Jing Iris Hu | Concordia University (Canada)

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Jing Iris HuConcordia University (Canada), Philosophy, Faculty MemberDuke University, Philosophy, Graduate StudentUniversity of Oklahoma, Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, Post-DocaddFollowdoneFollowing

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I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. My work focuses on moral emotions such as sympathy, empathy, shame and related topics such as moral responsibility, moral progress/discovery. I am particularly interested in understanding the social role emotions play in moral deliberation, moral perception, and moral motivation in Chinese philosophy and moral psychology. My work has appeared in journals such as Dao, Philosophy Compass, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Here is a story on the Global and Mail on my study on the cultivation and expression of emotions in public lives. Before joining Concordia’s faculty, I was a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. I have held teaching positions at Seattle University and Washington and Lee University. Besides my research, I do freelance translation on topics that interest me. For example, my translation of Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology is one of the most popular books on amazon.cn in 2019 in China.Supervisors: Owen Flanagan and David B. Wongless

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Papers by Jing Iris Hu

Shame, Vulnerability, and ChangeJournal of the American Philosophical Association , 2022Shame is frequently viewed as a destructive emotion; but it can also be understood in terms of ch... more Shame is frequently viewed as a destructive emotion; but it can also be understood in terms of change and growth. This paper highlights the problematic values that cause pervasive and frequent shame and the importance of resisting and changing these values. Using Confucian insights, I situate shame in an interactive process between the individual’s values and that of their society, thus, being vulnerable to shame represents both one’s connection to a community and an openness to others’ negative feedback. This process is an important arena where personal values interact with communal ones. The Confucian tradition, I argue, affords individuals a degree of autonomy in internalization through urging them to cultivate and maintain a keen sense shame. My discussion also offers resources for understanding the various aspects of this interactive process—how individuals with similar experiences of shame may, through channeling their experiences, transform current social values and propel moral progress.Download Part 2: Moral Motivation and Moral Cultivation in Mencius -When One Burst of Anger Brings Peace to The WorldPhilosophy Compass, 2019As a 4th century BCE Confucian text, Mencius provides a rich reflection on moral emotions, such a... more As a 4th century BCE Confucian text, Mencius provides a rich reflection on moral emotions, such as empathy and compassion, and moral cultivation, which has drawn attention from scholars around the world. This two-part discussion dwells on the idea of natural moral motivation expressed through the analogy of the four sprouts-particularly the sprout of ceyin zhixin (the heart of feelings others' distress)-as the starting point, the focus and the drive of moral cultivation. In Part 1, I presented an integrated view of the sprouts as including cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects. In Part 2, I discuss the cultivation and application of natural moral motivation. I illustrate how the sprouts inform moral deliberation and drive moral cultivation, while also being its subject. I also demonstrate how emotional responses are managed and regulated according to the sprouts, and discuss why moral cultivation is sometimes unsuccessful.Download Part 1: Moral Motivation in Mencius -When a child falls into a wellPhilosophy Compass, 2019As a 4th century BCE Confucian text, Mencius provides a rich reflection on moral emotions, such a... more As a 4th century BCE Confucian text, Mencius provides a rich reflection on moral emotions, such as empathy and compassion, and moral cultivation, which has drawn attention from scholars around the world. This two-part discussion dwells on the idea of natural moral motivation expressed through the analogy of the four sprouts—particularly the sprout of ceyin zhixin (the heart of feelings others’ distress)—as the starting point, the focus and the drive of moral cultivation. In this paper, Part 1, I stress the importance of holding an integrated view of the sprouts as consisting of three components: cognitive, affective, and motivational. Through examining scholarly accounts that do not adhere to such a view, I demonstrate why the integrative perspective is necessary for understanding the dynamic nature of human moral potential and the centrality of moral cultivation in Mencian ethics.Download Constructing Morality with Mengzi: Three Lessons on the Metaethics of Moral Progressby Seth Robertson and Jing Iris HuIn Colin Marshall (ed.), Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality, Routledge. forthcoming., 2020Download Empathy for Non-Kin, the Faraway, the Unfamiliar, and the Abstract –An Interdisciplinary Study on Mencian Moral Cultivation and a Response to PrinzDao, 2018This paper challenges the pessimistic view that empathy and other fellow feelings are biased and ... more This paper challenges the pessimistic view that empathy and other fellow feelings are biased and erratic motivation for morality. By discussing Mencius' account on how empathy could be developed from its biased and erratic beginnings, I argue that empathy can be extended to less common objects, such as non-kin, the faraway, the unfamiliar, and the abstract. The extension facilitated by empathy in turn enhances one's moral cognition towards the sufferings of less common objects; the extension helps to include less common objects into one's circle of care. I respond to critics of empathy such as Prinz by highlighting the dynamic cultivational process of empathy that they overlooked, and further point out that empathy can be cultivated so as to provide a remedy for the biases that no emotion is immune to. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on moral cultivation in the Chinese philosophy community and the dispute over empathy's role in morality in contemporary ethics.format_quoteMencius' approach shows empathy can be cultivated for less common objects, countering Prinz's view on empathy's bias and limitations.format_quoteDownload Review Essay: Between Nature and Person: What the Neo-Confucian Wang Fuzhi Can Teach us about Ecological HumanismCOMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 2018Many great minds, throughout the history of mankind, have wondered upon the relationship between ... more Many great minds, throughout the history of mankind, have wondered upon the relationship between nature and person. In the " Anthropocene " —the era where human activities have a significant and unprecedented influence on earth—the relationship between nature and person is no longer a mere philosophical topic for the curious minds to entertain, but a practical and pressing issue for many, including philosophers, to address. Philosophers have set onto the journey of seeking an alternative metaphysical view to anthropocentrism, which problematically places humans at the center of nature. Brasovan offers such an effort: He innovatively brings together the Neo-Confucian Wang Fuzhi's account with ecological humanism, aiming to contribute a view of human and nature that consist of continuous, dynamic and complex systems. Through critically engage with Brasovan's account, I discuss some of the most notable contributions of Wang Fuzhi's philosophy to our understanding of the relationship between nature and human, such as Wang's anti-anthropocentric metaphysics, his qi monism, and the spiritual side of his philosophy. I then criticize Brasovan's project on two accounts: his categorization of Wang's qi monism as materialism [with provisos] and his lack of discussion of human-centric concepts in Wang's philosophy. Lastly, I draw the reader's attention to the rich resources presented by Wang, who witnesses and partakes in the interaction amongst the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions; I also emphasize the significance and promises brought by Brasovan's approach of engaging Neo-Confucian thinkers with modern philosophical concerns such as the demand of ecological humanism.Download Han Fei Zi's Philosophical Psychology: Human Nature, Scarcity, and the Neo-Darwinian Consensusby Owen Flanagan and Jing Iris Huformat_quoteHumans possess a selfish but satiable core nature; without scarcity, social disorder is unlikely.format_quoteDownload

