Zz and the Gongsun Longzi

[surrogate corpse]

Over the summer I intend to drive myself a little mad figuring out just how deep in the GSLz weeds the Qiwulun is. Here's a preliminary report of the references motivating this planned folly:

 

1

GSLZ (白馬論): 以黃馬為非馬，而以白馬為有馬，此飛者入池而棺槨異處，此天下之悖言亂辭也。

To regard yellow horses as not horses, yet regard white horses as horses, this is to take flying things as entering pools and to reverse inner and outer coffins, this is Under Heaven's disordered nonsense-speaking.

 

Zz (逍遙遊): opens with a passage where a flying thing exits one pool and enters another

 

2

GSLz (堅白論): 循石，非彼無石，非石無所取乎白。

Inspect the stone: if it's not that there's no stone; if it's not a stone there's nothing selected as white.

 

Zz (齊物論): 非彼無我，非我無所取。

If it's not that there's no me; if it's not me there's nothing selected

 

3

GSLz (指物論): 物莫非指，而指非指。

No thing is not a finger, yet a finger is not a finger.

 

Zz (齊物論): 物無非彼，物無非是。

No thing is not that, no thing is not this

 

Zz (齊物論): 以指喻指之非指，不若以非指喻指之非指也；以馬喻馬之非馬，不若以非馬喻馬之非馬也。

Using a finger to show that a finger is not a finger is not as good as using a not-finger to show that a finger is not a finger; using a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a not-horse to show that horse is not a horse.

note: also indicates a reference to GSLz's white horse discourse

 

— —

 

So that's clearly 3/5 treatises in the Gongsun Longzi text being referenced by the Zhuangzi, with two of them being directly riffed on right as the Qiwulun enters its central argumentative passages.

 

This suggests a couple interesting things to me:

(1) There may be more unity to the GSLz text than is commonly supposed; at least, the QWL (ch. 2) author seems to be treating it as a unit

(2) The QWL is probably a product of the later warring states period rather than of the historical Zhuang Zhou (there's other textual evidence supporting this as well, such as the fact that Huizi seems to appear in QWL as already dead, plus all the evidence Esther Klein has marshaled)

 

Anyway, this is all preliminary for the moment; I'll be adding to this as I get deeper in the weeds and (I hope) find new things).

 

Feel free to chime in if you have thoughts or (this being a Zhuangzi thread) if you don't. : )

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

Over the summer I intend to drive myself a little mad figuring out just how deep in the GSLz weeds the Qiwulun is.

very commendable.  a noble undertaking indeed. you seem to be doing fine but i wish you would tell us your understanding of what these cryptic sentences mean and why they were uttered. otherwise they dont make much sense. E.g 

 

1 hour ago, surrogate corpse said:

GSLz (指物論): 物莫非指，而指非指。

No thing is not a finger, yet a finger is not a finger.

Huh? This is not quite clear. However once we learn who is the author

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongsun_Long

it may dawn on us that this a very pragmatic, political discourse with implications echoing for millennia to come.

[surrogate corpse]

Ah, well, what they mean is just the issue! I don't feel I have a grasp of the GSLz yet.

 

But in brief, his essays seem to be technical works in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. "Finger" is a metaphor for pointing out or indicating. So "no thing is not a finger, but a finger is not a finger" may mean something like "no thing is not capable of being pointed out, but pointing out cannot be pointed out." (What's the one thing my right index finger cannot point to? Itself!)

 

In the white horse discourse, my preferred reading, at this early stage, sees it as a technical critique of the later Mohist theory of predication. I don't yet know enough to work it out in more detail than that.

 

The discourse on "hard and white" looks to be something about how properties inhere in objects. I haven't read it yet.

 

All to say: at this stage I am still as lost as anyone—I know there is a territory to explore here but not yet quite what it contains...

[surrogate corpse]

For what its worth, the general reception of GSLz by his contemporaries (and later Chinese generations) was that he was anything but pragmatic. But it is clear, I think, that he and other "school of names" figures were, ultimately, putting linguistic paradox to broadly pacifist purposes. So perhaps more practical than it seems.

Edited April 20 by surrogate corpse

[Taoist Texts]

15 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

"Finger" is a metaphor for pointing out or indicating.

yes finger is a designation for a thing or simply speaking, finger is a name of a thing.

18 hours ago, surrogate corpse said:

物things莫are  none非without指a name，而but 指a name 非is not 指 a name。

Quote

All things have a name but a name (on its own) is not a name.

which interestingly is correct because 'a table' contains no description of the table. if tomorrow we agree to call a table by the name of 'droink' it would work too.

Edited April 21 by Taoist Texts

[thelerner]

and the Gongsun Longzi text is off my reading list..

[surrogate corpse]

hehehe, if you like intellectual concussions it's a fun one

[Nintendao]

12 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

'droink'

 

[thelerner]

1 hour ago, Nintendao said:

 

South Park is sometimes brilliant, sometimes droll.  The Marklar episode was brilliant philosophy.  

If I had to write a dissertation for a doctorate in philosophy, I'd use that episode.  Obviously I wouldn't  

pass but then again there's not much money in philosophy.  Writing for TV on the other hand.. 

 

Edited April 21 by thelerner