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...
Tue 8 May 2012
Our recent anthology Ethics in Early China, published by HKU Press, is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and similar sites. For the table of contents and Introduction, see this page.
Thu 19 Apr 2012
Jonathan Bennett, a well-known philosopher and scholar of early modern philosophy, has published online a series of paraphrases of important early modern philosophical works in simple contemporary English. Bennett’s paraphrases are careful and thorough and should be of great help to all students reading the original texts, especially those, such as most HKU students, whose first language is not English. Bennett’s work is available at Early Modern Texts dot com.
Sat 28 Jan 2012
In October 2010, a short documentary called “Opening Dao” by Gennaro Ambrosino was released in which I am interviewed discussing classical Daoism. The film is a bit of a mixed bag, but I hope my part came out well. I actually spoke mainly about the Zhuangzi, but most of that material was cut in order to emphasize the Daodejing. Also interviewed is Chad Hansen, who hoped the waterfall behind him would help convey Daoist ideas; instead it mainly drowned out his voice! The film can be viewed here.
Sat 28 Jan 2012
RTHK “The Big Idea”
Category: News
I was recently interviewed for a pair of RTHK radio shows in the fun and interesting series “The Big Idea,” hosted by the delightful Vanessa Collingridge. The most recent episode, on Daoism, aired January 21, 2012, and can be heard here. The other interviewee is my teacher and colleague Chad Hansen.
An earlier episode, on Happiness, aired November 26, 2011, and can be heard here. In this show, I’m paired with my colleague and good friend Timothy O’Leary, also of HKU.
The whole series is highly recommended. An episode about Confucianism with Sungmoon Kim and P. J. Ivanhoe of City University of HK can be heard here.
Tue 10 Jan 2012
I’ve recently finished a paper entitled “The Limitations of Ritual Propriety: Ritual and Language in Xunzi and Zhuangzi.” The paper is a contribution to a special issue of Sophia: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysical Theology and Ethics (51:2, 2012) that will be devoted to ritual in Chinese philosophy. Here’s an abstract of the paper: Continued…
Wed 7 Dec 2011
I’ve belatedly posted this preprint of a paper written between 1998 and 2005 and published in Philosophy East & West 57.4 (2007): 420–56, because I think it makes a significant contribution to a debate highlighted recently in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. Unfortunately, the Dao discussion took place without any reference to the arguments in this paper, nor to the linguistic work by Dan Robins on which some of these arguments are based.
The paper critiques Chad Hansen’s “mass noun hypothesis,” arguing that though most Classical Chinese nouns do function as mass nouns, this fact does not support the claim that pre-Qín thinkers treat the extensions of common nouns as mereological wholes, nor does it explain why they adopt nominalist semantic theories. The paper shows that early texts explain the use of common nouns by appeal to similarity relations, not mereological relations. However, it further argues that some early texts do characterize the relation between individuals and collections as a mereological relation. It includes a detailed review of the literature on the mass noun hypothesis up to 2005.
For an abstract and full-text preprint, see this page.
Wed 16 Nov 2011
Truth in Mohist Dialectics
Category: Research
I’ve posted a preprint of a forthcoming paper on the concept of truth in Mohist dialectics, including the Mozi core books and the dialectical texts. The paper discusses Chad Hansen’s well-known claim that Chinese philosophy has no concept of truth. I affirm two of Hansen’s key claims, namely that early Chinese thought overall has a practical or pragmatic orientation and that early Chinese philosophy of language focuses on subsentential expresssions such as terms or phrases rather than on subject-predicate sentences. However, I argue that neither of these points entails that the Mohists are unconcerned with truth, or concerned only with some pragmatic or ethical normative status other than truth, and that the Mohist dialectical texts clearly employ concepts whose expressive role corresponds to that of truth. The full paper is available here.
Thu 9 Jun 2011
Global Themes in Ethical Naturalism
Category: Conferences, News
Update: The conference program is here.
Later this month I’ll be attending an international workshop in Singapore called “Global Themes in Ethical Naturalism,” hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the National University of Singapore, June 27–28. My talk will be entitled “Chinese Naturalism and the Limits of Ethics.” An abstract follows. Continued…
Fri 15 Apr 2011
Joseph Chan, of HKU’s Department of Politics and Public Administration, has organized a mini-workshop on Confucian Political Philosophy to be held 29 April 2011 (at 2 pm) in the PPA dept library. The speakers will be Joseph himself and Daniel A. Bell, of Tsinghua University, along with four commentators: Ci Jiwei and Fan Ruiping, on Joseph’s paper, and P. J. Ivanhoe and myself, on Daniel’s. Joseph’s topic is “Interplay between ideal and nonideal thinking in early Confucian political thought: A reconstruction and application,” while Daniel’s is “Confucianism and nationalism: A reconciliation.” I’m sure we’ll have some lively discussion.
UPDATE: Anyone who would like the text of my remarks is welcome to contact me.
