Professor Haiming Wen received his Ph.D. in comparative philosophy from the University of Hawaii in 2006. He is now a professor at the School of Philosophy, Renmin (People’s) University of China (RUC), The Beijing Center (TBC, since 2007), Yeching Academy (YCA, since 2015). He was previously a post-doctoral fellow (2006-12) and Master’s student (1996-99) in the Department of Philosophy, Peking University. He has published the books Making One’s Intentions Concrete: Dimensions of Confucian Ethics (RUC Press, 2014), Confucian Pragmatism as the Art of Contextualizing Personal Experience and World (in English: Lexington, 2009), and Chinese Philosophy (in English: Cambridge University Press, 2012; in Chinese: China International Press, 2010). He has also published more than 50 journal articles in both English and Chinese, including more than 10 articles in English peer-reviewed journals like Asian Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Contemporary Chinese Thought, Culture and Psychology, Frontier of Chinese Philosophy, etc. He has been selected as one of the New Century Excellent Talents (NCET) by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2010, and one of the Ming De Scholars of RUC. He is the secretary-general, and Director of Research for International Association of Yijing (the Book of Changes) Studies. He is a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of the journal Asian Philosophy, and was the Associate Editor-in-Chief for the English Journal Frontiers of Philosophy in China, and editor-in-chief for the “International Studies on Chinese Philosophy” series for Peking University Press. He has been invited to present more than 50 papers in more than 20 countries all over the world.
There are three major philosophies and religions throughout long Chinese cultural history in the past three thousand years. This course is an introduction to their basic cannons: Yijing, Daodejing, and The Platform Sutra. The Yijing (or The Book of Changes) is the most philosophical and influential classic in Confucianism. The Daodejing by Laozi (Laotzu) is the foundation for both philosophical Daoism and Daoist Religion. The Platform Sutra (Tanjing) by Huineng (the Sixth Patriarch) is the only Buddhist sutra by Chinese monk and the founding classic for Chinese Chan Buddhism, which was later called Zen Buddhism in Japan and the Western world.
