Author Archives: Tao Jiang

Tao JIANG is Professor of Religion and Philosophy with joint appointment in Religion and Philosophy departments at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, US. He specializes in pre-Qin classical Chinese philosophy, Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is the author of “Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China” (Oxford, 2021), “Contexts and Dialogue: Yogācāra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind” (Hawai'i, 2006), and the co-editor of “The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China” (Routledge, 2013). He is director of Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies. He co-chairs the Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) and the Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar at Columbia University.

Philip J. Ivanhoe at Columbia on May 1, 5-7pm

Joint session by the Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar and the Comparative Philosophy Seminar at Columbia

Philip J. Ivanhoe (Georgetown): Chinese and Korean Neo-Confucian Views on Not Transferring One’s Anger

ABSTRACT: Early Chinese Confucians believed that in certain circumstances anger is a proper emotion to have, express, and act upon but that it is a potential source of moral error and difficult to control; therefore, it requires special attention and management. Neo-Confucian thinkers in China and Korea accepted and defended these beliefs but offered quite distinctive analyses of what anger is and how it should be attended to, exercised, and managed. They often developed their ideas by reflecting and commenting on the early Confucian teaching of Not Transferring One’s Anger, first seen in the Analects, to explain their views on anger and in particular how to control and direct it. I will describe and explain some representative Confucian views on anger in China and Korea and argue that while the standard neo-Confucian account of anger is not plausible in certain respects, it offers an excellent model or template for thinking about anger and a method for achieving the kind of anger management that we require in order to live well in the contemporary world. I will further argue that the need to understand and manage anger is a particularly pressing problem for people today because, given the nature of our times, for a variety of reasons, it is a much greater liability for wellbeing and humanity than it was in the past.

DATE: Friday, May 1st

TIME: 5:00-7:00pm EDT

LOCATION: Faculty House (64 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10027)

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Brook Ziporyn’s talk on Tiantai Buddhism at Rutgers on Thursday, Oct. 23 (updated: hybrid format)

Brook Ziporyn (University of Chicago), will give a talk, “Everything Everywhere All at Once: The Buddha-Nature According to Tiantai and What To Do About It, If Anything,” at Rutgers New Brunswick campus on Thursday, October 23, 2025, 4-5:30pm. Here’s the link to the talk:

https://rccs.rutgers.edu/events/events-list/icalrepeat.detail/2025/10/23/2454/-/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-the-buddha-nature-according-to-tiantai-and-what-to-do-about-it-if-anything-brook-ziporyn-university-of-chicago

The talk is also available on Zoom. Check the website for the registration link. Please drop me a note if you are coming in person. Thanks.

“How Orthodox (Neo-Confucian) Morality Trivializes Human Desires: Dai Zhen’s Main Argument” by Justin Tiwald

Justin Tiwald (University of Hong Kong) is giving a talk, “How Orthodox (Neo-Confucian) Morality Trivializes Human Desires: Dai Zhen’s Main Argument,” at the next Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, 3:30-5:30pm, at the Heyman Center for the Humanities on Columbia University campus.

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Sungmoon Kim’s hybrid presentation on “Confucian Power as Responsibility” at Rutgers on Tuesday, April 29

Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong) will give a hybrid presentation, “Confucian Power as Responsibility,” at Rutgers University New Brunswick on Tuesday, April 29, 4-5:30pm EDT. Everybody is welcome, but registration is required for Zoom streaming. If you plan on coming in person, please drop me a quick note. Click here for the abstract and the link to register for Zoom streaming.

On-cho Ng on “Dai Zhen’s Hermeneutics” in Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar at Columbia on May 2

On Friday, May 2, 3:30-5:30pm, On-cho Ng will present a paper, “Dai Zhen’s Hermeneutics” in the Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar at Columbia University. We will meet at our regular location, The Heyman Center for the Humanities (74 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10027). On-cho Ng is Professor of Asian Studies and Philosophy, and Founding Head of the Asian Studies Department (2012-2021), at the Pennsylvania State University. Primarily a specialist in late imperial Chinese intellectual history, he has published on a wide range of topics, such as Confucian hermeneutics, religiosity, ethics, and historiography. His books include Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing, Mirroring the Past, The Imperative of Understanding, and Theory and Practice of Zen. His dozens of articles have appeared in venues such as the Journal of Chinese Religions, Dao, Philosophy East and West, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Journal of World History, and the Journal of the History of Ideas. He is editor of the Book Series on Chinese intellectual history (National Taiwan University) and associate editor of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. He has been chair/co-chair of the Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar for two decades.

Important: for non-Columbia guests, please RSVP by emailing Sapphire Qiaochu Tang at qt2154@columbia.edu no later than Wednesday, April 23, to be granted access to the campus. Once the registration email is sent, please expect an email with a QR code to access campus. The email will come from: CU Guest Access <caladminnoreply@columbia.edu. Please make sure to bring a valid ID, and please arrive early. You can also request the pre-circulated paper from Sapphire.

7th Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy: An International Conference on “Moral Conflict in Early Chinese Philosophy”

The 7th Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) will take place in person in New Brunswick, NJ, on April 10-11, 2025. This year’s workshop will be a two-day international conference, with the theme “Moral Conflict in Early Chinese Philosophy.” Scholars of early Chinese philosophy from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America will engage each other and the audience on this important topic. Everybody is welcome. Space is limited and registration is required. Here’s the link for more details: https://rccs.rutgers.edu/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2025/04/10/2446/54/seventh-rutgers-workshop-on-chinese-philosophy?Itemid=147

New book: Confucianism at War: 1931-1945

Routledge has just published a book edited by Shaun O’Dwyer, Confucianism at War: 1931-1945. The book brings together original research by East Asian and European scholars – some of it published for the first time in English – which demonstrates that Confucianism was “a potent and also contested cultural resource for promoting national cohesion, war mobilization, and expansionism in East Asia between the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the end of World War II in 1945.” More information on the book can be found here. Thanks to Dongxian Jiang (Fordham) for the pointer.

PEW publishes a book symposium on Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China

Philosophy East & West (73.2) just published a book symposium on my book, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China (OUP 2021). It features contributions by six critics, including Loy Hui-chieh (on Introduction, Conclusion, and the Mohists), Hagop Sarkissian (on Confucius), Sungmoon Kim (on Mencius and Xunzi), Yuan Ai (on Laozi), Paul J. D’Ambrosio (on Zhuangzi), and Yuri Pines (on fajia/Legalists), with my response. The symposium covers a broad set of topics, ranging from the relevance of history and culture to philosophy, historical vs. philosophical reasonings, virtue politics, alternative interpretative paradigms, contestations of key terms and passages, contemporary global relevance of moral norms in classical Chinese texts, other early texts that could have been included in the book, among many others.

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/51059