Abstract
My first scholarly article was about the work of A. C. Graham. Unfortunately, I never met him but my copies of his books became so worn from over-use that I had to replace them. My second, now equally worn, copy of Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science opens to a statement that inspires my work:
A consistent nominalism has to extend its principle to the particular utterances of the name itself; I pronounce the sound ‘stone’ over X and afterwards convey that Y is like X by pronouncing a similar sound.
This claim has two important implications. First, in early Chinese texts the feature that makes one name (míng 名) the same as another is not an abstraction. Second, what makes one míng the same as another is a matter of pronouncing similar sounds. In this essay, I explore these two implications by analyzing illustrations of failures to name in early Chinese texts.
Document Type
Post-print Chapter
ISBN
9781438468556
Publication Date
3-2018
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2018, State University of New York Press. This book chapter first appeared in Having a Word with Angus Graham: At Twenty-Five Years into His Immortality, edited by Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018.
The definitive version is available at: State University of New York Press.
Full Citation:
Geaney, Jane. “Míng (名) as ‘Names’ Rather than ‘Words:’ Disabled Bodies Speaking without Acting in Early Chinese Texts." In Having a Word with Angus Graham: At Twenty-Five Years into His Immortality, edited by Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018.
Recommended Citation
Geaney, Jane. “Míng (名) as ‘Names’ Rather than ‘Words:’ Disabled Bodies Speaking without Acting in Early Chinese Texts." In Having a Word with Angus Graham: At Twenty-Five Years into His Immortality, edited by Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018.