To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), the Division of Humanities is organizing a conference titled “Ethics in Chinese Philosophy,” which will take place on March 20-21, 2026 (Friday and Saturday) at HKUST. Please read more to further information about the conference and the application guidelines. Continue reading →
Category Archives: Ethical Theory
Episode 27 of “This Is the Way”: Mohism—Two Arguments for Impartial Caring
This episode examines the Mohist doctrine of impartial caring (jian’ai 兼愛) via two arguments in the Mozi — the Caretaker Argument and the Filial Piety Argument. We examine the arguments’ logical structure, the psychological plausibility, and practical applicability. We also discuss the importance of reciprocity and competing interpretations of “impartial caring,” from the less demanding don’t-harm-anyone interpretation to stronger equal-concern readings, setting them against the Confucian model of care-with-distinctions (graded love). We also consider what genuine filiality requires and how different moral frameworks shape familial and social practices. Continue reading →
Episode 16 of “This Is the Way”: The Zhuangzi on Uselessness
In this episode, we talk about the theme of uselessness in the Zhuangzi, one of the great foundational texts of philosophical Daoism. What exactly determines whether something is useful or useless? Is usefulness largely or fundamentally a matter of perspective? Does the text’s apparent recommendation that we be “useless” (in some sense) entail some sort of realism or objectivism about value? We explore these themes together with our guest, Chris Fraser, a major scholar of the Zhuangzi. Continue reading →
Book Discussion: Wong, Moral Relativism and Pluralism
The 四海为学 “Collaborative Learning” Project will be starting off the new academic year with a book discussion of David Wong’s Moral Relativism and Pluralism. The discussion will start at 20:00 on September 6th, Beijing time. For more details and the Zoom link please visit the event page.
Note: Zoom does not always adjust the date and time correctly, please ignore what the link says and follow our scheduled time. No pre-registration or passcode is required. Everyone in the waiting room will be let in promptly when the event begins.
For more information on the 四海为学 “Collaborative Learning” Project visit the website, and for list of our upcoming events please see the calendar.
New Book: Yuan, Confucian Ren and Feminist Ethics of Care
Lijun Yuan’s new book, Confucian Ren and Feminist Ethics of Care: Integrating Relational Self, Power, and Democracy, has been published by Rowman & Littlefield. For more information, see here.
New Book: Rošker on Li Zehou
A new book in Brill’s distinguished “Modern Chinese Philosophy” series: Jana Rošker, Becoming Human: Li Zehou’s Ethics. A desciption:
The book Becoming Human: Li Zehou’s Ethics offers a critical introduction and in-depth analysis of Li Zehou’s moral philosophy and ethics. Li Zehou, who is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese philosophers, believes that ethics is the most important philosophical discipline. He aims to revive, modernize, develop, and complement Chinese traditional ethics through what he calls “transformative creation” (轉化性的創造). He takes Chinese ethics, which represents the main pillar of Chinese philosophy, as a vital basis for his elaborations on certain aspects of Kant’s, Marx’s and other Western theoreticians’ thoughts on ethics, and hopes to contribute in this way to the development of a new global ethics for all of humankind.
More info is here.
CFP for chapters in a cross-cultural ethics textbook
The below message solicits papers for a cross-cultural textbook in ethics; please respond to Ms Rodriguez directly.
My name is Laura Rodriguez and I’m responsible for Marketing and Library Relations at Open Book Publishers., the leading Open Access publisher in the HSS in the UK. I’m contacting you further to the launch of a call for papers for What do we care about? A Cross-Cultural Textbook for Undergraduate Students of Philosophical Ethics because we believe it might be of interest for you and/or your peers.
New book: Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority, by Aaron Stalnaker
Oxford University Press has just published my new book on early Confucian social thought, and what contemporary people might learn from it: Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority. The publisher’s page is here. At present the cheapest way to purchase it is directly from Oxford, with a discount code for 30% off (AAFLYG6).
This comes with hearty thanks to Steve Angle and Bryan Van Norden, who were belatedly revealed as the press’s referees.
New edited collection on role ethics
Routledge has published a collection of essays on role ethics edited by Tim Dare and Christine Swanton, which includes two essays on early Confucian ethics. More information is here.
The publisher’s description is as follows:
Although our moral lives would be unrecognisable without them, roles have received little attention from analytic moral philosophers. Roles are central to our lives and to our engagement with one another, and should be analysed in connection with our core notions of ethics such as virtue, reason, and obligation.
This volume aims to redress the neglect of role ethics by confronting the tensions between conceptions of impartial morality and role obligations in the history of analytic philosophy and the Confucian tradition. Different perspectives on the ethical significance of roles can be found by looking to debates within professional and applied ethics, by challenging existing accounts of how roles generate reasons, by questioning the hegemony of ethical reasons, and by exploring the relation between expertise and virtue. The essays tackle several core questions related to these debates:
What are roles and what is their normative import?
To what extent are roles and the ethics of roles central to ethics as opposed to virtue in general, and obligation in general?
Are role obligations characteristically incompatible with ordinary morality in professions such as business, law, and medicine?
How does practical reason function in relation to roles?
Perspectives in Role Ethics is an examination of a largely neglected topic in ethics. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars in normative ethics, virtue ethics, non-Western ethics, and applied ethics interested in the importance of roles in our moral life.
New episodes of The Issue is Not The Issue
The Issue is Not the Issue: A Podcast with Hans-Georg Moeller and Dan Sarafinas
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfs0MY7rs8J6jWlCdneoPVQ
Hans-Georg Moeller and Dan Sarafinas discuss contemporary debates on “political correctness” and related moral and social issues. They point to concepts such as virtue speech (“virtue signalling”), civil religion, “profilicity,” and the role of critique to better understand their nature.
Episode 3—Critique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W1m0Bez8vU
Philosophy today runs the risk of once more becoming the “handmaiden of theology” by being put in the service of civil religion. The Kantian concept of critique is revived to reflect on contemporary dogmatism and associated power structures that lead to phenomena such as “competitive wokeness” in entertainment (Taylor Swift) or the need to write “diversity statements” in academia. The idea of a therapeutic rather than a normative philosophy is suggested and it is explained how society, along with critique, evolves rather than progresses.
Episode 4—Profilicity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yz1C0-mtWI
Why do we need to produce “virtue speech”? We need it to be competitive in society and to bolster our public profiles. A new profile-based identity paradigm, called “profilicity,” is on the rise. It is replacing other identity paradigms such as sincerity and authenticity and provides not only individuals but also institutions (political parties, companies, universities, etc.) with identity value.
