This book is a collection of chapters on Dai Zhen戴震, who is widely considered to be the most important philosopher in the Qing period of China. The contributions present Dai Zhen’s philosophy as representing the spirit and the general principles of Han studies. There is coverage of his criticism of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, but also his influence on Zhang Taiyan, Hu Shih and Modern Chinese Thought. Top scholars in the field provide a comprehensive study of Dai Zhen’s philosophy and contextualize his thought within the history of Chinese philosophy, laying bare his relation to alternate traditions within China yet also in dialogue with many other international traditions of thought. This volume is a compass and tool for students and researchers working in Chinese and comparative philosophy as well as in Chinese history.

Zemian Zheng is an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He specializes in Neo-Confucianism from Song to Qing. He is the author of the monograph 誠意關 The Sincerity Pass: Reconstructing the Narrative of Neo-Confucian Philosophy from Zhu Xi to Wang Yangming (2022). He received his PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2011, and taught at Wuhan University from 2011 to 2019. He was a post-doc at the Free University of Berlin, and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. He joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019.