Welcome to the academic website of Chris Fraser. For the academic year 2023–24, I am Vice-Chancellor Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
From 2021–2023 I held the Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Department of Philosophy and Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, where I was also affiliated with the Department for the Study of Religion and served as acting director of the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies.
Previously, I was Professor and Chair in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, which I joined as Associate Professor in 2009.
From 2001–2009, I was Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2000, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei.
Prior to embarking on an academic career, I was an editor and technical writer in Taiwan's electronics industry and taught English composition at two universities there.
I have a wide range of philosophical interests but my publications have focused on early Chinese philosophy, covering a wide range of topics in philosophy of language and logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology, action theory, ethics, metaethics, and political philosophy. Of late, I have also been working more on Song, Ming, and Qing dynasty thought, particularly metaethics and political philosophy.
Areas of research:
- Language and logic in Chinese philosophy
- Epistemology in Chinese philosophy
- Mohist philosophy, including the Later Mohist dialectics
- Zhuangzi
- History of Chinese political philosophy
- History of Chinese philosophy of law
- Sources of normativity in the history of Chinese thought
Recent books:
- Zhuangzi: An Annotated Translation (Oxford, 2024)
- Zhuangzi: Ways of Wandering the Way (Oxford, 2024)
- Late Classical Chinese Thought (Oxford, 2023)
- The Essential Mozi (Oxford, 2020)
- The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists (Columbia, 2016)
Research in progress:
- Zhuangzi and Ethics
- Normativity in Dai Zhen
- The concept of fa 法 (standards, models, methods, laws) in the history of Chinese thought
- Language, mind, and world in early Chinese thought
- Sources of normativity in Chinese ethics
Academic background:
- B.A., Yale University
- M.A., National Taiwan University
- Ph.D., University of Hong Kong