Overview of My Work – Zhiqi Wang

I am honoured to have been awarded the Barbara Stevens Heusel Research Fund for Early-Career Scholars. I am currently a PhD candidate in the School of Literature at Zhejiang University, China. My doctoral dissertation is titled ‘Reconstructing Subjectivity: A Dialogue between the Ethical and Aesthetic Thought of Iris Murdoch and Wang Yangming’.

In the 1990s, with the publication of Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness, edited by Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker, Iris Murdoch’s philosophical thought gained increasing influence in contemporary Western academia. During the same period in China, the philosophy of Wang Yangming, a prominent Neo-Confucian thinker of the Ming dynasty, experienced a revival after a long silence, as Chinese scholars embarked on fresh reinterpretations of his ideas and renewed appreciation of their value. If we borrow Carl Jung’s term, this represents a ‘synchronicity’ occurring in the intellectual scene. Their simultaneous emergence, though unrelated to the causal laws of the physical world, manifests as an experiential synchronicity grounded in the profound inner connections between their philosophies.

We recognise this not as mere coincidence, but as a meaningful connection. When we ‘witness’ the thoughts of these two philosophers entering the historical stage simultaneously, time ceases to be merely a sequence of physical processes and becomes, at once, the manifestation of order in the spiritual world. Centered on the reconstruction of human subjectivity, my doctoral dissertation traces the shared theoretical intentions of Murdoch and Wang Yangming’s philosophies, and describes the dialogical relationship between their thought in terms of theoretical approaches and frameworks. The significance of this research lies, on the one hand, in revealing the dialogical nature of their thought, thus exploring the deeper spiritual order underlying the ‘synchronicity’. This spiritual order encompasses both their shared understanding of the relationship between human existence and cosmic order, and the common need for such insight that arises as history progresses into the contemporary world. On the other hand, beyond philosophical comparison itself, this study aims to illuminate how their thought can inspire contemporary people to reconceive human subjectivity, and thus to pursue and articulate a meaningful way of existence that unites truth, goodness, and beauty.

The central concern of both Murdoch and Wang Yangming lies in ethics, yet their ethics is simultaneously aesthetics. It can be said that both develop an aesthetic ethics, or an ethical aesthetics, thereby dissolving the rigid boundaries between ethics and aesthetics. This dissolution of oppositional order is, in essence, a reconstruction of a deeper order. From the perspectives of Murdoch and Wang Yangming, in a mode of existence more attuned to truth, we will experience harmony rather than opposition. Beauty and goodness are never separate, but coexist in the dwelling place of truth. It is only when we live at a distance from truth that it becomes difficult to speak meaningfully of all three together. In their thought, intellect, emotion, and will, as three faculties of the human mind, do not operate separately as Kant prescribed, but form an indivisible whole, flourishing or diminishing together, jointly shaping the subject’s mode of existence. Their separation from truth and their purification toward it pave the way for the subject’s homeward journey.

This study argues that the reconstruction of human subjectivity constitutes the shared theoretical intention of Murdoch and Wang Yangming’s ethics. Both thinkers seek to address the crisis of subjectivity that emerged in their respective eras, characterised by the inflation of selfish desires and the loss of reverence for the object. The consequences are manifested in the hegemony of knowledge, the alienation of individuals from true knowledge, and the separation between knowledge and action in moral life. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of subjectivity describes the concrete content of their ethical thought. In their view, the ideas of Plato and the Confucian classics provide knowledge of human subjectivity, encompassing both the purpose of the subject’s existence and the means for its realization. The crisis of subjectivity in modern Western society and mid-Ming China, they suggest, originates from philosophical misinterpretations of ancient wisdom, which have distanced people from true knowledge of subjectivity. Thus, the crisis of subjectivity is essentially a crisis of the meaning of human existence. Grounded in creative reinterpretations of ancient wisdom, Murdoch and Wang’s ethics offer renewed knowledge of subjectivity and endow it with moral, aesthetic, and practical dimensions. Their ethics is simultaneously an ethical aesthetics and a philosophy of practice. Moreover, both philosophers emphasize the vital role of art in the reconstruction of human subjectivity.

I spent the academic year 2024-25 as a visiting researcher at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre under the supervision of Dr Miles Leeson. During this period, I participated in the Eleventh International Iris Murdoch Conference. In my conference paper, I discussed the moral and practical dimensions that Murdoch and Wang Yangming ascribe to subjectivity. My research for the coming year will focus on three main areas. First, I will continue to deepen my study of the moral and practical dimensions of subjectivity, with particular attention to both thinkers’ moral psychology and their respective understandings of the relationship between body and mind in moral practice. Second, I will turn to the aesthetic dimension of subjectivity, exploring their shared idea of ‘unselfing’. Third, I will investigate Murdoch and Wang Yangming’s theories of art, examining their views on the ethical significance of artistic creation and appreciation. Additionally, I plan to undertake a comparative study of their poetic works, exploring how this unique form of artistic practice interacts with their philosophical thought.

My motivation for undertaking this comparative study stems from my belief in the practical value of Murdoch and Wang Yangming’s philosophical thought for contemporary individuals seeking a truly meaningful life. I hope that, with the help of the BSH Fund, I can attend the Twelfth International Iris Murdoch Conference in 2026 to share my latest research on the aesthetic dimension that Murdoch and Wang Yangming bring to subjectivity and communicate further with Murdoch scholars from around the world. I also wish to visit the Kingston Archives to go through materials related to Murdoch’s poetic writings and to explore possible connections between her poetry and her philosophy.