An Ontology of Verbs

The history of philosophy is the history of a specific relationship to language. This relationship is one that, in matters of thought, has given priority to names. Names are what embody the truth of what we think, what we do and what we are. Names are the bricks of thought, best encapsulated into concepts. But what if that were false? What if thinking in terms of names has led us to a dead end – the dead end of closed things, of finished entities and of determinate realities? In this radically original philosophical essay, Zhao Tingyang proposes opening us up to a metaphysics of verbs – to a relationship with language that no longer forces us to confine ourselves to things but opens us up to creation and action. For philosophy, this would be nothing less than a new beginning.

Zhao Tingyang is one of the world’s greatest thinkers. He is professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His last book in English is The Whirlpool That Produced China (SUNY Press, 2024).