Kwong-loi Shun
Professor, Recalled
Office: Philosophy Hall 242
Office hours: (reading week, reserved for Phil 18) Wed Dec 11, 2:30-4:30 pm; Fri Dec 13, 2:30-4:30 pm (both by zoom)
E-mail: klshun@berkeley.edu
Web: http://www.klshun.com/
Courses for Fall 2024: Confucius for Today
(B. Phil., University of Oxford; Ph.D., Stanford University). Kwong-loi Shun specializes in Chinese philosophy and moral psychology. His current research is a five-volume work on Confucian thought. The first volume, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, was published in 1997, and a manuscript of the second volume, Zhu Xi and Later Confucian Thought, is under revision. The third volume, From Philology to Philosophy, discusses methodological issues in transitioning from philological studies to philosophical studies, and is close to completion. The fourth and fifth volumes, On Self and Self-Transformation and A Study in Confucian Moral Psychology, jointly provide a comprehensive study of Confucian moral psychology, the former being primarily philological and the latter primarily philosophical.
He started teaching at Berkeley in 1986, and was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters & Science when he left Berkeley in 2004. He returned to Berkeley in 2014 after having served as Principal of the University of Toronto at Scarborough and then Head of New Asia College in Hong Kong (founded by Confucian scholars Qian Mu and Tang Junyi to promote Chinese culture). Before his return, he was Chair Professor of Philosophy and Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently, in addition to teaching regular courses on Chinese philosophy and moral psychology, he devotes most of his time to the philosophical study of Confucian thought. He is also deeply interested in undergraduate education, and has published on liberal education in the U.S. and Confucian learning. He was President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division) in 2017-18.