Xiānqín míngxué shǐ 先秦名學史

‘History of Pre-Qín Name Studies’, the Chinese version of Hú Shì’s (1891–1962) Columbia doctoral dissertation, completed in 1917 and published in English as The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (1922). The work reconstructs early Chinese philosophy through the development of logical method. Its scope extends well beyond the Mohists, covering the Yìjīng, Confucius, Mò Dí, the later Mohists, Huì Shī, Gōngsūn Lóng, Zhuāngzǐ, Xúnzǐ, and Legalist thought. Hú’s central achievement was methodological: he showed how Qīng philology, modern historical criticism, and Western philosophy could be combined to write a new kind of history of Chinese thought.