ABSTRACT
Ultimately Graham’s sympathies undoubtedly were with Zhuangzi, but in his rationalistic mood Graham would proceed in exactly the same fashion as the Mohist. He would extract from Zhuangzi’s “many-sided language” propositions that are refutable in terms of contemporary disputation – even as he recognized that the Mohist’s attempt to refute Zhuangzi through disputation (bian) somehow missed the point. Consider the following passage from “On the Equality of Things”:
Now, there may be [authentic] saying here, but I do not know if it belongs or does not belong to the category of a [propositional] “this” (shi). If belonging to a category and not belonging to a category together make a category, then one is not different from the other! At any rate, please let me try to say it.
