Research On Xunzi’s Logical Thought From The Perspective Of Overseas Scholars

Xunzi’s logical thought of "rectifying the name" has a very important position in the history of Chinese logic.Xunzi absorbed and summarized the logical thoughts of Confucius and Mencius,fully inheriting the views of Confucian sages,and absorbing the logical thoughts of Mohism,forming a relatively comprehensive and systematic logical thought.The content of this logical thought is based on the three things of "reason","principle" and "category",with "name","propositions" and "argumentation" as the core,and supplemented by the criticism of three fallacies called "three confusions" by Xunzi.Overseas scholars’ research on Xunzi’s logical thoughts can be traced back to the "Zhengming" translated by Duyvendak in the 1920 s.In the following nearly a hundred years,overseas scholars’ research on Xunzi’s logical thought never stopped.Overseas scholars’ research on Xunzi’s logical thought can be roughly divided into three types.The first is to study Xunzi’s "rectifying the name" thought as a logical thought.The second is to examine Xunzi’s "rectifying the name" thought from the perspective of studying Chinese philosophy,without making a disciplinary qualitative analysis of Xunzi’s "rectifying the name" thought.The third is not to regard Xunzi’s "rectifying the name" as a logical thought,but to study it on the basis of ethics and other disciplines.Based on this situation,it is quite difficult to sort out,so the author chooses to limit it with the framework of Xunzi’s logical thought.On the basis of this framework,whether overseas scholars think that this part of the discipline belongs to any discipline or not,as long as its content is related to such contents as "category","reason","name","propositions" and "argumentation",the author will include it in the discussion of this article.This paper can be divided into two parts according to the content.One part is the questions raised by the author,such as investigating the basic understanding of overseas scholars on the "Zhengming" article,Xunzi’s enthusiasm in overseas Sinology research,and the reflection on overseas Xunzi’s logical thought research.The other part is based on Xunzi’s logical thinking framework to investigate the research of overseas scholars,that is,to study the part of the academic achievements of overseas scholars that involves Xunzi’s "name","propositions","argumentation" and other logical thoughts.