Chris Fraser 方克濤

The following paper is forthcoming in a special edition of Philosophical Topics on comparative studies of happiness, edited by my colleagues Edoardo Zamuner and Timothy O'Leary.

I set out to write a general explanation of why happiness is not an especially prominent topic in early Chinese thought but quickly concluded the topic was much too ambitious for a single journal article. I found that most of my points could be made more effectively through a careful study of a single ethical system. The result is a detailed, and I hope informative, exploration of Xunzi's ethics with a relatively unusual orientation, offering an interesting interpretive twist on the grounds for Xunzi's views.

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Happiness in Classical Confucianism: Xunzi

Abstract

This essay contributes to comparative inquiry concerning happiness through a case study of Xunzi, a major Confucian thinker. Xunzi's ethical theory presents values and norms that fill the role of happiness indirectly, through the ideal figure of the gentleman. However, his working conception of psychological happiness and individual well-being turns on aesthetic values that go beyond the universal prudential values to which his ethical theory appeals. Hence I argue that his implicit conception of happiness actually revolves around a way of life grounded in what Susan Wolf has called ‘reasons of love.’

Download full draft of the paper here.

This summer I finally completed the revised version of the companion paper to my 2011 article "Emotion and Agency in Zhuangzi." The new paper is entitled "Wandering the Way: A Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuangzi."

The more recently completed paper was actually written first and is cited in the 2011 article and a few other places. An earlier version was presented at a conference in 2009, but because plans for an anthology based on the conference fell through, there was a long delay before I finally submitted the paper to a journal. It is now forthcoming in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy.

The new paper uses textual materials from the Zhuangzi to construct a "eudaimonistic" Zhuangist ethical ideal. By "eudaimonistic" here, I refer to a conception of the good or ideal life that is grounded in a view of human flourishing or healthy functioning. I suggest that Zhuangist eudaimonism is distinct from virtue ethics, in that the conception of human flourishing involved does not center around virtues, as they are usually understood.

In 2008 I published a preliminary study of conceptions of xu 虛 (emptiness, blankness, insubstantiality) in the Zhuangzi. I've recently completed a follow-up study tying the Zhuangzi concept of xu to Foucault's notion of "ethical work," the tasks or practices by which agents reshape themselves to become ethical adepts. Along the way I make a few remarks as well about how the concept of "flow" popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi might relate to Zhuangist ideals. There's still a lot more to say about the practical side of Zhuangist thought, but I hope this latest study helps to fill in a few more pieces of the puzzle.

An extended abstract and a preprint of the full paper can be found here.

"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.

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.