Tu Weiming | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 6, 1940 |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline |
|
Sub-discipline | Ethics |
School or tradition | New Confucianism (Boston Confucianism) |
| Institutions | |
Notable works |
|
Notable ideas |
|
| Website | tuweiming |
Tu Weiming (born 1940) is a Chinese-born Taiwanese-American New Confucian philosopher. He is Chair Professor of Humanities and the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. He is also a professor emeritus at Harvard University, where he was the Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy from 1981 to 2010.
Tu was born on February 6, 1940, in Kunming, Yunnan, China, and grew up in Taiwan. He graduated from Tunghai University with a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese literature in 1961. As an undergraduate, he studied under Confucian scholars Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan. He then moved to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University, where he studied under professors Benjamin I. Schwartz, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Neelly Bellah. Tu earned his Master of Arts in East asian studies from Harvard in 1963 and his Ph.D. in history and East Asian languages from Harvard in 1968. His doctoral dissertation was titled, "The quest for self-realization: A study of Wang Yang-ming's formative years".
Tu was Harvard–Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations[citation needed] at Harvard University (1981–2010)[citation needed] and Director of the Harvard–Yenching Institute (1996–2008). He also held faculty positions at Princeton University (1968–1971) and the University of California at Berkeley (1971–1981)[citation needed] and was Director of the Institute of Culture and Communication at the East–West Center in Hawaii (1990–1991).
Tu was a visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, Peking University, and the University of Paris. He currently holds honorary professorships from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, Jinan University, Renmin University, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Soochow University, and Zhejiang University. He is also a member of International Advisory Council in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Tu has been awarded honorary degrees by King's College London, Lehigh University, Lingnan University in Hong Kong, Grand Valley State University, Shandong University, Soka University in Japan, Tunghai University in Taiwan, and the University of Macau.
In 1988, Tu was one of many public intellectuals who were asked by Life magazine to give their impressions on "The Meaning of Life". In 1994, he was featured in A World of Ideas with Bill Moyers: A Confucian Life in America (Films for the Humanities and Sciences). In 2001, he was appointed by Kofi Annan as a member of the United Nations' "Group of Eminent Persons" to facilitate the Dialogue Among Civilizations.[page range too broad] In 2004, he gave a presentation on inter-civilizational dialogue to the executive board of UNESCO. He was also one of the eight Confucian intellectuals who were invited by the Singaporean government to develop the "Confucian Ethics" school curriculum.
Tu has been the recipient of numerous awards including the grand prize of International Toegye Society (2001), the second Thomas Berry Award for Ecology and Religion (2002), the Lifelong Achievement Award by the American Humanist Society (2007), the first Confucius Cultural Award by Qufu (2009), the first Brilliance of China Award by China Central Television Beijing (2013), and the Global Thinkers Forum Award for Excellence in Cultural Understanding (2013).
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1988), a member of Academia Sinica (2018), an executive member of the Federation of International Philosophical Societies, and a tutelary member of the International Institute of Philosophy.