Duke PhD Students at Fudan

BAI Tongdong, Yanlin "Elaine" Chen, and Emily Kluge at Fudan University with Chinese Philosophy graduate students, 2024

In May 2024, I presented my paper, "Incomplete Bodies in Early Confucianism and Zhuangzi," at Fudan University.

Abstract: This paper considers how early Confucianism and the Zhuangzi respond to bodily “incompleteness” and examines the extent to which Zhuangzi’s critique in Dechongfu remains philosophically salient. Although Zhuangzi overstates the Confucian tendency to conflate physical and moral completeness, elements of the critique remain compelling. In particular, Confucian practices that involve “reading” bodies—especially ritual—create an inroad for stigma transfer and the entrenchment of evaluative hierarchies. Nevertheless, the two traditions are best seen as offering complementary responses to the diversity of embodiments. Early Confucian texts provide social and institutional remedies for practical inequalities that arise in the context of incomplete bodies, whereas Zhuangzi addresses inequalities that are produced by conventional distinction-making and evaluation. Both approaches ultimately aim at unity in diversity: Confucians seek to restore harmonious participation in the spirit of Datong 大同 (“Grand Unity”), and Zhuangzi offers datong 大通 (“great transformative openness”) as a harmonious correspondence with the world. Using a comparative framework of three questions concerning equality, social justice, and the good life, this paper also situates each view in relation to contemporary disability models.