​I'm interested in most things to do with Confucianism and Daoism, especially their ethics and aesthetics, and also Chinese philosophical accounts of nature, and the theme of misanthropy as it relates to classical Chinese philosophies.


Forthcoming and in progress

• A paper on the moral significance of gardens in East Asian philosophies, in progress.​

• ‘Confucian Courage in a World Without the Way’, Blaine Fowers (ed.) Courage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).* 

• ‘Gardens of Refuge, Innocence, and Toil’, Yue Zhuang, Alasdair Forbes, and Michael Charlesworth (eds.) The Garden Refuge of Asia and Europe: Paradigms for Dwelling in a Torn World (London: Bloomsbury, 2024/25), forthcoming.*

   

• 'Hánfēizǐ - A Chinese Philosophical Pessimist?', Daily Philosophy, 22 May 2024.

• 'Everyday Aesthetics, Happiness, and Depression', Martin Poltrum, Michael Musalek, Helena Fox, Kathleen Galvin, Yuriko Saito (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), forthcoming.
  • ​​The 'case studies' for this chapter are Indian Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Zen, and Shinto.

 

• ‘Gardens and the Good Life in Confucianism and Daoism’, Laura D’Olimpio, Panos Paris, Aidan Thompson (eds.), Educating Character Through the Arts (London: Routledge, 2022), 125-139.*

 

• ‘Happiness for a Fish: Zhuāngzǐ and Huizi at the Hao River’, Helen de Cruz (ed.), Philosophy Illustrated: 40 Thought Experiments to Broaden your Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 57-60.*​​

 

• ‘Shénnóng and the Agriculturalist School’, Daily Philosophy, 22 April 2022.

 

• ‘Gardens of Refuge’, Daily Philosophy, 4 October 2021.
  • ​This piece discusses Chinese philosophy of gardens.

 

• ‘Going Slow’, Daily Philosophy, 11 September 2021.
  • ​Much of this paper draws on Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist ideas.

 

• ‘Ghosts in Classical Chinese philosophy’, Fortean Times 407 (July 2021): 54-55.

 

• 'Varieties of Philosophical Misanthropy', Journal of Philosophical Research 46 (2021): 27-44.
  • ​Two sections of this paper argue that Kongzi and early Daoism were misanthropic, in the sense defined in the paper.

 

• 'Reloading the Canon', The Philosopher's Magazine 93 (2021): 57-63.*
  • ​​​This article reflects on a prejudice - which I call xenophilia - which distorts people's engagements with 'non-Western' philosophies. This article has also been translated into Chinese by Wu Wanwei.

 

• 'Vices, Misanthropy, and Daoism', Philosophy in Three Words podcast, University of Exeter Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, May 2019.*

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• ‘“Following the Way of Heaven”: Exemplarism, Emulation, and Daoism’, Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6.1 (2020): 1-15.
  • Selected by the Editors for the JAPA Special Series in Non-Western Philosophy.

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• 'Daoism, Humanity, and the Way of Heaven', Religious Studies 56 (2020) 56, 111–126.
  • ​Special issue: Philosophy of Religions: Cross-Cultural, Multi-Religious Approaches, edited by Mikel Burley.

 

• 'Admiration, Attraction, and the Aesthetics of Exemplarity', Journal of Moral Education 48:3: 369-380.
  • ​Special issue on education and exemplarism edited by Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza. My case study is the Confucian aesthetics of exemplarity.

 

• 'Adversity, Wisdom, and Exemplarism', Journal of Value Inquiry, 52 (2018): 379–393.
  • ​​​Contains case studies of Kongzi and Lunyu and the Buddha and the Mahaparinibbana (the record of the Buddha's last days).

 

• 'Confucianism, Curiosity, and Moral Self-Cultivation', in Ilhan Inan, Lani Watson, Dennis Whitcomb, and Safiye Yigit (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Curiosity (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 97-116.*

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• ‪‘Nature, Mystery, and Morality: A Daoist View’, Religious Studies 51.2 (2015): 165-181.

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