Hon-Yin and Suet-Fong Chan Professor, School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong
On October 4 I’ll be speaking at a colloquium in the Department of East Asian Studies at McGill University in Montreal. I’m grateful to Professors Jeehee Hong and Robin Yates for arranging this event. My topic is “The Xunzian Critique of Legalism and Its Contemporary Significance.” This presentation is a preliminary selection from my work…
I’m looking forward to an upcoming visiting lecture on Sept 30 in the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. The event announcement is here. My lecture will be based on the paper posted here. Much thanks to Jing Hu 胡靜 for arranging the talk, and it will be a delight to visit Montreal,…
I recently had a productive and enjoyable visit with colleagues from the Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience and the Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy at Hokkaido University. The title of my talk was “A Path with No End: Skill and Ethics in Zhuangzi and Mozi.” The event announcement is here and…
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…
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…