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Plínio Tsai

Plínio Marcos Tsai is a Full Professor in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at the Methodist University of São Paulo and a CNPq Researcher. He serves as coordinator of the research group Buddhism with Brazilian Characteristics at the same institution. Additionally, he holds a professorship in the undergraduate Theology program at the Methodist University of São Paulo.
An active leader in religious and academic initiatives, Tsai currently holds several key positions: as Director of the Buddhist Faculty of São Paulo (a project developed in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Culture), Founder of the Buddha-Dharma Association for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (headquartered in Valinhos and officially recognized as a public utility organization by the State), National Director of the Dominican Lay Fraternities and also Director-Secretary of the Fausto Castilho Center for the Study of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy History (CEMODECON – IFCH/Unicamp).

Plínio Tsai

From Rectification to Relational Flux: The Rectification of the Ontological-Logical Notion in Early Chinese Philosophy

The presentation I intend to deliver offers an introductory analysis of the substantialist logical framework of Huìzǐ (惠子) and Gōngsūn Lóng (公孫龍), whose predicative structure operates based on the rectification of names (zhèng míng, 正名) and the separation between name (míng, 名) and substance (shí, 實). In the argument “a white horse is not a horse” (bái mǎ fēi mǎ, 白馬非馬), we observe a logic of categorical exclusion aimed at fixing conceptual identities through formal distinctions between subject and predicate. Zhuāngzǐ (莊子), especially in the Qíwùlùn (齊物論), the second chapter of the Zhuāngzǐshū (莊子書), deconstructs this ontology through an inter-relational logic that reveals the inseparability via the interdependence of opposites as an epistemological horizon. In place of the rigidity of discriminative discourse (biàn, 辯), Zhuāngzǐ (莊子) proposes an opening through an ontological deconstructive logic, in which míng (名) (name, language) and shí (實) (substance, reality) are not phenomena in themselves, but relational flows within an interdependent network. The critical analysis not only deconstructs the logic of the School of Names (Míngjiā, 名家), but also redirects the flow of epistemological construction toward an ontology of inter-relational flux and mutually determined identity.

©2025 by The XI International Conference of Eastern Philosophy at Unicamp

Brazil-China Study Group

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