Department of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong
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…
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…
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…
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 —…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…