Hui shi's monism: a russellian interpretation

Abstract

A dilemma in interpreting Hui Shi's ten theses is that they are understandable only in the light of relativistic pluralism, which conflicts with his own main theme of absolutistic monism. However, after a careful investigation of the evolutionary paths of the tense and aspect uses of the temporal adverb fang 方 in classical Chinese language, a construction argument can be made for fang sheng fang si 方生方死 But before presenting this construction argument, we first introduce the dilemma in interpreting the ten theses.