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Comparative Reflections on Persons and Selves

What matters in personal survival? What makes self-awareness possible? If there is no permanent self, should we be altruistic?

These and other questions were tackled by the international participants in the 2018 Uehiro Graduate Student Philosophy Conference at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Their responses explore the subject of subjecthood from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Some approach it from an analytic point of view, others from a historical, and as many as five draw from non-Western traditions to argue their points.

We have selected seven of the 21 papers presented at the conference. Given their comparative scope, they provide a slightly unusual sample of the discussions in philosophy of self and personhood today. The collection would be of interest not only to graduate students and professional philosophers, but also to anyone curious about the comparative methods used to investigate the self in philosophy.


Pavel Stankov is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. He holds a BA in History and an MA in Philosophy. His primary research is in metaethics, with additional interests in critical thinking, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. He is working on a dissertation defending reductionist, naturalist ethical realism grounded on insights from the life sciences, Buddhist ethics, and Hellenistic philosophy. Stankov has taught Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, and Deductive and Inductive Logic.

Michael Dufresne is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He holds a BA and MA in Philosophy. His research interests include Chinese philosophy, aesthetics, decolonial philosophy, and philosophy of education. His dissertation project analyzes the impacts of coloniality on the philosophical and aesthetic theories of the Qing dynasty scholar Wang Guowei. Dufresne has taught Introduction to Philosophy, Greek Philosophy, and Deductive Logic. He has also published the chapter “The Illusion of Teaching and Learning: Zhuangzi, Wittgenstein, and the Groundlessness of Language” in Cultivation of Self in East Asian Philosophy of Education, edited by Ruyu Hung (2020).

“In recent years the discipline of philosophy has begun to globalize, to bring distinct philosophical traditions into dialogue with one another. Given that the University of Hawaii has long played a prominent role in this process, it should come as no surprise that a philosophy graduate student conference held there should provide a glimpse into what may be in store as this dialogue develops and matures. The theme of the conference was ‘Persons and Selves,’ and the papers selected for this volume all address this theme, but from a variety of different perspectives and utilizing tools drawn from a variety of different traditions. Taken together they will give the reader a sense of the promise and prospects of genuinely cross-cultural philosophizing.”
Mark Siderits
Emeritus Professor, Illinois State University, USA

Katherine Cheng

You Jeen Ha

Emma Irwin-Herzog

Chih-Wei Peng

Mathew Sayball

Elliot J. Thornley

Zulhaqem Zulkifli

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-5275-0220-1

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-0220-8

Release Date: 10th July 2023

Pages: 134

Price: £64.99

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