Research On Wu Feibai's Zhengming Thought

Mister Wu Feibai is a famous Mohist and logician in Chinese modern and contemporary history. In writing Chinese Ancient Mingist's Speeches, he adhered to historical materials, unconstrained by the simple methodology of using"the antithetical couplet structure"to study pre-Qin times Mingist, explored a new logicist orientation for the study of Mingism in China, thus enabled the"Zhengming"thought to get rid of the fetters of ancient politics and ethics, and become truly scientific thought. By annotating the theories about"Ming"proposed by the various schools of thought and their exponents during the period from pre-Qin times to the early years of the Han Dynasty, explored and studied their thoughts about such categories as Ming,Shi,signification,object,Wei,logic law, and Zhengming, thereby rectified and confirmed pre-Qin times Mingism into an organic unity.He expounded"signification"as having three kinds of senses, namely signifier,signified and signifier to be signified, and two opposite aspects of signifier and its reverse. In his opinion, the signifying relationship is the development and deepening of the relationship between"Ming"and"Shi". According to this, he considered Discussion on Ming and Shi as the radical demonstration of the relationship between Ming and Shi, Discussion on Zhi and Wu and Discussion on Ordinary Change as its abstract explanation, while Discussion on White Horse,Discussion on Tightness and Whiteness as its concrete testification.In addition, he clearly differentiated Ming and Wei, criticized common people for just emphasizing"Zhengming"while neglecting"Zhengwei". For his own part, the significance of"Zhengming"is to clarify the Ming of concept or to know the connotation and denotation of the Ming of words; its fundamental aim is to correct the inappropriate Ming to dennotated Shi. Furthermore, he regarded"Zhengwei"as the essence of Zhengming. For the sake of this, he clearly proposed two principles of"Jianming"and"Bieming"to clarify the connotation and denotation of concept and words, while is the first time in Chinese history of Mingism; From his standpoint, the various schools in pre-Qin times respectively proposed three methods of"Weiming","Weishi"and"Weiwei"to realize"Zhengwei". So far, It can be inferred that Shi and Ming constituted the naming theory, whereas Zhi and Wu,Ming and Wei formed reference theory and sense theory in Chinese ancient logics.In a word, the way that Wu feibai created the law of Mingism through introducing dialectical ideology, imitating the law of western formal logic deserves our admiration and can be used for our reference. It is enlightening for the research of Chinese Mingism and also provides the modernization of Mingism with theoretical foundation and practical reference. Especially, he firmly stuck the features of logical school different from other schools, commenting Mingism purely from the perspective of western logical school. Thus, it has extremely important referential, inspiring significance to wards the research of Mingism.