Kong Chuan

Kong Chuan , courtesy name Zi Gao , was a sixth-generation descendent of the philosopher Confucius, native to the State of Lu. He is primarily known for his debates with Gongsun Long on his White Horse Dialogue. He defined Confucianism as "embracing excellence and the Six Arts; the balance between movement and stillness should not be lost."

In the Kong Family Master's Anthology, Kong Chuan was asked by an unnamed person to correct Gongsun Long, believing he was bringing shame and humiliation to the Dao; therefore, correcting him was a matter of restoring balance. The two met at the residence of Lord Pingyuan, where Kong introduced himself as having wanted to study under Gongsun, but could not due to his disagreement with the White Horse Dialogue. Gongsun rebuked Kong for this, believing his ideas to be based on his logical proofs coming from the White Horse Dialogue; therefore, he would have nothing to teach, and compared the situation where King Xuan of Qi asked a similar question to Yin Wen. He then clarified his position, discussing a quote from Confucius:

王曰：‘止也，楚人遺弓，楚人得之，又何求乎？ The King said: “Wait. A man of Chu lost it, so a Chu person will find it. Why search for it?”

仲尼聞之曰：‘楚王仁義而未遂，亦曰人得之而已矣，何必楚乎？’ (In 公孫龍子·迹府, the 乎 is absent He concluded, saying that to want to learn, but not learn the most important part of his theory, would make even a hundred of himself insufficient to teach Kong Chuan.) Kong then moved to leave,

六鷁退飛 Six herons fly back

Kong Chuan argued thusly: Upon seeing the herons, there are six. Upon closer inspection, there is one. The hawk is like a horse; the six is like the colour white. Colour, then, distinguishes the "inner" from the "outer". Kong Chuan's argument relies on a distinction between modifiers and head nouns, which modern semantics identifies as intersective adjective + noun compounds. He then cites either Gaoyang or Ganmao from the Classic of Poetry: If silk and hemp are added to a woman's work, one can find either a plain green or a plain yellow colour. Although the colours are different, their qualities are the same; therefore, those poems would say "plain silk" , not "silk-plain" . He furthermore cites the Book of Rites, specifically Za Ji I, which would say fine-cloth , not cloth-fine . Therefore, Kong had argued that, in classical usage, Old Chinese is adjective-initial, that the descriptor must precede the name. Therefore, these were not necessarily inseparable compounds, but a grammatical construction. He concluded that a Junzi would value the principle of things rather than flowery, excessive explanations for such a thing. He then argued that Confucius was critiquing the reductionist nature of King Gong of Chu's statement; why must it be Chu?