Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought.

• Author: Asselin, Mark L.

Little is known about the life of Xu Gan (A.D. 170-217), a scholar-official who was immortalized as one of the "Seven Masters of the Jian'an Period" (referring to the final reign of the Han, 196-220). Xu Gan established his name with shi and fu pieces; of his literary accomplishments, barely fragments survive today. Apart from these remnants is his Zhong lun, a philosophical treatise that is the subject of a neat, brief monograph by John Makeham. Zhong lun, which Makeham translates as Discourses that Hit the Mark, has heretofore received little scholarly attention.(1) Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought is not a comprehensive study of Zhong lun, but an interpretation of the ming-shi polar concepts as they are used in Zhong lun, analyzed within their philosophical and socio-political contexts.

Makeham has constructed a strong framework for this book, providing a clear statement of goals at the outset, and a concise summary at the end of each chapter. He divides his study into four sections. The first of these sections, "Xu Gan's Theory of Naming" (pp. 1-32), attempts to determine Xu Gan's understanding of the ming-shi concepts. Makeham renders Xu Gan's concept of ming-shi as "name and actuality," "actuality" being "a state of development peculiar to an entity or state of affairs by virtue of which that entity or state of affairs is what it is" (p. xiii). Ming-shi as "name and actuality" suggests a concern with ontology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, and the first part of Makeham's discussion bears this out.

Part two, "The Philosophical Background" (pp. 33-95), surveys the intellectual tradition out of which Zhong lun arises. Makeham points out that the primary stimulus for Xu Gan's writing was the socio-political conditions of his time. Other works similar to Zhong lun in providing critical commentary on contemporary social problems, such as Wang Chong's (27-ca. 97) Lun heng, Wang Fu's (ca. 85-162) Qianfu lun, and Cui Shi's (?-ca. 170) Zheng lun, show little if any interest in the ming-shi concepts. Hence, Makeham entertains differences and similarities between Xu Gan's ideas and the concepts of thinkers prior to the Eastern Han. Zhong lun is essentially a Ruist work and, given the time of its composition, it is surprising that it is not more eclectic. Nonetheless, Zhong lun is informed by other traditions. Makeham convincingly demonstrates how Xu Gan's concept of ming-shi is built upon the work of earlier thinkers. Having identified Xu Gan's ming-shi as a correlative theory, he proceeds to analyze Confucius' "ordering of names" (zheng ming) program, the Neo-Mohists' and Xunzi's "name and object" (ming-shi), and Hah Fei's "name and deed" (xing ming) as "nominal prescriptivism" (pp. 47, 81); and Guanzi's and Chunqiu fanlu's "name and actuality" as nascent correlative theories. In his conclusion, Makeham states: "My identification of the emergence of correlative theories of naming in the late third and early second centuries B.C.E. is the most important conceptual interpretation advanced in this study" (p. 147).

Two topics take up the third part, "The Socio-intellectual Background" (pp. 97-125): the first is ming jiao, which had two senses, the idea that one ought to cultivate a moral reputation, and the moral teaching that one ought to cultivate xiao (filial respect and submission). The other topic is classical scholarship, specifically the zhang ju (chapter and verse) and xun gu (glossing ancient words)...