China Social Science Review

No.2, 2021

Cultural Confidence and Xuanzang’s Achievements in Hetuvidyā: A Discussion with Shen Jianying, Sun Zhongyuan and Fu Guangquan (Abstract)

Zheng Weihong

Xuanzang’s great achievements in hetuvidyā (Ch. yinming) still need to be widely publicized at home and abroad. The Chinese tradition of hetuvidyā is a source of cultural confidence; it provides ample capital for China to establish itself in the ranks of world studies of Indian classical logic. Many of the major theoretical debates in the field today are related to a failure to understand the nature of the discipline. The Chinese school of hetuvidyā, pioneered by Xuanzang, suggests that the logic of the discipline is polemical. The major legacy of Xuanzang’s work is “the exclusion of the subject from the realm of both the similar and dissimilar instances” and “the exclusion of the subject from the positive and negative example-statements.” This last statement is the key to Dignāga’s theory of hetuvidyā; a key that can help us to find the benchmark answer to the logic of Dignāga’s theory and can correctly summarize the gains and losses of domestic and foreign research on the subject over the past century. In Issue no. 3, 2020, China Social Science Review organized a special issue on hetuvidyā, which was a major contribution to the study of hetuvidyā in China. But the important topic of cultural confidence and Xuanzang’s hetuvidyā achievements still deserves in-depth study.