Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture, University of Toronto
Congratulations to Douglas Cairns and Curie Virag, who are putting the finishing touches on a novel, collaborative anthology that brings together specialists in early Chinese and ancient Greek thought to explore various understandings of emotion in the Chinese and Hellenistic traditions. The title of this volume, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, is In the Mind,…
I’ve been intrigued for years by the possibility that a Zhuangist stance toward dao might overlap considerably with the standpoint of contemporary moral particularism, primarily as defended in the work of Jonathan Dancy. This year I finally had a chance to look into this issue carefully, reading up on Dancy’s work and that of his…
I’ve just learned of a program at the University of Toronto that deserves to be widely publicized: the International Visiting Graduate Students program. This program allows graduate students enrolled in research-based programs at international universities to do research and audit courses for one or more semesters at the University of Toronto under the supervision of…
I’m pleased to announce that as of July 2021, I will be moving to the University of Toronto to take up the Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture, a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and Department of East Asian Studies. I’m delighted to be returning to Canada…
In early August I’ll be attending what promises to be a fascinating workshop at the Fondation Hardt on emotions in ancient Greek and Chinese thought, organized through the diligent and difficult efforts of Curie Virag and Douglas Cairns of Edinburgh. The title of the event is “In the Body, in the Mind, and in the…
I’m attending an unusual conference at Fudan University 復旦大學 in Shanghai on the theme “Sosa Encountering Chinese Philosophy.” The conference poster is here. The aim of the conference is put Ernest Sosa’s virtue epistemology into dialogue with Chinese sources. Here’s the Introduction to my own very tentative contribution:
I’ll be giving two lectures at National Cheng Chi University 國立政治大學 in Taiwan next week: “Zhuangzi and Normative Ethics” on Thursday, Nov. 8, and “Mind and World in Xunzi” on Friday, Nov. 9. The poster for the event is here. These are part of the Cross-cultural Philosophy lecture series 跨文化哲學講座系列 at the NCCU Research Center…
I will be teaching this year at the annual Philosophy Summer School in China sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This year’s theme is Chinese-Western Comparative Philosophy, and the program will take place at Capital Normal University from July 30-August 15. The other lecturers are Michael Beaney (the organizer and coordinator), Carine Defoort,…
Eric Schliesser recently posted a thoughtful discussion of how the Mohist account of the shift from a state of nature to political society might resemble some varieties of social contract views. I posted a comment in response, which led to a fruitful exchange about the Mohist conception of the origin of political authority. The entire…
I’m posting here selections from the Mohist “Dialogues” included in my abridged translation of the Mozi, which I hope will be forthcoming before too long. Here is the file: Selections from the “Dialogues” Following the example of the Stephanus numbering used to cite from the works of Plato and the Bekker numbering used to cite…