Current Research
Book in Progress:
At present I am working on a book-length study of the philosophy of Dai Zhen. There is no book in English devoted solely to Dai’s philosophy, so part of my research is necessarily the legwork and explication required to understand Dai’s basic project. But the book’s particular focus is Dai’s charge that ascetics and self-abnegators (that is, people who succeed at suppressing or eliminating desires) are inadequate moral agents, for they are unable to give proper consideration to human well-being. For Dai, being a virtuous person requires that one also be capable of recognizing what makes another person’s life go well or poorly, and whether a person’s life goes well or poorly depends greatly on whether her desires are being fulfilled. If one suppresses or lacks a wide range of wants and drives, she can’t fully, sympathetically appreciate the rises and falls in another person’s quality of life.
As I hope to show, this raises three important issues in moral philosophy: (1) the psychological structure of (morally valuable forms of) sympathy, (2) the place of desire fulfillment in human well-being, and (3) the possibility that self-interest can be consistent with being a virtuous and caring person. I aim to explicate the overlooked presuppositions that commit Dai’s most important philosophical adversary (the neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi) to his more self-abnegationist views on each of the three issues, and then show that Dai offers an alternative that is—in most but not all respects—superior to his rival’s.
I expect to finish this manuscript in the summer of 2011.
Papers in Progress:
I am also working on three papers that focus on virtue ethics, political philosophy, and the rich history of speculation about the relationship between welfare and desire in Chinese thought.
Moralizing human well-being
A reexamination of eudaimonistic virtue theories, understood as the view that an agent’s virtuous behavior is (generally and
on the whole) good for the agent. I argue that popular versions of this theory tend to have a deflationary effect, reducing the
scope of potential prudential goods to an implausibly narrow range.
To sidestep this problem, I offer an alternative plural-
interest theory and note a few suggestive precedents in the history of ethics.
Selfconsciously virtuous behavior
When doing the right thing, we sometimes do it because it is right, but often not. We may even think there are circumstances
in which it is better not to act for the sake of doing the right thing—for example, when acting to rescue one’s own child.
Many Chinese philosophers make a point of praising moral agents who are not directly motivated by the intention to do the
right or virtuous thing (call this “unselfconsciously virtuous behavior”). Dai Zhen thinks this tendency quickly gets out of
hand. This paper is a defense of Dai’s view.
Rights as a fallback apparatus
A contribution to the ongoing debate about Confucian precedents for modern rights talk. Most sides of the debate agree on
what I call a “fallback apparatus” account of would-be Confucian rights, where rights become a part of moral discourse
only when preferred mechanisms (familial love, neighborly concern, tradition, etc.) have failed. I show that rights in this
sense are understood as grounds for a particular kind of justificatory practice, where rights are claimed as such and claimed
primarily by their rights-holders. I argue that rights so understood are inconsistent with the basic doctrines of classical
Confucianism. I also observe that liberal rights thinkers often hold fallback accounts of their own, and note salient
differences between some of these and their Confucian alternative.
Translation:
On the middle burner is a translation of and commentary on Dai Zhen’s Evidential Study (Shuzheng).
Previous Publications:
A list of previous publications can be found here.