- 著者
-
高田 淳
- 出版者
- 東洋文庫
- 雑誌
- 東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.45, no.2, pp.240-256, 1962-09
Hui Shih 恵施, also said to be a Nominalist in the same category as Kung-sun Lung, enjoys a high reputation despite the scarcity of information about his thought except for a few fragments quoted in the Chapter T’ien-hsia 天下 of the Chuang-tzu. In the present article, those fragments are interpreted in the light of the activity and thought of him as a prime minister of Wei Kingdom who advocated the anti-Ch’in alliance, as recorded in the Chan-kuo-ts’ê 戦国策, Lü-shih-ch’un-ch’iu 呂氏春秋, etc., and an attempt is made at understanding his thought in relation with that of Chuang-tzŭ, a friend of his with whom he used to have disputations.After all, what Hui Shih and Kung-sun Lung themselves called casuistry had in essence nothing too different from the elocution of other itinerant orators of the Warring States period, being an art of persuasion and not having relation with the logic in the proper sense, though it should be pointed out that, between the two, Kung-sun Lung was richer in epistemological elements. There still remains to be analyzed the question of the nature of the elocution of the orators toward the end of the Warring States period which caused our sophists to be tinged with casuistic color.