The Original Text
The White Horse Dialogue (Baima Lun) constitutes chapter 2 of the eponymous Gongsun Longzi "Master Gongsun Long", who was a leader in the "School of Names" (aka "Logicians" or "Dialecticians") in the Hundred Schools of Thought. Most of Gongsun's writings have been lost and the received Gongsun Longzi text only contains 6 of the supposedly 14 original chapters. Parts of the text are dislocated and some commentators and translators rearrange them for clarity. The dialogue is between two unnamed speakers.
Can it be that a white horse is not a horse?
Advocate: It can.
Objector: How?
Advocate: "Horse" is that by means of which one names the shape. "White" is that by means of which one names the color. What names the color is not what names the shape. Hence, I say that a white horse is not a horse.
Objector: If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses. If one cannot say that there are no horses, doesn't that mean that there are horses? For there to be white horses is for there to be horses. How could it be that the white ones are not horses?
Advocate: If one wants a horse, that extends to a yellow or black horse. But if one wants a white horse, that does not extend to a yellow or black horse. Suppose that a white horse were a horse. Then what one wants would be the same. If what one wants were the same, then a white would not differ from a horse. If what one wants does not differ, then how is it that a yellow or black horse is sometimes acceptable and sometimes unacceptable? It is clear that acceptable and unacceptable are mutually contrary. Hence, yellow and black horses are the same, one can respond that there are horses, but one cannot respond that there are white horses. Thus, it is evident that a white horse is not a horse.
This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether "white" and "horse" can be separated from "white horse".
Other Gongsun longzi chapters discuss Baima-related concepts of jian 堅 "hard; hardness" and bai 白 "white; whiteness", ming 名 "name; term" and shi 實 "solid; true, actual; fact, reality", and abstract zhi 指 "finger; pointing; designation; universal" like "whiteness" and concrete wu 物 "thing; object; particular" like a "white horse".
Read more about this topic: When A White Horse Is Not A Horse
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