Freedom's Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi
BTG webinar no. 23 recorded video - 27 July 2024
This recorded video of BTG no. 23 features a conversation between Dr. Christine Abigail Tan (NUS College and Yale-NUS College, Singapore) and Mx. Ingrid Mae De Jesus (University of the Philippines, Diliman) about Dr. Tan’s recently published book, Freedom’s Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi (SUNY Press, 2024).
Speakers and bionotes:
Christine Abigail Tan is a Lecturer at NUS College and Yale-NUS College, Singapore.
She is a Filipino-born philosopher whose main areas of expertise are Chinese and Comparative Philosophy in general, and Neo-Daoist philosophy in particular. She did her PhD at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where she wrote her dissertation titled ‘Freedom as Self-realisation: Zide in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang’. Before that, she did her MA and BA at the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines, where her areas of focus were psychoanalysis and post-structuralist philosophy.
Dr. Tan has published extensively in Chinese philosophy (with a specific focus on Guo Xiang). Her work has spanned a variety of epistemological themes from classical and medieval Chinese textual analysis to problem-driven treatments of traditionally Euro-centric issues such as freedom and autonomy. This includes published journal articles on Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Ultimately, her goal is to push the boundaries for how we understand selfhood, agency, and community from inter-cultural and truly global lenses.
Ingrid Mae De Jesus uses she/they pronouns.
They graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines - Diliman, College of Social Science and Philosophy (CSSP) in 2019 with a baccalaureate degree in Philosophy. She specializes in the study of Philosophy in Media and Pop-culture, Ancient Philosophy, as well as in Asian Philosophy and Belief Systems. Other fields of interest include Gender Studies and Feminist Philosophy.
At present Mx. De Jesus is an instructor in the Department of Philosophy at UP Diliman, mainly handling General Education courses (Philosophy 1: Philosophical Analysis and Philosophy 10: Approaches to Philosophy) in line with UP CSSP's mandate as a service college.
They are currently pursuing their Master's degree in Philosophy at UP Diliman.