The Logical Thought Of Dengxizi And Its Application In Legal Argumentation

Dengxizi is the founder of the School of Names in China's pre-Qin period,and he is the first attorney in Ancient China.At that time the system of society was in the revolution from slavery to feudalism,which brought great changes in the fields of social politics,economy,culture,etc.Because the things in old order and old system were only an empty title or their names were different from their essence,scholars appealed to give things correct names which were consistent with their essence,and it brought the trend of debating names.The thought of Dengxizi was born in this background.The legal logical thought of Dengxizi was reflected in the following four aspects.The first is the thought of names.In the relationship between names and essence,Dengxizi claimed names should be consistent with their essence,which meant resetting names according to their new essence.The function of names was to refer to specific things and discriminate colorful objects in the world.Only in this way would people obey the rule and society be in order,preventing it from a mess.The second is the skill of argumentation.In this thought it contains plain dialectics.Dengxizi could find opposition between different things or in one thing and analyze different things rationally to find their essential characteristics.Dengxizi differentiated argumentation into two kinds---one called “Big Argumentation” was to eliminate the false and retain the true,and the other one called “Small Argumentation” only focused on words like quibbling.Besides,Dengxizi have also talked about the use of argumentation language.Because of his intensive study on argumentation theory,more and more people joined in,which made great contributions to the development of argumentation and logistics.The third is “ambiguous said”.It is the representative theory of Dengxizi and its typical case was written in L?shichunqiu,which is a story about buying and selling corpse.Despite the contradictory interest between them,Dengxizi told both of them to keep calm.From this case,we can find that Dengxizi analyzed problems in a comprehensive view and he learned contradiction existing in every thing.The forth is the thought of inference.Dengxizi specialized in inference method.In Wuhoupian and Zhuancipian we can see Dengxizi used the method of deductive inference,inductive inference and analogical inference to express his opinions frequently.In this way,Dengxizi could spread his thought more convincingly and influentially,which speeded the pace to abolish Zhou Li.Although in some books there were negative judgments to the thought of Dengxizi,for example,saying it quibbling and confusing right and wrong.But we can't deny that it is the most outstanding argumentation thought in Ancient China,tells people to solve problems objectively and dialectically,and makes great contributions to nowadays legal argumentation development.Legal argumentation is the activity to prove a legal proposition legitimate and reasonable among two or more people,put forward grounds to support our own opinion,and overcome other counteradvices.It aims to persuade others to accept our own idea.The produce and development of legal argumentation contribute to people understanding and researching legal problem,forming better judicial system and realizing judicial justice and impartiality,which gives positive effect to build society with rule of law.To analyze legal problems and realize judicial justice correctly and effectively in the process of legal argumentation,Dengxizi's thought of names,the skill of argumentation,ambiguous said and the thought of inference all can provide valuable suggestions.