In the 2013–2014 academic year, I will be teaching the following:
Semester 1:
PHIL2470 Moral Psychology in the Chinese Tradition
Semester 2:
PHIL1034 Ethics and Politics, East and West
Mon 1 Apr 2013
A revised version of my paper "Xunzi Versus Zhuangzi: Two Approaches to Death in Classical Chinese Thought" is now forthcoming in Frontiers of Philosophy in China. A preprint of the paper is available here.
This paper originated as a talk given at a research workshop entitled "Death: Philosophy, Therapy, Medicine on April 23, 2010. The workshop was sponsored by the "Philosophy, Therapy, and Medicine" research cluster of HKU's Centre for the Humanities and Medicine. The workshop was organized by my colleague Barbara Dalle Pezze.
An abstract follows. (Read more...)
Thu 21 Feb 2013
Another interesting conference coming up this spring is the International Conference on Nature and Value in Chinese and Western Philosophies to be held at Rutgers University on April 4–5, 2013. The conference is advertised as the Inaugural Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy, so let's hope it turns out to be the first in a series of stimulating events. Tao Jiang, Steve Angle, and Ruth Chang are the organizers. (Kudos to them, as organizing an event of this scope is always a lot of work.)
My talk will be on the plausibility of naturalistic approaches to ethics in the Chinese tradition and where they lead us in terms of a contemporary ethical standpoint. I argue that some version of Chinese naturalism may be defensible, but that the ethical position that emerges from critical reflection on Chinese naturalism doesn't look at all like conventional duty ethics (whether consequentialist or deontological) and sets aside core moral notions such as duty and obligation. Although the resulting view has eudaimonistic components, I don't think it can be appropriately classified as a form of virtue ethics, either.
A provisional abstract of the paper follows.
Continued...Thu 21 Feb 2013
Chinese Metaphysics Conference
Category: Conferences
I'll be speaking next month at a conference on metaphysics in the Chinese tradition at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The conference is "Conceptions of Reality: Metaphysics and Its Alternatives in Chinese Thought," scheduled for 29-30 Mar 2013. Much thanks to Prof. Chenyang Li for organizing this event. I'll be talking about how Mohist thought sets the agenda for much of early Chinese metaphysics. A preliminary abstract follows.
Continued...Thu 24 Jan 2013
My recent study of fundamental concepts and models of early Chinese logic and philosophy of language appears in History and Philosophy of Logic 34.1 (2013), 1–24, and is available here. An abstract follows.
Continued...Mon 10 Dec 2012
Landscape and Travel in Daoism
Category: Research
"Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the 'Cosmic Question.'" This paper is to appear in the anthology Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey, edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew Whitehead (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).
The paper is based on a talk I gave at “Landscape and Travelling—East and West." Académie du Midi, Alet Les Bain, France, May 28–June 1, 2012. The original abstract for the talk was the following.
Continued...Sun 30 Sep 2012
Language and Logic in Xunzi
Category: Research
I've just completed an extensively revised draft of a longish (15,000 words) article on the philosophy of language and logic of the Xunzi. The article will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Dao Companion to Xunzi edited by Eric Hutton. (Much thanks to Eric for taking on this massive project.)
Besides a detailed summary of Xunzian views on language and logic, the article tries to situate these views in the broader context of early Chinese thought. As a result, the discussion touches on a wide range of fields, obviously including philosophy of language and philosophy of logic but also philosophy of mind, epistemology, action theory, ethics, and political philosophy. In a way, the article can be read as a concise introduction to early Chinese "analytic" philosophy.
A central theme of the chapter is Xunzi's theory of "rectifying names" or "right names" (zheng ming 正名).
Also included is an extensive treatment of one of the most prominent interpretive controversies concerning Xunzi: whether his stance is that of a "realist," who holds that the dao (way) is predetermined by tian 天 ("heaven") or nature, or a "conventionalist" or "constructionist," who holds that the dao is a product of human conventions, among other factors. I argue for a conventionalist reading, while acknowledging a sense in which Xunzi can also be construed as a kind of weak realist.
To download a full-text preprint of the chapter, click here.
Tue 7 Aug 2012
Tsinghua Logic Talk
Category: Conferences, News
I recently returned from Beijing, where I gave a talk at an occasional logic forum at Tsinghua University, organized by Liu Fenrong. Much thanks to Fenrong for arranging my visit. My talk and many other past and upcoming events are announced here and here. The talk was based on a forthcoming paper, "Truth in Mohist Dialectics." It was a pleasure to see Fenrong again and to meet Sun Zhongyuan and Zhou Yunzhi, two senior scholars of the history of Chinese logic, along with several other colleagues and grad students.
Thu 26 Jul 2012
Back in April 2011, Joseph Chan, of HKU's Department of Politics and Public Administration, organized a mini-workshop on Confucian Political Philosophy here at HKU. I commented on a paper by Daniel A. Bell, of Tsinghua University, entitled “Confucianism and nationalism: A reconciliation.” Since Daniel has recently published several articles in popular media whose content overlaps this paper, I think it worthwhile to post the full text of my April 2011 remarks here.
* * *
Comments on Daniel A. Bell’s “Confucianism and Naturalism: A Reconciliation”
Chris Fraser
University of Hong Kong
April 29, 2011
This is an interesting and provocative paper. Daniel defends two main theses:
(1) Confucianism is compatible with at least some forms of nationalism.
(2) Confucian nationalism is desirable, for various reasons.
These are presented as parts of a positive evaluation of a one-party Chinese state committed to Confucianism, rather than Marxism, as its core ideology. Rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat, we would have a dictatorship of the erudite.
My first question about the paper concerns its precise purpose. I’m not sure whether the aim is the ambitious one of justifying a Confucian nationalist state or only the modest one of arguing that were such a state to come into being, it would not be repugnant, or at least it’d be better than the present communist state or a quasi-fascist one. The modest aim is easy to agree with. Confucianism has a lot of good qualities, among them a commitment to rén zhèng 仁政, or benevolent government. The more ambitious aim is less compelling. Despite its good qualities, I doubt Confucianism can be justified as the core ideology of a contemporary state.
Continued...Wed 16 May 2012
Mohism and Self-Interest
Category: Research
I'm posting here an article about the interpretation of Mohism that I published in 2008. It appears in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35.3 (2008): 437–54. Key points from this article will appear in my forthcoming book on Mohism. A main significance of the article is that it refutes a widespread misunderstanding of Mohist thought — a misunderstanding that is important insofar as it badly distorts our picture of early Chinese moral psychology. An abstract follows, along with a link to the full manuscript. Continued...
若夫乘天地之正而御六氣之辯以遊無窮者，彼且惡乎待哉!—〈逍遙遊〉
Now were one to mount the norms of heaven and earth, riding the fluctuations of the six qì, and thus wander in the limitless, how would that person's activity be contingent on anything! — Zhuāngzǐ, “Meanderingly Wandering"
臣之所好者道也，進乎技矣。
— 庖丁
What I'm keen on is dào. It goes beyond skill.
— Páo Dīng
不知周之夢為胡蝶與？胡蝶之夢為周與？...此之謂物化。
I wonder, is it that Joe dreams of being a butterfly, or that the butterfly dreams of being Joe? ...This is what's called "things transform."