Inaugural Lecture by Professor Gregory Lee Contributions to Global Thinking from the Space we have imagined as China

Professor Lee will address the thinking of the philosopher Zhuangzi who was active in a part of the territory we now call China during the late 4th century BCE, and will demonstrate how this philosophy presaged, and can today be seen to complement, the work of European philosophers from Plato to the present-day. He will start by interrogating what we have understood by “China”, and go on to show how Zhuangzi stands apart from the so-called Taoists, an anachronistically concocted school of thought. Professor Lee will demonstrate Zhuangzi's understanding of the Tao or Dao, and of the concepts of power and its limitation in the work we call The Zhuangzi. This philosophy, addressing our relations with “Nature”, after humankind had subtracted itself from it, may help us to apprehend differently our relationship to the biological and physical world of today; an essential reassessment as we face the crisis that is climate change.