Living the Contradiction
- Date: May 28, 2026
- Location: CITIC Bookstore at Genesis Beijing
- Language: English and Chinese. The livestream will offer real-time machine translation.
In 17th-century China, a Confucian scholar wrote a passionate and sharply critical response to the newly introduced teachings of Catholicism. At first glance, this seems like a familiar story of cultural and religious conflict between East and West. But beneath the surface lies a far more intriguing question: how do we respond to ideas we deeply disagree with—and is it possible to do so without simply rejecting them? This lecture explores not just the arguments themselves, but the remarkable way they are presented. The author stages a dialogue between multiple voices—voices of critique, tolerance, and reflection—all coexisting within a single mind. Rather than resolving the conflict, he allows opposing perspectives to confront and illuminate each other. What emerges is a powerful philosophical insight: perhaps we do not always have to choose between agreement and rejection. Instead, we might learn how to hold conflicting views together, without erasing their differences.
Guest Speaker
Brook A. Ziporyn
Mircea Eliade Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School
Professor Ziporyn is a scholar of ancient and medieval Chinese religion and philosophy. He is the author of Evil And/Or/As the Good: Omnicentric Holism, Intersubjectivity and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Brill, 2000), The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang (SUNY Press, 2003), Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments With Tiantai Buddhism (Open Court, 2004); Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Hackett, 2009); Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li (SUNY Press, 2012); Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and its Antecedents (SUNY Press, 2013); Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism, (Indiana University Press, 2016); and Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, translated and with introduction and notes by Brook Ziporyn was published by Hackett in 2020, and his translation of the Daodejing was published by Liveright Books and the Norton Library in 2023.
Moderator
Roger T. Ames
Humanities Chair Professor, Peking University
Co-Chair, Academic Advisory Council, Berggruen Research Center, Peking University
Professor Ames is the former editor-in-chief of Philosophy East & West and founding editor of China Review International. He has authored several influential works on Chinese philosophy, including Thinking Through Confucius (1987) and Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics (2020). His translations of Chinese classics include The Art of Warfare (1993), The Confucian Analects (1998), and The Daodejing (2003). His work has been widely translated into Chinese, including his recent Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy (2022).
CHENG Lesong
Dean and Professor, Department of Philosophy and of Religious Studies, Peking University
Professor Cheng earned his PhD in Culture and Religion from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2006. His research focuses on early Daoist thought, the history of Daoist ideas, and intellectual history during the Han Dynasty. Adopting a perspective that views religion in terms of faith, he employs methods in textual and intellectual history to analyze Daoist classics within their ancient cultural contexts, thereby contributing to an academic understanding of Daoism in Chinese cultural history. Professor Cheng also teaches a range of courses on Daoism and religious studies, including Daoist history, Daoism and folk religion, and the principles of religious studies.
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Image: Mount Tiantai by Wu Bin, 1605, Honolulu Museum of Art
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
About The Berggruen Institute
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