The Ten Theses

The final chapter of the Zhuangzi, Tian Xia (天下 'Under Heaven') claims that Hui Shi held ten main opinions, referred to as "The Ten Theses" or "The Ten Paradoxes", and lists them as follows:^[5][4][6]

1. The largest thing has nothing beyond it; it is called the One of largeness. The smallest thing has nothing within it; it is called the One of smallness.
2. That which has no thickness cannot be piled up; yet it is a thousand li in dimension.
3. Heaven is as low as earth; mountains and marshes are on the same level.
4. The sun at noon is the sun setting. The thing born is the thing dying.
5. Great similarities are different from little similarities; these are called the little similarities and differences. The ten thousand things are all similar and are all different; these are called the great similarities and differences.
6. The southern region has no limit and yet has a limit.
7. I set off for Yueh today and came there yesterday.
8. Linked rings can be separated.
9. I know the center of the world: it is north of Yen and south of Yueh.^[7]
10. Let love embrace the ten thousand things; Heaven and earth are a single body.

The list in the Tian Xia does not, however, explain how Hui Shi argued these theses.^[8] Though the theses seem haphazard, and the list laking in logical structure, Chris Fraser argues that they can be divided into four natural groups:^[8]

1. The basic principles (theses 1, 5 and 10) – These are non-paradoxical statements of Hui Shi's ontological doctrines. Thesis 1 presents the relativity of the concept of oneness. At the extremes, the One can be interpreted as the smallest possible part, with nothing inside it, or the largest possible whole, with everything inside it. (The idea of a "smallest thing" is sometimes used to argue that Hui Shi was an atomist,^[9] but Fraser proposes that it might be a geometrical point rather than an atom.) Thesis 5 represents the claim that sameness and difference are also relative and perspective-dependent, and that two things can be the same in one way while differing in another. Finally, thesis 10 contains an ethical element alongside an ontological one, suggesting that, if all things can be considered to form one whole, us included, we should treat all things with the same love with which we treat ourselves.
2. The paradoxes of infinitesimals and part-whole relations (theses 2 and 8) – Thesis 2 presents the paradox of the infinite divisibility of things into dimensionless, infinitesimal points (the "smallest things" from thesis 1) despite the seeming impossibility of adding together dimensionless objects to yield anything with thickness. Thesis 8 is obscure, but Fraser suggests it could be explained through thesis 2: if the rings are formed entirely of infinitesimal points, which take up no space, then there should be nothing there to prevent the rings from passing through each other.
3. The paradoxes of spatial relations (theses 3, 6, and 9) – Thesis 3 applies the relativism of thesis 5 to spatial relations: if "the ten thousand things are all similar and are all different", then there is a certain scale or perspective from which the apparently great distance between heaven and earth is reduced to nothing. Theses 6 and 9 concern the indexicality of the cardinal directions, i.e., the meaning of "south" changes the further one travels south.
4. The paradoxes of temporal relations (theses 4 and 7) – Thesis 4 can be explained through the multiplicity of perspectives: while the sun appears high here, to someone further east it must appear to be setting. Similarly, from the moment a thing is born, even as it grows, it is at the same time approaching its death. Thesis 7 is unclear, but also seems to relate to the relativity of time.

Miscellaneous Paradoxes

Another passage from the Tian Xia attributes 21 more paradoxes to Hui Shi and other members of the School of Names, which they are said to have used in their debates. Compared to the Ten Theses listed above, they appear even more absurd and unsolvable:

     惠施以此為大觀於天下而曉辯者，天下之辯者相與樂之。卵有毛，雞三足，郢有天下，犬可以為羊，馬有卵，丁子有尾，火不熱，山出口，輪不蹍地，目不見，指不至，至不絕，龜長於蛇，矩不方，規不可以為圓，鑿不圍枘，飛鳥之景未嘗動也，鏃矢之疾而有不行不止之時，狗非犬，黃馬、驪牛三，白狗黑，孤駒未嘗有母，一尺之捶，日取其半，萬世不竭。辯者以此與惠施相應，終身無窮。
     Hui Shi by such sayings as these made himself very conspicuous throughout the kingdom, and was considered an able debater. All other debaters vied with one another and delighted in similar exhibitions. [They would say,] "There are feathers in an egg." "A fowl has three feet." "The kingdom belongs to Ying." "A dog might have been [called] a sheep." "A horse has eggs." "A tadpole has a tail." "Fire is not hot." "A mountain gives forth a voice." "A wheel does not tread on the ground." "The eye does not see." "The finger indicates, but needs not touch [the object]." "Where you come to may not be the end." "The tortoise is longer than the snake." "The carpenter's square is not square." "A compass should not itself be round." "A chisel does not surround its handle." "The shadow of a flying bird does not [itself] move." "Swift as the arrowhead is, there is a time when it is neither flying nor at rest." "A dog is not a hound." "A bay horse and a black ox are three." "A white dog is black." "A motherless colt never had a mother." "If from a stick a foot long you every day take the half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted." It was in this way that the debaters responded to Hui Shi, all their lifetime, without coming to an end.

— Zhuangzi, chapter 33 (Legge translation)^[10]

The last statement in particular, "if from a stick a foot long you every day take the half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted" is notable for its resemblance to the Dichotomy paradox described by Zeno of Elea. Zeno's paradox takes the example of a runner on a finite race track, arguing that, because runner must reach the halfway point before they can reach the finish line, and the length of the track can be divided into halves infinitely many times, it should be impossible for them to reach the finish line in a finite amount of time.^[11] The Mohist canon appears to propose a solution to this paradox by arguing that in moving across a measured length, the distance is not covered in successive fractions of the length, but in one stage.

Due to the lack of surviving works, most of the other paradoxes listed are difficult to interpret.^[12]

Fondness for Analogies

A dialogue in the Shuo Yuan portrays Hui Shi as having a tendency to overuse analogies (譬 pi, which can also be translated as "illustrative examples") with Hui Shi justifying this habit with the claim that communication is impossible without analogies:^[4]

A client said to the King of Liang, “In talking about things, Hui Shi is fond of using analogies. If you don’t let him use analogies, he won’t be able to speak.” The King said, “Agreed.” The next day he saw Hui Shi and said, “I wish that when you speak about things, you speak directly, without using analogies.” Hui Shi said, “Suppose there’s a man here who doesn’t know what a dan is. If he says, ‘What are the features of a dan like?’ and we answer, saying, ‘The features of a dan are like a dan,’ then would that communicate it?” The King said, “It would not.” “Then if we instead answered, ‘The features of a dan are like a bow, but with a bamboo string,’ then would he know?” The King said, “It can be known.” Hui Shi said, “Explanations are inherently a matter of using what a person knows to communicate what he doesn’t know, thereby causing him to know it. Now if you say, ‘No analogies,’ that’s inadmissible.” The King said, “Good!”

A. C. Graham argues that this philosophical position suggests some affinity between Hui Shi and the Mohists, in their shared opinion that "the function of names is to communicate that an object is like the objects one knows by the name"^[13][4]