[Revised entry by Chris Fraser on September 3, 2024.
Changes to: Bibliography]
The “School of Names” (ming jia) is the traditional Chinese label for a diverse group of Warring States (479 – 221 B.C.E.) thinkers who shared an interest in language, disputation, and metaphysics. They were notorious for logic-chopping, purportedly idle conceptual puzzles, and paradoxes such as “Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday” and “A white horse is not a horse.” Because reflection on language in ancient China centered on “names” (ming, words) and their…

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