Drafts by Jing Iris Hu

This is about Face --A Study of Internalization and ShameIs shame an accomplice of external oppressive values or an introspective emotion that reveals one... more Is shame an accomplice of external oppressive values or an introspective emotion that reveals one's true moral character? We track these conflicting intuitions about shame and argue that they point to several understudied social features of shame. We then lay out a more nuanced and inclusive view of shame that accounts for meaningful lifelong interactions between self and community. This view emphasizes both personal agency in navigating shame-related experiences and the social challenges to such agency, namely the social structures and values that breed shame for some people while exempting others. We argue that individuals demonstrate their agency in managing the emotion of shame not just through their private attitudes, by accepting, negotiating, or rejecting specific values, but also through social action, by identifying with some communities and distancing themselves from others. In pointing out that shame is a double-edged sword-harmful in ways not discussed before, yet also morally potent by propelling individual agency-we hope to add much-needed complexity to the discussion of shame.Download Women’s Learning in the Confucian Tradition and Contemporary China—Learned Women, “Leftover” Women, and “The Third Sex”In this chapter, I explore how Confucianism can better help and guide women in societies where it... more In this chapter, I explore how Confucianism can better help and guide women in societies where it remains a major influence. While many approaches could help address the question of Confucianism and the future of women in societies with a strong Confucian influence, I will focus on the key doctrines of Confucianism. More specifically, I discuss one of the most important activities or meta-virtues in Confucianism—learning. Moral cultivation and learning are crucial to both Confucian ethical theory and practices; the Analects of Confucius opens by asking “Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals”(Lau, 1998, p. 59)? Learning, despite its clear theoretical significance in the Confucian tradition, becomes rather complex when women are the learners. While the ideals of “women moral exemplars” and “moral sages” seem attainable in optimistic interpretations of the Confucian texts, learning is viewed by learnt women as a curse rather than a bless in pre-modern China (see section 4). In today’s China, education does not always result in respect and social recognition for women as it does for men. This chapter explores, using the key Confucian texts and the Confucian Four Book for Women (女四書), the issues revolving women’s learning. I point out that in order for Confucianism to be helpful to women in the future, we must reform certain structures that are foundational to the Confucian tradition, such as the realms that correlate with the social roles assigned to women and men.Download ×Close

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