Wansha Philosophy Salon
We are running a Chinese/English public philosophy salon in Tainan.
Blogs
12 Posts
Strange Happenings in Japan
I’ve been having fun learning a little Taiwanese lately. And because there are not that many materials around, I’ve been rummaging around online to find some older texts that I can translate. This is language-learning by diving in at the …
Playing with Prognostications
This paper was written for the 2022 Yijing World Summit Forum. It’s about play and divination, and it won the 2022 first prize for essays on the Yijing (优秀易经论文一等奖). This is a draft of the paper that I gave remotely at the 2022 Yijing World …
Combat, Play and Aesthetic Experience: Three Metaphors of Philosophy
Is philosophy a kind of play? Is it a kind of combat? Or is it a kind of aesthetic experience? Thoughts on Sarah Mattice and Michel Serres.
How Writing Opens Up New Spaces in a Crowded World
When the marketplace of words seems crowded, the best remedy is to keep on writing
Some notes on Plato, divination and madness
For Plato, divination is always tied up with madness — but that it is not to diminish it. Instead, as far as Plato is concerned, divination may be a necessary madness. This is what Plato writes in Timaeus (71e): The claim that god gave divination as …
Thirty-six kinds of divination to try at home
Human attempts to read, interpret and over-interpret the world are fascinatingly diverse. This is a list of some divination methods, culled from here and there. Wikipedia has a much more comprehensive list, but these are my favourites. If you happen …
Weaving the Net of Argument
Three stories of women philosophers in the ancient world weaving arguments to challenge their male contemporaries. Gārgī Vācaknavī in India, Hipparchia in Greece, and Jing Jiang in China.
On the Virtues of Cats
John Gray's Feline Philosophy, Daoism and a medieval Chinese debate on the virtues of cats.