13 August 2026, 12:00-1:30pm, UNSW Morven Brown 209 + Online
Sagely Actions: Wang Yangming’s Challenge to the Standard Theory of Agency
UNSW Philosophy and the School of Humanities and Languages invite you to a
seminar by Professor Yong Huang, Fudan University.
Abstract:
Agency is a central topic not only of philosophy of action but also of moral,
political, and legal philosophy, as it is closely related to the issue of
responsibility. While there are different theories of agency in contemporary
philosophy, the one whose foundation was laid by Donald Davidson, deeply
influenced by G.E.M. Anscombe, has often been considered to be the standard
theory. This theory regards the intention, understood to be the reason for
action, which is further explained in terms of belief and desire in a means-end
relationship, as the key to our understanding of agency. In this paper, I shall
argue that this theory encounters a difficulty in explaining the agency of
sagely actions, especially as characterized by the neo-Confucian philosopher
Wang Yangming, which are spontaneous. While the historical approach is
primarily developed to explain the sagely action, it can also provide an
explanation of the agency of skilled activities, more adequate than both the
one provided by Hubert Dreyfus and the one by defenders of the standard theory:
the skilled person can act spontaneously precisely because they have
consciously taken a long and painstaking process of practice to become skilled
persons.
Professor HUANG, Yong
Yong Huang is Fudan Distinguished Chair Professor at the School of
Philosophy of Fudan University. Prior to his coming to Fudan University, he was
a professor of philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013-2025)
and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (1996-2013). With training in both
Western and Chinese philosophical traditions, his research focus has been on
moral (both ethical and political) issues from a comparative perspective. He is
the founding editor-in-chief of Dao: A Journal of Comparative philosophy, the
most prominent journal in English in non-Western philosophy. Huang is also the
founding editor of the first and still the only companion series exclusively
focused on Chinese philosophy, Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy.
13 August 2026
12:00-1:30pm
Morven Brown 209 + Online
Online on Teams
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