School of Names

[2] A Three Kingdoms era figure, Xu Gan, is relevant for discussions of names and realities, but was more Confucian and less relativist.

He uses Confucianism to defend the White Horse Dialogue, believed in kindness and duty, and has a rectification of names doctrine aimed at actualities and social order.

A contemporary of Confucius and the younger Mozi, Deng Xi, associated with litigation, is taken by Liu Xiang as the originator of the principle of xíngmíng, or ensuring that ministers' deeds (xing) harmonized with their words (ming).

[4] With Gongsun Long as example, most were still likely more socially or philosophically oriented than the late, stringent Han Feizi; it cannot be assumed that many were familiar with Shang Yang.

The earliest literary occurrence for xingming is in the Zhan Guo Ce, in reference to what would become known as the School of Names, amongst other more modern terms.

Joseph Needham notes that their works have been lost, except for the partially preserved oeuvre of Gongsun Long, and the paradoxes of Chapter 33 of the Zhuangzi.

[1] One of the few surviving lines from the school, "a one-foot stick, every day take away half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted", resembles Zeno's paradoxes.

As with the Legalists, Sinologist Kidder Smith highlights the mixed posthumous reception received by the school of names.

Rather than having to look for "good" men, mingshi or xingming can seek the right man for a particular post, though doing so implies a total organizational knowledge of the regime.