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13The Rhetoric Of ContextJournal of Religious Ethics 41 (4): 555-584. 2013.This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice-centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self-formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter in…Read more
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107The moral power of Jim: A mencian reading of huckleberry FinnAsian Philosophy 19 (2). 2009.This paper examines the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the light of the early Confucian thinker Mencius, arguing in essence that Mencian theories of moral development and self-cultivation can help us to recover the moral significance of Twain's novel. Although 'ethical criticisms' of Huckleberry Finn share a long history, I argue that most interpretations have failed to appreciate the moral significance of Jim, either by focusing on the moral arc of Huck in isolation or by casting Jim in one-…Read more
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52An Ethics of Propriety: Ritual, Roles, and Dependence in Early ConfucianismAsian Philosophy 23 (2): 153-165. 2013.This study examines the normative foundations of early Confucian ethics and suggests that rather than attempting to understand Confucian ethics in the language of ‘morality’ a more productive way would be to appreciate Confucianism as an ethics of propriety that can be articulated in terms of social roles, ritual decorum, and relational dependence. I argue that Western notions of ‘morality’ betray a thicker, more culturally loaded concept that possesses a limited utility in regard to comparative…Read more
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121What is it like to be a butterfly? A philosophical interpretation of zhuangzi's butterfly dreamAsian Philosophy 17 (2). 2007.This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the 'Inner Chapters' and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the 'significant symbol' of the butterfly. This normative reading of the passage will be contrasted with two recent interpretations of the passage - one by Robert Allinson and the other by Harold Roth - that tend to focus more on the epistemological and …Read more
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24Mutual Transformation of Colonial and Imperial Botanizing? The Intimate yet Remote Collaboration in Colonial KoreaScience in Context 29 (2): 179-211. 2016.ArgumentMutuality in “contact zones” has been emphasized in cross-cultural knowledge interaction in re-evaluating power dynamics between centers and peripheries and in showing the hybridity of modern science. This paper proposes an analytical pause on this attempt to better invalidate centers by paying serious attention to the limits of mutuality in transcultural knowledge interaction imposed by asymmetries of power. An unusually reciprocal interaction between a Japanese forester, Ishidoya Tsuto…Read more
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Northeastern UniversityAssociate Professor
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Asian Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |