Journal articleJournal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture · January 1, 2025
Attempts to integrate cosmopolitanism with a recognition of the pluralism of value across cultures have largely relied on the idea of a Rawlsian overlapping consensus. I argue that such a strategy has significant limitations in addressing the concrete norm ...
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Journal articleJournal of Global Ethics · January 1, 2024
I begin with identifying Confucian metaphors of leadership for the way the mind (the ‘heart-mind’) should lead the whole person. I then discuss how the Daoist text Zhuāngzǐ criticizes this conception of the mind’s leadership as too fixed and rigid–unrespon ...
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Journal articleJournal of Chinese Philosophy · January 1, 2021
The Zhuangzi text deploys two epistemic themes to accomplish its ends of combatting human pretensions to know the world and to prompting us to rediscover the world through fresh eyes. To get us to shed our arrogant dispositions it applies a constructive sk ...
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Journal articleJournal of the American Philosophical Association · June 1, 2020
Is the ancient Confucian ideal of he, 'harmony,' a viable ideal in pluralistic societies composed of people and groups who subscribe to different ideals of the good and moral life? Is harmony compatible with accepting, even encouraging, difference and the ...
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Journal articleThe Ultimate Guide from Philosophy Now · November 2017
This was first published in Philosophy Now magazine, included in their "bookazine" as The Ultimate Guide" to philosophy, issue one: ethics. ...
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Journal articleJournal of Chinese Philosophy · March 1, 2017
The Zhuangzi text deploys two epistemic themes to accomplish its ends of combatting human pretensions to know the world and to prompting us to rediscover the world through fresh eyes. To get us to shed our arrogant dispositions it applies a constructive sk ...
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Journal articleDao · June 26, 2015
Metaphors of adorning, crafting, water flowing downward, and growing sprouts appear in the Analects (Lunyu 論語), the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子), and the Xunzi 荀子. They express and guide thinking about what there is in human nature to cultivate and how it is to be ...
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Journal articleJournal of Chinese Philosophy · March 1, 2015
There are two broad approaches to environmental ethics. The “conservationist” approach on which we should conserve the environment when it is in our interest to do so and the “preservationist” approach on which we should preserve the environment even when ...
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Journal articleAnthropological Theory · January 1, 2014
Philosophy and anthropology need to integrate their accounts of what a morality is. I identify three desiderata that an account of morality should satisfy: (1) it should recognize significant diversity and variation in the major kinds of value, (2) it shou ...
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Journal articlePhilosophical Topics · March 1, 2013
I explore conceptions of happiness in classical Chinese philosophers Mengzi and Zhuangzi. In choosing to frame my question with the word 'happiness', I am guided by the desire to draw some comparative lessons for Western philosophy. 'Happiness' has been a ...
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Journal articleCulture and Dialogue · 2012
Arguments for the preservation of culture are based on an extremely problematic essentialist conception of culture as a fixed entity with an essence. The inadequacy of the essentialist conception has received increasing recognition, but an adequate positiv ...
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Journal articlePhilosophical Issues (metaethics issue of Nous) · October 2009
In some recent work I have developed a theory of moral reasons and
their relation to the agent’s motivations. The theory is naturalistic in its
approach, meaning that it seeks to integrate a conception of what moral
reasons are and how they motivate wit ...
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Journal articlePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2007
Addresses the question of whether moral
reasons stem
from existing desires of the agent, from the
nature of
practical rationality or from outside the
agent herself. ...
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Journal articleDao · June 2006
Both Buddhism and Stoicism would appear to
recommend the complete elimination of
emotional attachment to others. The promise
is release from the suffering that arises
from loss or anticipated loss of others dear
to the self, as emphasized by Buddhism, and ...
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Journal articleHistory of Philosophy Quarterly · March 2005
Perhaps the primary interpretive problem in
interpreting
the Daoist text Zhuangzi is that it
alternates between
skeptical questioning of purported knowledge
claims and
apparent advocacy of a certain way of life.
I offer an
interpretation of the kind o ...
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Journal articleJournal of Chinese Philosophy · December 2004
I discuss the way that the Chinese self could truly be said
to be relational and argue that this sense of relationality is
compatible with a significant form of moral autonomy
that is highly valued in Confucianism. It is in fact a kind
of autonomy fre ...
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