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10What Is the Emperor to Us?—Relationships, Obligations, and ObedienceDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 21 (4): 611-616. 2022.In an award-winning essay, Shu-Shan L ee discusses scholarly commentary about obedience to the emperor, focusing on public and hidden records of protest. The thesis of Lee’s essay is that the relationship between authority and subject in imperial Confucianism was built on a conditional obligation of obedience, despite traditional accounts of it as absolute. On his account, the obligation of obedience should be conceived through the rubric of imperial Confucianism as being conditional on fulfillm…Read more
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11On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. By Jane Geaney. Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, No. 19. (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002. vii, 267 pp. Paperback, $20, ISBN 0824825578) (review)Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30 (3-4): 559-562. 2003.
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39Goldin, Paul R., Confucianism: Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011, vii 168 pages (review)Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 11 (2): 241-245. 2012.
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35A Good Life, an Admirable Life, or an Uncertain Life?Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (4): 573-577. 2015.
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22Review of Karyn L. Lai, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (3). 2009.
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8Review of Antonio S. Cua (ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (8). 2003.
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92Horse-parts, white-parts, and naming: Semantics, ontology, and compound terms in the white horse dialogueDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (2): 167-185. 2007.In this article I argue against Chad Hansen’s version of the “White Horse Dialogue” (Baimalun) of Gongsun Longzi as intelligible through writings of the later Moists. Hansen regards the Baimalun as an attempt to demonstrate how the compound baima, “white horse,” is correctly analyzed in one of the Moist ways of analyzing compound term semantics but not the other. I present an alternative reading in which the Baimalun arguments point out, via reductio, the failure of either Moist analysis; in par…Read more
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87Moral knowledge and self control in mengzi: Rectitude, courage, and qiAsian Philosophy 14 (1). 2004.In this paper, I reveal systematic aspects of the moral epistemology of the Warring States Confucian, Mengzi. Mengzi thinks moral knowledge is 'internally' available to humans because it is acquired through normative dictates built into the human heart-mind. Those dictates are capable of motivating and justifying an agent's normative categorizations. Such dictates are linked to Mengzi's conception of human nature as good. I then interpret Mengzi's difficult discussion of courage and qi in Mengzi…Read more
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84Emotional control and virtue in the "mencius"Philosophy East and West 49 (1): 1-27. 1999.This essay argues against the standard reading of Mencius that the emotions are perfectible or that they require perfecting in order to render a person virtuous. Rejecting this perfectibility reading allows us to explore two interesting philosophical points: (1) we can give an account of moral virtue and moral development that is significantly different from broadly Aristotelian accounts and that provides a psychologically realistic model of the Mencian sage; and (2) this account introduces a co…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Asian Philosophy |
Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophical Traditions |
Value Theory |