 145-86 BCE) who succeeded to the position of official historian and wrote the first comprehensive history of China in the biographical style, entitled The Record of the Grand Historian (史記 Shi-Ji). In his treatise entitled ‘Lun-Liu-Jia-Yao-Zhi’ (論六家要指, On the Essential Ideas of the Six Schools), Sima Tan has classified the thinkers of the preceding centuries into six major schools, including the Yin-Yang school (陰陽 家 Yin-yang-jia), Confucianism (儒家 Ru-jia), Mohism (墨家 Mo-jia), the school of Names (名家 Ming-jia), Legalism (法家 Fa-jia), and Daoism (道德家 Dao-de-jia). In regard to this classification of Sima Tan, modern philologist and historian Hu Shi (胡 適) has rightly demonstrated that it should not be understood as a factual description of reality in history. Nevertheless, I think it is still significant to use this classification as a prescriptive framework to understand the similarities and differences between various thinkers of the pre-Qin China in a sensible and systematic way. A group of thinkers was identified as the school of Names by the scholars of the former Han, but its members had been generally recognized as the school of Forms and Names (刑名之家 Xing-ming-zhi-jia), or as ‘sophists’, ‘disputers’, or ‘dialecticians’ (辯者 Bian-zhe) during the Warring States (戰國 Zhan-guo) period. According to the records in the literature of the Warring States and former Han period, this group includes such main figures as Deng Xi (鄧析), Yin Wen (尹文), Hui Shi (惠施 350-260 BCE), and Gongsun Long (公孫龍 320-250 BCE). With the exception of the partially preserved Gong-Sun-Long-Zi (公孫龍子), the works of the sophists have all been lost. What wecan know today about the ideas of Hui Shi and other sophists is basically preserved in Chapter 33 (‘Under the Heaven’ 天下 Tian-Xia) of Zhuang-Zi (莊子). In Sima Tan’s treatise on the six schools, he remarks on the scholars of the group:The school of Names made minute examination of trifling points in complicated and elaborate statements, which make it impossible for others to refute their ideas. They specialized in the definition of names, but lost sight of human feelings. Therefore I say: ‘They lead men to a sparing use of words which makes it easy to lose the truth.’ Yet to force names to express actualities, and study logical order so that there will be no error, is a task that must be investigated.1