ABSTRACT
Ontology, or the doctrine of being, is rightly considered as one of the main achievements of Western metaphysics, no matter how we finally judge the value of the tradition derived from it. But it has also been observed that, without the support of the Greek verb ‘to be’ (einai, eimi, estin), it would hardly have been possible to express the central tenets of ontology, let alone discover them.1 Is it justified, then, to infer from the commonplace observation that ancient China has had neither a verb ‘to be’ comparable to the Greek einai nor a theory of being comparable to what Aristotle and Plato had constructed, that ontology simply could not arise in China? And if this is considered as a serious hypothesis, what are our opportunities for testing it?
