From the archives: I think I have always been against Valentine's Day: so obviously constructed to play upon our romantic insecurities to sell cards and flowers.  And when I see stories like this one, from today's China Daily, I am… Continue reading

Just wanted to post this here for the record:   Continue reading

  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

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

Watching the ideological intransigence of "conservative" (I put that in scare quotes because they are actually radical in their extremism) Republicans, brings two lines from the Analects to mind: 子曰：「君子周而不比，小人比而不周。」2.14  子曰：「攻乎異端，斯害也已！」2.16  Here's Hinton's translations: The Master said: "The noble-minded are… Continue reading

Two stories crossed my screen in the past two days, reinforcing each other in unexpected ways. The first is a piece in the NYT Sunday Review: "The Importance of the Afterlife. Seriously  In it, Samuel Scheffler, a philosopher at NYU,… Continue reading

Bo Xilai has been given life in prison.  Although we all knew that Bo would be found guilty, I must say I am a bit surprised at the severity of the sentence.  Xi Jinping has a very strong incentive to… Continue reading

A rather depressing post over at Shanghaiist yesterday with a brief video description of "Confucius Cuisine."  For whatever reason the short youtube clip was blocked on their site, so I am embedding it below. The "Confucian cuisine" portrayed here is… Continue reading

In the course of my recent trip to China, I gave several talks on Chinese philosophy.  On three different occasions, with three different groups of Williams College alumni and students, I discussed pre-Qin texts and how we might think about… Continue reading

It's a sad day, a day of remembrance of the hundreds and hundreds of people (we still do not have a definitive count) killed by the PRC military in Beijing. I was in Nanjing back on that black day twenty… Continue reading