author
Hui Shi
An influential thinker from China’s Warring States period, this early philosopher is remembered for sharp debates about language, logic, and the strange puzzles of space and time. Later texts also preserve his lively exchanges with Zhuangzi, which helped keep his ideas alive for centuries.
1 Audiobook
幽閨記
by Hui Shi
About the author
Hui Shi, also known as Huizi, was a Chinese philosopher who lived during the Warring States period, traditionally dated around 370-310 BCE. He is usually linked to the School of Names, a group of thinkers interested in language, argument, and how words relate to reality.
He became especially famous for a set of paradoxes that explore ideas about size, distance, change, and perspective. Even when only fragments of his writing survive, those puzzles still make him stand out as one of the most intellectually playful figures in early Chinese thought.
Hui Shi is also known through stories in the Zhuangzi, where he appears as both a rival and a conversation partner of Zhuangzi. Those encounters give him a vivid afterlife in Chinese philosophy: not just as a logician, but as a memorable personality in some of its most enduring debates.