Revisiting Xunzi’s Philosophy of Language

Abstract

In a recent essay, Chris Fraser claims that Xunzi has a “purely extensional” theory of terms. This paper challenges that interpretation by pointing to places in the Xunzi that suggest the presence of an implicit notion of intension. Fraser’s evidence is drawn mostly from chapter 22 of the text, while the competing evidence comes from outside that chapter. The presence of such competing evidence raises the question of whether there is a genuine inconsistency in the Xunzi, or whether chapter 22 might be re-interpreted as also incorporating a notion of intension. While I favor the latter view, offering a fully developed interpretation along those lines is beyond the scope of the present essay. Therefore, in the absence of an argument for such a reading, I offer what I call a “compromise” position. Namely, I suggest that the material in chapter 22 is perhaps best understood as not representing the whole of Xunzi’s view of terms, but should instead be regarded as a particular response to abuses of language, and hence that if there is a discrepancy between the views presented in chapter 22 and the rest of the text, that discrepancy need not amount to a contradiction in the text.