Critique of “Judgment” in Gongsun Long’s “Zhiwu lun”

Abstract

This paper has attempted to characterize “Zhiwu lun” as the presentation of the incapacity of object-oriented knowledge to represent the realm of “things”, highlighting Gongsun Long’s epistemological and ontological value beyond a logical one. This paper proposes that only based upon this assumption does “Zhiwu lun” allow a thorough interpretation of “Mingshi lun”, whereby the intuitive function of “names” provides a better solution to the cognitive limits imposed by object-oriented (self-)consciousness. Methodologically, this paper mainly considers the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s critique of judgment in “Judgment and Being” to be both a complementary justification and reconstruction of the implicit structures of Gongsun Long’s view. This paper has presupposed the interpretation of Gongsun Long’s key concept of 指 as “judgment” in Hölderlin’s sense, in contrast to “things” (物) and “name” (名), then verified this hypothesis, as well as the relationships amongst these translations, by a close textual analysis and new translation of “Zhiwu lun”.