Why Is “A White Horse Not a Horse”? A New Perspective on Gongsun Long’s “A Discussion on the White Horse”

Shiqin She

doi:10.4312/as.2024.12.2.273-308

Authors

SHE Shiqin Xiamen University, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.273-308

Keywords:

Gongsun Long, “A Discussion on the White Horse”, critique of judgment, Heidelberg School, Hölderlin

Abstract

This paper attempts a new reading of Gongsun Long’s “Baima lun”, through comparison with the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s “Being and Judgement” as a critique of self-consciousness and its judgmental form. It demonstrates that “Baima lun” correspondingly employs a reflectivity, or logic-transcending, anti-foundational perspective of “Being”, in order to undertake an ironical critique of judgment by a judgment as an illustration and confirmation of the epistemological ideas developed in “Zhiwu lun” and “Mingshi lun”. Consequently, based on the GSLZ, this paper proposes a new nominalist approach which differs from that of Hansen. Derived from further elaboration of the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s conception of Being, this paper posits that “things”, as read in “Mingshi lun”, are a specific dimension of “Being”, as singular infinity, and “name”, as superior to “zhi” or judgment in the rendering of things as criticized in “Zhiwu lun” and “Baima lun”.

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