History of Chinese Logic, Argumentation, & Rhetoric to 1950:
Essential Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

Biderman, Shlomo; Scharfstein, Ben-Ami; eds. Rationality in Question: on Eastern and Western Views of Rationality. Leiden; New York: Brill, 1989.

Bloom, Alfred H. The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: a Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981.

Chmielewski, Janusz. Language and Logic in Ancient China: Collected Papers on the Chinese Language and Logic, edited by Marek Mejor. Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk, 2009.

Gentz, Joachim; Meyer, Dirk; eds. Literary Forms of Argument in Early China. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2015.

Graham, A. C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La Salle: Open Court, 1989.

——————. Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; London: School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, 1978.

——————. Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature. Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies, National University of Singapore, 1986; Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990.

Chapter “‘Being’ in Western Philosophy Compared with Shih/Fei and Yu/Wu in Chinese Philosophy,” pp. 322-359, is based on Graham, 1967 (see below), with the addition of an Appendix: The supposed vagueness of Chinese.

Hansen, Chad. Language and Logic in Ancient China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.

Harbsmeier, Christoph. Science and Civilisation in China [by Joseph Needham]. Vol. 7.1: Language and Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Hofmann, Martin; Kurtz, Joachim; Levine, Ari Daniel; eds. Powerful Arguments: Standards of Validity in Late Imperial China. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020.

Hu Shi. The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1922. 2nd ed., with introduction by Hyman Kublin. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1963.

Kurtz, Joachim. The Discovery of Chinese Logic. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Leslie, Donald. Argument by Contradiction in Pre-Buddhist Chinese Reasoning. Canberra: Australian National University, Center of Oriental Studies, 1964.

Lu Xing. Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: a Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1998.

Mou, Bo, ed. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions, La Salle: Open Court, 2001.

Reding, Jean-Paul. Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.

Sun, Zhongyuan. The Mojing: Origins and Development of Mohist Logic, translated by Daniel Sarafinas. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2024. (Modern Chinese Philosophy; vol. 25)

Wardy, Robert. Aristotle in China: Language, Categories and Translation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (Needham Research Institute Studies; 2).

Scientism & Modernization of Chinese Thought

Brière, O. Fifty Years of Chinese Philosophy, 1898-1950, translated from the French by Laurence G. Thompson, preface by E. R. Hughes. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956 [French ed., 1949].

Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890-1911). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Chiu, King Pong. Thomé H. Fang, Tang Junyi and Huayan Thought: A Confucian Appropriation of Buddhist Ideas in Response to Scientism in Twentieth-Century China. Boston: Brill, 2016.

Hammerstrom, Erik J. The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. (Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies)

Jenco, Leigh, ed. Chinese Thought as Global Theory: Diversifying Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Albany: SUNY Press, 2016.

Kwok, D. W. Y. Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

Makeham, John, ed. Learning to Emulate the Wise: The Genesis of Chinese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2012.

Wang, Hui. The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought [abridgement, translation], edited by Michael Gibbs Hill. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2023.

Journal & Book Articles

Banu, Ion. "The Graphic Figure and the Philosophical Abstraction", in: Contemporary East European Philosophy, Vol. III, edited by Edward D'Angelo, David H. DeGrood, Dale Riepe (Bridgeport, CT: Spartacus Books, 1971), pp. 244-259.

Benesch, Walter; Wilner, Eduardo. "Continuum Logic: A Chinese Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding in Philosophy and Science," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 4, December 2002, pp. 471-494.

Fung, Y.-M. “Reason and Unreason in Chinese Philosophy,” in Rationality: Constraints and Contexts, edited by T[zu]-W[ei] Hung and T[imothy] J[oseph] Lane (Amsterdam; Boston: Academic Press, 2017), pp. 149-172.

Graham, A. C. “‘Being’ in Classical Chinese,” in The Verb ‘Be’ and Its Synonyms; Philosophical and Grammatical Studies; Part 1. Classical Chinese, Athapaskan, Mundari, edited by John W. M. Verhaar (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1967), pp. 1-39.

The Verb ‘Be’ and Its Synonyms book series

Lee, T. M. “Does Classical Chinese Philosophy Reveal Alternative Rationalities?” in Rationality: Constraints and Contexts, edited by T[zu]-W[ei] Hung and T[imothy] J[oseph] Lane (Amsterdam; Boston: Academic Press, 2017), pp. 195-211.

Mills, C. Wright. “The Language and Ideas of Ancient China,” in Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, edited and with an Introduction by Irving Louis Horowitz (New York: Ballantine Books; Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 469-520. Originally: “The Language and Ideas of Ancient China: Marcel Granet’s Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge” (1940, University of Wisconsin, Department of Sociology; privately mimeographed and previously unpublished).

Some interesting sociological & ideological observations, but Granet’s contention that Chinese thought eschews abstraction is not tenable.  See also Fung, above.

Rošker, Jana S. “The problem of the flying arrow: Comparing Hui Shi and Zeno of Elea using the method of sublation,” in Doing Metaphysics in a Diverse World: How We Make Sense of Things Across Cultures, edited by Stephen Green (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), pp. 73-96.

Vallverdú, Jordi. "Brains, Language and the Argumentative Mind in Western and Eastern Societies. The Fertile Differences Between Western-Eastern Argumentative Traditions," Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Volume 131, December 2017, pp. 424-431. Preprint.

Wang, E. H. “Reason and Emotion in Xunzi’s Moral Psychology,” in Rationality: Constraints and Contexts, edited by T[zu]-W[ei] Hung and T[imothy] J[oseph] Lane (Amsterdam; Boston: Academic Press, 2017), pp. 259-276.

“Scientism, Romanticism and Social Realist Images of Science”
by Aant Elzinga

“What is the Relationship Between Logic and Reality?”
by R. Dumain

Leibniz & Ideology: Selected Bibliography:
Leibniz & China

Lu Xun: A Select Bibliography
(in English & Esperanto)

Indian Logic & Argumentation: Selected Bibliography

Occultism, Eastern Mysticism, Fascism, & Countercultures: Selected Bibliography

Argumentation & Controversies: Selected Bibliography

Diversity, Intercultural & Comparative Philosophy in the Historiography of Philosophy:
A Guide

Philosophy of Paraconsistency & Associated Logics (Web Guide)