Abstract: The Confucian classic the Great Learning states that one must hate evil “like hating a hateful odor” and love the good “like loving a lovely sight.” These metaphors played a central role in Chinese debates over the possibility of “weakness of will”: doing what you know is wrong. In this talk, I explain how the great Confucians Zhu Xi (12th century CE) and Wang Yangming (16th century CE) appealed to these same metaphors to defend contradictory conclusions in their argument over the relationship between moral knowledge and action.
Bryan W. Van Norden is James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy at Vassar College (USA), and Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon fellowships, Van Norden has been honored as one of The Best 300 Professors in the US by The Princeton Review. Van Norden is author, editor, or translator of ten books on Chinese and comparative philosophy, including Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), and Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011). He has also published several featured op-eds in the New York Times, and written a Ted-Ed video on Confucius that has been viewed over a million times. Books and articles by or about him have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Farsi, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. Van Norden’s hobbies are poker (he has played in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas) and video games.