I go by "Gus" in personal communications, and "Law" is my last name. I am a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows and a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Previously, I was cross-appointed as Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Chinese and Japanese. I was also participating faculty in two interdisciplinary programs: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, as well as Science, Technology, and Society. I received my Ph.D. in philosophy from the Graduate Program in Classics, Philosophy, and Ancient Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
I take a tra…
I go by "Gus" in personal communications, and "Law" is my last name. I am a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows and a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Previously, I was cross-appointed as Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Chinese and Japanese. I was also participating faculty in two interdisciplinary programs: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, as well as Science, Technology, and Society. I received my Ph.D. in philosophy from the Graduate Program in Classics, Philosophy, and Ancient Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
I take a transcultural approach to philosophy: I proactively explore culturally diverse sources and draw upon whichever texts or thinkers I find promising for the philosophical problems I am engaged with. Currently, my research projects are centered on two themes: causal ambiguity -- the appearance that one thing has causes of different kinds -- and virtue as a way of being (practical as well as theoretical virtues). I am interested in notions of causal ambiguity and virtue especially insofar as they illuminate how our behavior could be explanable by justification in terms of how things are, given that it is also explanable by how things seem to us and other explanations that the empirical sciences report to us. Some of the works important to my research are by Mengzi, Zhuangzi, Aristotle, Anselm, G.E.M. Anscombe, and Susan Wolf.
Apart from these projects, I am also investigating a possible connection between detached engagement as an ideal way of being in the Zhuangzi – a so-called “Daoist” text – and the peculiar bodily aesthetic of playing the qín, an ancient Chinese zither that I began learning to play in Hong Kong in the summer of 2011, where and when my study of classical Chinese philosophy also began.
The cover picture above shows part of a qín musical notation handwritten by my qín teacher's teacher, TSAR Teh-yun laoshi. The piece denoted is "Three Variations on the Plum Blossom."
The profile picture is cropped from "Playing the Zither beneath a Pine Tree," an anonymous painting from the 16th or 17th century CE. It is currently part of the collection at the National Museum of Asian Art: https://asia.si.edu/object/F1953.84/
