•  22
    Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir
    British Journal of Aesthetics 64 (1): 136-139. 2023.
    You know that feeling when you see someone’s eyes light up when they talk about something they love? Now imagine reading a book that makes you feel that. In Art.
  •  168
    Imagination and the Permissive View of Fictional Truth
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of ficti…Read more
  •  17
    A Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s Philosophy of Music (after minor corrections)
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. forthcoming.
    Music, alongside ritual, plays an important role in Confucian moral education. Among all the Confucians, Xunzi gives music the most radical ability to transform people, and this is striking given his pessimistic view of human nature. Though he set the standard for Chinese aesthetics for millennia, there is no systematic account that brings together Xunzi’s various commitments: that only music from virtuous previous dynasties are morally conducive, that music can bring about lasting character cha…Read more
  •  271
    Defending Juche Against an Uncharitable Analysis
    Apa Studies: Asian and Asian American Philosophy 22 (2): 12-17. 2023.
    In this article, I aim to do two things: first, introduce Juche, the official philosophy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”), and second, defend Juche against Alzo David-West’s allegation that it is a nonsensical philosophy. I organize David-West’s complaints into two major strands—that Juche’s axiom is too vague to be of philosophical use and that Juche makes too stark a distinction between human vs. everything else—and offer responses to both strands. My goal isn’t to …Read more
  •  643
    Juche in the Broader Context of Korean Philosophy
    Philosophical Forum (4): 287-302. 2023.
    There is ongoing debate on whether Juche (주체/主體), the North Korean state ideology, is indigenous, Marxist-Leninist, or Confucian—or if it’s a real philosophy at all. In this article, I introduce Juche and show how characteristics that philosophers identify to be unique or pronounced in premodern Korean philosophy can be found in Juche as well. Intellectual adaptation, pragmaticism, and an emphasis on continual improvement are prominent in both premodern Korean thought and Juche. Juche should be …Read more
  •  392
    A Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s Philosophy of Music
    The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 2023.
    Music, alongside ritual, plays an important role in Confucian moral education. Among all the Confucians, Xunzi gives music the most radical ability to transform people, and this is striking given his pessimistic view of human nature. Though he set the standard for Chinese aesthetics for millennia, there’s no systematic account that brings together Xunzi’s various commitments: that only music from virtuous previous dynasties are morally conducive, that music can bring about lasting character chan…Read more
  •  473
    Metaphysics as a Means in “Burnt Norton”
    Philosophers' Imprint. forthcoming.
    Philosophy-and-literature as a subfield theorizes about the relationship between the two. Though few would explicitly say that philosophy is the point and literature the means, it’s common to see discussions of literature serving as an expression of philosophical insight and uncommon to see discussions of philosophical ideas put in service of literature. So, the aim of this paper is to explore, and suggest one concrete instance of, a literary work where philosophical concepts are instrumental fo…Read more
  •  400
    Convention and Representation in Music
    Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1). 2023.
    In philosophy of music, formalists argue that pure instrumental music is unable to represent any content without the help of lyrics, titles, or dramatic context. In particular, they deny that music’s use of convention counts as a genuine case of representation because only intrinsic means of representing counts and conventions are extrinsic to the sound structures making up music. In this paper, I argue that convention should count as a way for music to genuinely represent content for two reason…Read more
  •  16
    Introduction to the Symposium on Korean Aesthetics: The Beginning is Half
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (3): 355-356. 2022.
  •  312
    Metaphors in Neo-Confucian Korean philosophy
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (3). 2022.
    A metaphor is an effective way to show how something is to be conceived. In this article, I look at two Neo-Confucian Korean philosophical contexts—the Four-Seven debate and Book of the Imperial Pivot—and suggest that metaphors are philosophically expedient in two further contexts: when both intellect and emotion must be addressed; and when the aim of philosophizing is to produce behavioral change. Because Neo-Confucians had a conception of the mind that closely connected it to the heart (心 xin)…Read more
  •  786
    Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challe…Read more
  •  985
    Camus and Sartre on the Absurd
    Philosophers' Imprint 21 (32). 2021.
    In this paper, I highlight the philosophical differences between Camus’s and Sartre’s notions of the absurd. “The absurd” is a technical term for both philosophers, and they mean different things by it. The Camusian absurd is a mismatch between theoretical reasoning and practical reasoning. The Sartrean absurd, in contrast, is our theoretical inability to explain contingency or existence. For Sartre, there is only relative, local absurdity; for Camus, the absurd is universal and absolute. I show…Read more
  •  485
    A New Class of Fictional Truths
    The Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 90-107. 2021.
    It is widely agreed that more is true in a work of fiction than explicitly said. In addition to directly stipulated fictional content (explicit truth), inference and background assumptions give us implicit truths. However, this taxonomy of fictional truths overlooks an important class of fictional truth: those generated by literary formal features. Fictional works generate fictional content by both semantic and formal means, and content arising from formal features such as italics or font size a…Read more
  •  1661
    A chapter in an encyclopedia for important events for religious history. I discuss the life, works, and influence of Aquinas.
  •  374
    Art beyond Morality and Metaphysics: Late Joseon Korean Aesthetics
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77 (4): 489-498. 2019.