Kuang Zhao

Kuang Zhao, Ph.D. in Philosophy, is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Confucius Society; and Deputy Director of the Confucian Classical Studies Research Committee. His primary research focuses on pre-Qin philosophy, metaphysics, and Chinese classical studies.

He gained his Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University in 2010. His thesis focused on the idea of Xin (mind-heart) in early Chinese philosophy and designated that the structure of this idea should be studied from practical aspect more than theoretical one both in the thinking of Confucianism and Taoism. He finished his Post-Doctoral Research in Peking University 2012. Partly on basis of a comparative philosophical approach to Chinese philosophy, his research report discussed the spiritual exercises of early Confucianism; He argues that the learning for the self in early Confucianism could be understood as a kind of spiritual exercises focused on the transformations of the self and the achievement of ideal personality, which is similar with the core theoretical purpose of ancient Greek philosophy in the interpretations of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault.

He has published the monographs The Theory and Practice of the Mind in Pre-Qin Daoism (China Social Sciences Press, 2021) and The Expression of the Mind in Language: The “Self-Cultivation Philosophy” of Early Confucianism (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2026).