Ke Wu

I am a joint PhD student in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University and the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China. I hold a master's degree from Yuelu Academy, Hunan University(2024), and a bachelor's degree from the School of Philosophy, Anhui University(2021). I was an exchange student the Department of Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University(2019).

My research focuses on Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism and Ming–Qing philosophy from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. During my master's studies, I specialized in the thought of the late Ming–early Qing philosopher Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), known by his sobriquet Chuanshan 船山. My master's thesis, "Wang Chuanshan's 王船山 Philosophical Reflection on Moral 'Self-Deception' (ziqi 自欺)" (Hunan University, 2024), analyzed, from the perspective of moral psychology, the definition, mechanism, and remedies of self-deception in his thought. While Western philosophy and psychology have long struggled to define self-deception without paradox, Chuanshan, centuries earlier, reread the "Sincerity of Intention" (chengyi 誠意) chapter of the Great Learning (Daxue 大學), taking qi 欺 not as "to deceive" but as "to encroach upon" and defining self-deception as the intention (yi 意) wresting control from a habitually upright mind (xin 心), a predicament confined to morally upright persons rather than hypocrites.

On this basis he built a tightly reasoned account that traces self-deception to deficiencies in the extension of knowledge (zhizhi 致知) and the rectification of the mind (zhengxin 正心), posits a fluid four-tier model of moral realms, and prescribes an integrated program of cultivation uniting zhizhi, zhengxin, and shendu 慎獨 (often rendered "vigilance in solitude"). Within this program, shendu is recast as an inner judgment of the incipient stirrings (ji 幾) of good and evil at the very moment an intention arises. My study treated self-deception as a topic in its own right, traced how his reading of the "self" in self-deception shifted from "mind" to "mind and knowledge" across the Du Sishu daquan shuo 讀四書大全說, Sishu xunyi 四書訓義, and Sishu jianjie 四書箋解, and showed that his critique of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) unfolds within, and moves beyond, the Song–Ming Neo-Confucian framework, qualifying his image as a thinker of "practical learning" (shixue 實學) alone.

During my doctoral studies, I have received comprehensive training in Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism through a reading group on Zhu Xi's correspondence, a close-reading seminar on his commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong zhangju 中庸章句), and a writing seminar on Neo-Confucian thought, among others. My projects for the writing seminar addressed theories of mind and nature (xinxing 心性) from the Tang to the Song; how to read and utilize family epitaphs of Neo-Confucian scholars; the late Song debate between the schools of Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan 陸九淵 (1139–1193);  Wu Cheng's 吳澄 (1249–1333) account of principle (li 理) and qi 氣, and Wang Maohong's 王懋竑 (1668–1741) Zhuzi lunxue qieyaoyu 朱子論學切要語 (Master Zhu's Essential Remarks on Learning).

My doctoral dissertation, "A Study of Shendu 慎獨 in the Thought of the Ming–Qing Transition," builds on this background in Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism and Ming–Qing philosophy. It examines shendu, a central concept in Confucian theories of self-cultivation. It asks how Confucian thinkers of the Ming–Qing transition, among them Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578–1645), Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695), Li Yong 李顒 (1627–1705), and Sun Qifeng 孫奇逢 (1584–1675), interpreted the notion across its three canonical loci: the "Sincerity of Intention" chapter of the Great Learning, the opening chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean, and the "Liqi" 禮器 chapter of the Record of Rites (Liji 禮記). It further considers how their readings differ from those of Song–Ming Neo-Confucians such as Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. In doing so, it addresses the broader question of transformation and continuity between Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism and Ming–Qing philosophy.