Eric L. Hutton

Brief Biography

B.A. Stanford University — Classics, Chinese; M.A. Harvard University — Chinese; Ph.D. Stanford University — Philosophy.

Areas of Expertise: Chinese Philosophy, Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ethics

Courses Taught

• Philosophy 1003: Introduction to Philosophy — Philosophy and Human Nature
• Philosophy 3013: Plato's Republic
• Philosophy 3013: Philosophy of the Daodejing
• Philosophy 3500: Ethics
• Philosophy 3100 (previously 4110): Ancient Greek Philosophy
• Philosophy 4140/6140: Classical Chinese Philosophy
• Philosophy 5110/6110: Topics in Ancient & Medieval Philosophy
• Philosophy 5145/6145 (previously 5150/6150): Topics in Classical Chinese Philosophy
• Philosophy 5193/6190: Plato (co-taught with Elijah Millgram)
• Philosophy 5500/6500: Contemporary Ethics
• Philosophy 7010: Graduate Proseminar
• Philosophy 7500: Graduate Seminar on Virtue Ethics
• Honors 2101: Intellectual Traditions — Antiquity and the Beginning of the Common Era
• Honors 2104: Intellectual Traditions — Cross Cultural Dialogues

Selected Publications

Articles, Books, Essays, and Translations

• “Solving a Puzzle about a Source for Matteo Ricci’s Jiaoyou lun 交友論” in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu (AHSI), vol. XCIV, fasc. 187 (2025-I), 123–30.
• “Xunzi and the Authority of Tradition” in Justin Tiwald, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025.
• “Debating the Proper Wei to Rule the State in Early Chinese and Greek Political Philosophy: On the Emotional Influence of Rulers” in Douglas Cairns and Curie Virág, eds. In the Mind, in the Body, in the World: Emotions in Early China and Ancient Greece. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
• “Ethics and the Arts in Early China” in James Harold, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.
• “Revisiting Xunzi’s Philosophy of Language” in Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 36 (2021), p. 163–84.
• “On Ritual and Legislation” in European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13:2 (2021), p. 45–64.
• “Xunzi and the Problem of Different Strokes for Different Folks: On Tang Siufu’s Self-realization through Confucian Learning” in Dao 19:1 (2020), p. 113–120.
• 柏拉图论‘仁’ (“On Confucian Benevolence in the Philosophy of Plato”), tr. 刘旻娇 Liu Minjiao, in 伦理学术 Academia Ethica 4, ed. 邓安庆 Deng Anqing, June 2018, p. 29–45.
• “Extended Knowledge and Confucian Tradition” in J. Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos, and Duncan Pritchard, eds. Extended Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi. Dordrecht: Springer, 2016. (Also available in Chinese as 荀子哲学导论, translated by 刘旻娇 Liu Minjiao, Xi'an: Northwest University Press 西北大学出版社, 2025.)
  
  In addition to editing this volume, my contributions include:

  • “Ethics in the Xunzi” (Chinese translation available as 荀子的伦理思想)
  • “Xunzi on Moral Psychology” (Chinese translation available as 荀子论道德心理)
  • “Xunzi on Music,” co-authored with James E. Harold (Chinese translation available as 荀子论"乐")
  • “The Xunzi in Edo Japan” (translation of 《荀子》在江戶日本, originally by 藍弘岳 Lan Hung-Yueh)

  
• “Confucius”, entry for Oxford Bibliographies Online, philosophy list. Edited by Duncan Pritchard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. (DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0290)
• “On the ‘Virtue Turn’ and the Problem of Categorizing Chinese Thought” in Dao 14:3 (2015), p. 331–353. (With erratum to the published version.)
• “Xunzi and Virtue Ethics” in Lorraine Besser-Jones and Michael Slote, eds. The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2015.
• Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Revised paperback edition, 2016. (Also available from Amazon.)
  
  Formal academic reviews at: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dao

  
• “Mengzi, Xunzi, and the Legacy of Confucius” in Michael Nylan, ed., The Analects: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. (Please note the following errors in this publication: (1) footnote 4 on p. 173 should be labeled as an editor’s note — it does not reflect my own view, and (2) the first seven lines of footnote 6 on p. 174 are an erroneous and redundant version of materials in footnotes 2 and 3 on p. 173; the formulations in footnotes 2 and 3 are to be preferred, and the last sentence of footnote 6 should have appeared at the end of footnote 2.)
• “A Note on the Xunzi’s Explanation of Xing 性” in Dao 10:4 (2011), p. 527–530.
• “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics” in Journal of Moral Philosophy 5:3 (2008), p. 423–453. Reprinted in Thom Brooks, ed. Ethics and Moral Philosophy. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011.
• “Un-Democratic Values in Plato and Xunzi” in Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, eds. Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008.
• “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought” in Philosophical Studies 127:1 (2006), p. 37–58.
• “Xunzi” (translation of selected passages) in:
  • Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds. Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy. 2nd ed. Hackett Publishing Co., 2006; revised and expanded 3rd ed., 2023. Partially reprinted in Joel J. Kupperman, ed. Human Nature: A Reader. Hackett Publishing Co., 2012.
  • Robin Wang, ed. Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture. Hackett Publishing Co., 2003.
• “Moral Reasoning in Aristotle and Xunzi” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29:3 (2002), p. 355–384.
• “Moral Connoisseurship in Mengzi” in Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi. Hackett Publishing Co., 2002.
• “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature?” in T.C. Kline and P.J. Ivanhoe, eds. Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi. Hackett Publishing Co., 2000.

Reviews

• Review of Tao Jiang, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom, Oxford University Press, 2021 for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, April 2023.
• Review of Sor-hoon Tan (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies, Bloomsbury, 2016 for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 2017.
• Review of Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation, Princeton University Press, 2015 for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, January 2016.
• Review of 東方朔 [林宏星] Dongfang Shuo [Lin Hongxing], The Quest for Rationality: Collected Research on the Thought of Xunzi 合理性之尋求: 荀子思想研究論集. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2011 for Dao 13:3 (2014), p. 421–424.
• Review of Amy Olberding, Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That, Routledge, 2012 for Ethics 124:1 (2013), p. 197–201.
• Review of Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction, Open Court, 2007 for Dao 6:4 (2007), p. 417–421, and A Further Response to Kurtis Hagen in Dao 6:4 (2007), p. 445–446.
• Review of Xiusheng Liu, Mencius, Hume, and the Foundations of Ethics, Ashgate, 2003 for Hume Studies 30:1 (2004), p. 201–203.
• Review of G.E.R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China, Cambridge University Press, 2002 for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, March 2003.

Other Short Works

• Prologue (in English with Portuguese translation) to Teoria do Conhecimento do Filósofo Xun: traduções comentadas dos capítulos epistemológicos do Xunzi, vol. 1, tr. Matheus Oliva da Costa. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2025.
• Prologue (in Spanish) to Xun Kuang: Rectificar Los Nombres (Xun Zi / Zheng Ming), tr. Nuño A. Valenzuela Alonso. Madrid: Miraguano Ediciones, 2019. (The original English text of this Prologue is available for download from this location.)

Other Information

• Advice for Students Wanting to Pursue a PhD in Chinese Thought