Xuanxue’s 玄學 ongoing evolution: Thinking with Wang Bi’s name-actuality dialectic

How should we conceptualise a philosophical tradition retrospectively defined and continuously shaped by contemporary scholarship? This paper addresses this philosophy-of-historiography question by focusing on Xuanxue, a significant yet underdeveloped domain of Chinese philosophy centered on the corpus of the Wei-Jin (魏晉) Period (220–589 CE) and beyond. Scholarly conceptions of Xuanxue have long been bound by entrenched themes, the ‘Daoist’ label, and rigid periodisation. In contrast, this paper situates Xuanxue within both its historical milieu and the context of ongoing modern interpretations. Drawing heuristically from Wang Bi’s (王弼, 226–249 CE) conceptual interdependence between Name (ming 名) and Actual Situation (shi 實), I propose a new method (HPE) for evaluating Xuanxue conceptions with three criteria: Historical embeddedness, Plurality, and Evolvingness. This research thus offers a philosophically reflexive model for Xuanxue studies and the broader field of cross-cultural philosophy, demonstrating how ancient traditions can be engaged as dynamic intellectual projects.