Preface and Acknowledgements

Abstract

In a way, the idea for this volume and the conference out of which it grew was born out of chance. The editors first met as a group in 2011, and they soon discovered their shared fascination for one of the least-known, largely neglected treasures of classical Chinese masters literature. Playful yet technical, at the same time dazzling and obscure, the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ公孫龍子 had long since attracted the attention of Lisa Indraccolo, who dedicated her 2009 Ph.D. thesis at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice to it. In Zurich, Rafael Suter had also been working on this intricate text for quite some time and had already produced some minor publications on it. After the success of a co-organized panel on the ‘Zhǐwù lùn’ 指物論 at the 19 Biennial Conference of the European Society of Chinese Studies in Paris in 2012, Indraccolo and Suter convinced Wolfgang Behr to jointly organize an entire international workshop dedicated to the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ. Behr’s broad interests in early Chinese language and philosophy neatly complemented the group. The workshop finally took place from August 27 to 29, 2014, at the University of Zurich. That our efforts spawned the organization of a workshop that succeeded in gathering scholars from all over the world, and that this has eventually resulted in the publication of this book, is to the credit of many people. First and foremost, the editors wish to thank all the authors who were ready to contribute their conference papers and to invest considerable time and effort in reformulating and reshaping them into full-fledged articles for publication. We would also like to thank our anonymous peer reviewers, whose constructive, competent, and critical feedback played a large role in improving the quality and consistency of this volume. We are grateful to Zhang Yuheng and Yves Trachsel, who kindly provided translations of three papers that were originally written in Chinese. Even a passing acquaintance with the difficulties of the Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ suffices to imagine the pains they took to bridge the gulf between the linguistic continents of Classical Chinese and academic English. The careful corrections and meticulous remarks of our copyeditor, Alissa Jones Nelson, have considerably helped to improve the language of the present volume as a whole. We thank her and the typesetters at De Gruyter, whose efforts contributed greatly to the systematizing of the fairly heterogeneous contributions gathered in this volume. The cover design was provided by Albina Töws, who ensured that it fulfilled both De Gruyter’s formal requirements and the editors’ wishes. Our thanks also go to the editors of the Worlds of East Asia series at the Swiss Asia Society for their readiness to include this volume in the series. The series production manager at De Gruyter, Christina Lembrecht, as well as Gabrielle Cornefert, deserve our gratitude for their professional support.