Current Research

Book in Progress:

At present I am working on a book-length study of the ethics of the Qing dynasty master philosopher and philologist (and mathematician, and astronomer...) Dai Zhen (1724-1777). There is no book in English devoted solely to Dai’s philosophy, so much of this manuscript is just the legwork and exegesis required to understand his basic project. But my particular focus is Dai’s understanding of the relationship between desire and moral deliberation. Dai is somewhat distinctive among Chinese thinkers in holding that robust, self-interested desires are essential constituents of virtuous character traits and behavior. I explicate the arguments for this view and show how they divide the work of moral deliberation between different faculties of cognition, emotional simulation, and moral perception. I expect to finish the manuscript for this book in the summer of 2011.

Papers in Progress:

I am also working on two papers that focus on issues in virtue ethics and political philosophy.

         Sympathy in the Confucian tradition

         I am writing an article for Philosophy Compass on the history of empathy or sympathy (shu) in the Confucian tradition.
         There is a fair amount of agreement that some form of sympathy plays a pivotal role in Confucian ethics, due in part to
         Confucius’ claim that it is one half of the “single thread” that runs through his account of the good life. But there is little of the
         clarficatory and conceptual work that contemporary philosophical and psychological literature demands, with respect to the
         role of perspective-taking, simulation, pro-attitudes, point of view, and so on. This article is an attempt to help close this gap in
         the secondary literature.

         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 claiming 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 back or 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.