Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture, University of Toronto
This summer I finally completed the revised version of the companion paper to my 2011 article “Emotion and Agency in Zhuangzi.” The new paper is entitled “Wandering the Way: A Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuangzi.” The more recently completed paper was actually written first and is cited in the 2011 article and a few other…
In 2008 I published a preliminary study of conceptions of xu 虛 (emptiness, blankness, insubstantiality) in the Zhuangzi. I’ve recently completed a follow-up study tying the Zhuangzi concept of xu to Foucault’s notion of “ethical work,” the tasks or practices by which agents reshape themselves to become ethical adepts. Along the way I make a…
A revised version of this essay was published as “Xunzi Versus Zhuangzi: Two Approaches to Death in Classical Chinese Thought,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 8.3 (2013), 410–427. An updated preprint of the paper (May 2013) is available here. This paper originated as a talk given at a research workshop entitled “Death: Philosophy, Therapy, Medicine on…
Another interesting conference coming up this spring is the International Conference on Nature and Value in Chinese and Western Philosophies to be held at Rutgers University on April 4–5, 2013. The conference is advertised as the Inaugural Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy, so let’s hope it turns out to be the first in a series…
Update: The full author’s manuscript of “The Mohist Conception of Reality” is now available for download here. (This is an updated version of March 2014.) The paper will appear in a forthcoming anthology on Chinese metaphysics edited by Chenyang Li, Franklin Perkins, and Alan Chan. * * * I’ll be speaking next month at a…
My recent study of fundamental concepts and models of early Chinese logic and philosophy of language appears in History and Philosophy of Logic 34.1 (2013), 1–24, and is available here. An abstract follows.
“Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the ‘Cosmic Question.’” This paper is to appear in the anthology Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey, edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew Whitehead (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). The paper is based on a talk I gave at “Landscape and Travelling—East and West.” Académie du Midi, Alet…
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…