Hui Shi citations

Hui Shi

ou Huizi

est un philosophe et homme d'état chinois de la Période des Royaumes combattants .

Le sophiste, célèbre pour ses controverses avec Zhuāng Zhōu et ses paradoxes sur la relativité du temps et de l'espace, est considéré comme l'un des représentants majeurs de l'École des Noms . Il tient par ailleurs un rôle politique important en tant que premier ministre du roi Huì 魏惠王 des Wei 魏國.

« La perte des textes de Hui Shi est peut-être la perte la plus regrettable de la littérature chinoise ancienne, car chaque témoignage évoque un homme unique par l'étendue de ses talents et de ses centres d'intérêt, un véritable humaniste. » Angus Charles Graham « Sa pensée est probablement un sommet de la philosophie de la nature à l’époque des Royaumes combattants. » Li Cunshan 李存山 Wikipedia

Hui Shi: Citations en anglais

“Hui Shih was a man of many devices and his writings would fill five carriages. But his doctrines were jumbled and perverse and his words wide of the mark. His way of dealing with things may be seen from these sayings:
"The largest thing has nothing beyond it; it is called the One of largeness. The smallest thing has nothing within it; it is called the One of smallness."
"That which has no thickness cannot be piled up; yet it is a thousand li in dimension."
"Heaven is as low as earth; mountains and marshes are on the same level."
"The sun at noon is the sun setting. The thing born is the thing dying."
"Great similarities are different from little similarities; these are called the little similarities and differences. The ten thousand things are all similar and are all different; these are called the great similarities and differences."
"The southern region has no limit and yet has a limit."
"I set off for Yueh today and came there yesterday."
"Linked rings can be separated."
"I know the center of the world: it is north of Yen and south of Yueh."”

Help us translate this quote

Hui Shi

"Let love embrace the ten thousand things; Heaven and earth are a single body."
'With sayings such as these, Hui Shih tried to introduce a more magnanimous view of the world and to enlighten the rhetoricians.'
Zhuangzi, Ch. 33, as translated by Burton Watson (1968), p. 374; this contains the core of what has survived of Hui Shi's philosophy, most of the records of it having been eradicated in the vast "burning of books and burying of scholars" during the Legalism of the Qin dynasty.