Latest Posts
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Talk at Foreign Correspondent’s Club, Hong Kong, January 23, 2014
Just wanted to post this here for the record: Continue reading
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Korean Confucian Thoughts
I was traveling last week, to Seoul and Hong Kong. My primary purpose was to give a couple of talks, though I found some time to meet up with many former students and friends. First, last Monday in Seoul, I… Continue reading
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Ai Weiwei, Zhuangzi, and Life at the Margins
Happy New Year! I saw the Ai Weiwei documentary, Never Sorry, again last night, and led a bit of a discussion about it afterwards. If you haven't seen it, you should. Alison Klayman does a great job presenting Ai's political… Continue reading
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A Daoist Christmas
I wrote this a few years ago, but it still seems right for the season. Merry Christmas! I have blogged on a Taoist view, or my Taoist view, of Thanksgiving. But what about Christmas? What would a Taoist… Continue reading
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Responding to comments on “What Confucius Teaches Us About Modern American Justice”
Last week I published a piece over at The Atlantic's China page: "What Confucius Teaches Us About Modern American Justice." It has generated a fair number of comments and I want to respond to them here. The main point of… Continue reading
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Nelson Mandela: Daoist Sage
I'm reading obituaries of the great man, Nelson Mandela, who accomplished a transition to democracy in a divided and fraught South Africa. And I am reflecting on what I know of his life and how that experience has flowed through… Continue reading
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Return to the Trolley Problem: The Daoists Are Right!
A review in yesterday's NYT Sunday Book Review brings the infamous "trolley problem" to wider public attention. Having blogged on this issue before, primarily from a Daoist perspective (see here and here), I will not describe the full analytic apparatus… Continue reading
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Confucianism from the bottom-up
After my most pleasant China trip, I am coming to a conclusion: Confucianism works best in the world, especially in the modern world, when it operates as a form of practical ethics, providing ideas that can inform how individuals navigate… Continue reading
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Book News: The Sinica Podcast
Last Sunday I had the pleasure of chatting with Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn and Jeremiah Jenne on the Sinica Podcast about the book – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao – and lots of other stuff. I had… Continue reading
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Social Mobility as a Destroyer of Confucian Culture
My China trip continues to go well. I'm in Shanghai now, by way of Nanjing, where I spent one night and gave a talk at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (good to see my old friend Milo!). Here in the big city… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 