In this episode, we explore Zhu Xi’s striking account of how to read philosophical and other important texts with what he calls “reverential attention.” Blending close reading with reflections on learning, character, and distraction in modern life, we discuss how Zhu Xi tries to make reading simultaneously transformative and objective. The discussion raises a fascinating puzzle at the heart of Zhu’s approach: how can we personalize our reading so that it shapes us, while also preventing our own biases from distorting the text? Continue reading →
Category Archives: Chinese philosophy – 中國哲學 – 中国哲学
Call for Abstracts of Papers: Timothy Williamson Encountering Chinese Philosophy
School of Philosophy, Fudan University, will host a conference on “Timothy Williamson Encountering Chinese Philosophy” on November 6-7, 2026. This is the 4th event in the conference/book series of “Fudan Studies of Encountering Chinese Philosophy”, following the ones focused on Michael Slote, Ernest Sosa, and Simon Blackburn respectively. This one is focused on the work of Timothy Williamson. Following the previous practice in the series, there will be a dozen or so scholars of Chinese philosophy critically engaging various aspects of Williamson’s philosophy by drawing on various aspects of Chinese philosophy, to which Williamson makes responses. Revised versions of these critical comments and responses will be collected into an edited volume, with the same title of the conference, in the series mentioned above.
This call for paper is addressed to scholars of Chinese philosophy who are interested in Williamson’s work. As the first step, we call for expressions of interests and abstracts of papers. The deadline is March 15, and we will announce the result by the end of March. We will provide airfare and room and board in the duration of the conference for all participants at the conference.
Please send your expressions of interests/abstracts of papers to: yonghuang@fudan.edu.cn
ToC: Asian Studies 14:1
Vol. 14 No. 1 of Asian Studies has been recently published. Please see here and below for the Table of Contents. Continue reading →
Episode 29 of “This Is the Way”: Shen Dao on Law
Early in Chinese history, a number of political thinkers developed sophisticated arguments for relying on consistent application of laws rather than the personal discretion of political authorities to govern the state. In this episode, we explore the arguments of one of the early pioneers of this way of thinking, Shen Dao 慎到 (c. 350-275 BCE). We are joined by a leading expert on Shen Dao and Chinese Legalism, Eirik Lang Harris. Continue reading →
Liu, The Rise of Analytic Chinese Philosophy
A guest post by JeeLoo Liu
The Rise of Analytic Chinese Philosophy
JeeLoo Liu
The existence of Chinese philosophy has long been dismissed from both sides of the world. In the West, Hegel famously denied the presence of Chinese philosophy, focusing on the essential speculative nature of “philosophy” itself. Of Confucius, he wrote that Confucius was “only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom—one with whom there is no speculative philosophy.” Of the Daodejing, Hegel wrote: “If Philosophy has got no further than to such expression, it still stands on its most elementary stage. What is there to be found in all this learning?” (Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1). When Derrida visited China in 2001, he proclaimed that China “does not have any philosophy, only thought” on the grounds that “philosophy” is “something of European form.” This has since become a popular, if not the received, view in the Western philosophical world.
Documentary on Laozi
The documentary, Wisdom of China: Laozi, is now available on YouTube. This documentary discusses the historical evidence regarding Laozi and the meaning of the Daodejing, but also looks at the immense influence of Laozi’s ideas on topics as diverse as green energy, modern physics, politics, the martial arts, music, and the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The diverse figures discussed include Confucius, Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Lee, Ursula K. Le Guinn, The Beatles, and Nobel Laureate in physics Niels Bohr. Among the scholars interviewed are Feng Cao (Chinese People’s University), Xia Chen (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Guying Cheng (Peking University), Alexus McLeod (Indiana University), Michael Puett (Harvard University), Misha Tadd (Nankai University), and Lihua Yang (Peking University).
CFP: Walking, Wandering, and Journeying: Approaches from Chinese and Greek Thought
From Dimitra Amarantidou and Thomas Michael…
We are writing to share the Call for Papers for a joint special issue entitled Walking, Wandering, and Journeying: Approaches from Chinese and Greek Thought, to be published in Religions and Philosophies.
With this joint special issue we aim to open new, exciting dialogues between the Chinese and Greek philosophical and religious traditions. We invite you to contribute papers that explore the themes of walking, wandering, and journeying as guiding metaphors and embodied practices, whether within a single tradition or from a comparative perspective. The following timeline gives everyone ample time to develop their ideas:
- Abstract Submission Deadline: January 30, 2026
- Full Manuscript Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026
This schedule is designed to allow for preparation and may also align with the related “Way and Being: Between Daoist and Presocratic Approaches” Workshop planned in Germany (Tübingen) on 24-30 August, 2026, offering a potential venue for early discussion of your work.
Continue reading →
Episode 28 of “This Is the Way”: Mencius Against Mohist Impartialism
In this episode, we continue our exploration of Mohist impartial caring (jian’ai 兼愛) by examining two of Mencius’s most influential objections: (1) the “Without a Father” Argument (Mencius 3B9) and (2) the “Two Roots” Argument (Mencius 3A5).
Along the way, we take up some important questions: Should moral values be impartial even between family members and total strangers? Is radical impartiality incompatible with being human? And should ethics be grounded in (rational) doctrine or in human nature? Continue reading →
New Article: Beaney and Lai, Towards a deep epistemology
The article Towards a deep epistemology: knowing in historical and cross-cultural context by Michael Beaney and Karyn Lai has been published recently as the lead article in the special issue Knowing in Historical and Cross-Cultural Context of British Journal for the History of Philosophy. This article makes the case for a deep epistemology, an epistemology rooted in the epistemic experiences and philosophical debates from across the full range of historical periods and global cultures, with fine-grained sensitivity to the actual linguistic terms and constructions used in expressing them.
To access the article for further reading, please visit this site.
Tanner Reviews Cairns and Virág, In the Mind, in the Body, in the World
Jeremy Tanner’s review of Douglas Cairns and Curie Virág, eds., In the Mind, in the Body, in the World: Emotions in Early China and Ancient Greece (Oxford 2024) has been published in Classical Philology; see here.
