Carine Defoort is Associate Professor in the Department of Oriental Studies, Sinology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

"This is an exceptionally thorough, clear, and well-structured account of an important early Chinese text that has been largely overlooked by most scholars because of doubts about its authenticity and difficulties with its textual integrity—issues now largely clarified by this study."The author's approach is particularly interesting and illuminating; the focusThere is not only on what the He guan zi says, but how things are said, and how language is used in argumentation." — John S. Major, author of Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought"The He guan zi is of considerable importance in ascertaining the nature of the intellectual world of the late Warring States period, but it has been greatly under studied and under appreciated because of its unclear intellectual filiation, its textual complexities, and its questionable authenticity. Defoort's book makes great strides toward clearing up these various confusions that have stood in the way of fully appreciating this text for centuries. " — H. D. Roth, Brown University"Defoort's analysis of the text is very sophisticated, making a convincing argument that we have inappropriate expectations in approaching a Chinese text. That is, in a tradition such as our own, there is tension between philosophy and rhetoric that has, with few exceptions, been resolved in favor of the philosophical. This being the case, we approach a text with logical rather than rhetorical expectations, and find a text 'incoherent' if it does not satisfy these demands. Without the philosophical/rhetorical tension, a Chinese text must be entertained in a very different way." — Roger T. Ames, University of Hawaii

• PrefaceNote on Citations 1. Pheasant Cap Master and the Paradox of Unity 1.1. Expectations of Unity1.2. A Celebration of Fragments Part One: The Pheasant Cap Master as a Fragmented Text 2. Biographical Evidence and Expectations Concerning Unity of Authorship 2.1. Place of Origin in Biographical and Bibliographical Notices2.2. He guan zi's Place of Origin and Dates2.3. Further Considerations Concerning Authorship 3. Bibliographical Evidence and Expectations Concerning Unity of Length and Filiation 3.1. The Length of the Pheasant Cap Master3.2. The Filiation of the Pheasant Cap Master3.3. The Conflation Hypothesis3.4. Further Discussion Concerning Filiation 4. Commentarial Evidence and Expectations Concerning Stylistic Unity 4.1. Comments on a Work of Poor Style4.2. Commentaries on the Pheasant Cap Master4.3. From Poor Style to Plagiarism 5. Textual Evidence and Expectations Concerning Textual Unity 5.1. A Corrupt Text5.2. From Textual Corruption to Commentarial Interpolation5.3. Indirect Evidence5.4. Direct Evidence Part Two: The Pheasant Cap Master as a Rhetorical Text 6. A Work of Positive Rhetoric 6.1. Rhetoric, Politics, and Frustration6.2. Admonishment of the Ruler6.3. The Ruler and the Sage6.4. Explaining Political Failure 7. Rhetorical Use of Language 7.1. With the Power of Words7.2. Redefinitions as Arguments7.3. Further Instances of the Power of Language 8. Political Views on Language 8.1. Discussions about Names8.2. The Source of Names8.3. Norms for Naming 9. Beyond Names 9.1. Laws of Nature9.2. The Unnamed Source of Names9.3. Naming from the Unnamed Appendix 1. Taboos: the Distribution of zheng and duan in the He guan ziAppendix 2. The Distribution of Names in the He guan ziAppendix 3. Bibliographical Evidence in Sources from the Han through the YuanAppendix 4. Indirect Evidence in Sources Predating the First Extant Complete EditionAppendix 5. The Chapters of the He guan zi Notes Bibliography Original Text of The Pheasant Cap Master Index