Hon-Yin and Suet-Fong Chan Professor, School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong
Malcolm Keating recently interviewed me about Late Classical Chinese Thought for the New Books Network. It was a pleasure to discuss the book with such a careful reader. A podcast of the interview is here. Be sure also to check out Malcolm’s fascinating work on language and argumentation in Sanskrit philosophy.
In October 2023 David Chai in the Department of Philosophy at CUHK organized a stimulating and (to me) fruitful roundtable on Brook Ziporyn’s new translation of the Daodejing, along with an interpretive essay Brook published to accompany the book. Here is the event announcement: https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/web/zh-hant/node/753 My contribution to the discussion is posted here: Inversions, Leftovers,…
As part of a regular summer program in the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua University, I had the pleasure of meeting a circle of bright, enthusiastic students and up-and-coming young colleagues while teaching a mini-course this July. The course was devoted to early Chinese epistemology, which besides its inherent interest offers many potential insights and…
The third leg of my recent Beijing trip was a visit to Renmin University to see old friends Li Jifen and Liu Wei and to meet a number of new friends, including some brilliant graduate students. My talk was a Chinese version of this paper, which sketches Zhuangist reasons for rejecting morality as a guide…
The week of June 26–30 I delivered two lectures in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University and greatly enjoyed meeting graduate students and colleagues there. My deep thanks to Professor Zheng Kai for organizing this visit and Dr. Huachao Wang for all his efforts making arrangements. Especially meaningful was that the first lecture took…
In June I delivered one of the keynote addresses for the International Society for Chinese Philosophy conference held at UC Riverside, June 20-23. I’m grateful to Lisa Raphals for the invitation to contribute and to Cheng Chung-ying, Tang Siufu, and other audience members for stimulating questions. My talk was titled “Standards Cannot Stand on Their…
I recently gave a presentation at the 2nd Pan-American Symposium on the History of Logic, held at UCLA June 20-23, 2023, which was dedicated to the theme of “Existence and Nonexistence.” Kudos to the organizers, Milo Crimi, Graziana Ciola, and Calvin Normore, who went out of their way to include contributions exploring the theme of…
I’ve argued in the past that in early Chinese philosophical discourse the concept of dao (way) is more fundamental than the concept of truth. In a new article, I give a detailed account of just how truth relates to dao in the philosophy of the Xúnzǐ, the early Chinese “masters” text that probably devotes the…
I’ll be speaking at an upcoming conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on June 16-17 entitled “Dialogues on the States of the Field: Ethics in the Zhuangzi.” The format of this conference promises to be especially fruitful: junior colleagues at CUHK will present critiques of six prominent interpretations on Zhuangist ethics, and the…
My new book Late Classical Chinese Thought goes on sale in the UK next week. The North American edition is scheduled to be available July 1.