Julius Geissler

Summary of doctoral thesis: Through the study of early Chinese texts, my research investigates how human beings can achieve forms of ethical and intellectual orientation in a world whose structure resists straightforward and comprehensive theoretical mastery. In my doctoral project, I reconstruct an underexplored facet of ritual in the philosophy of the Xunzi 荀子. I seek to show that Xunzi conceives of ritual practice as having a distinctively cognitive import: ritual creates the space for a truth-seeking philosophical exploration that can yield a refashioned understanding of specific concepts and modes of understanding. In this capacity, ritual can respond to a specific challenge that arises amidst the intellectual developments of Xunzi’s time, namely a perceived lack of fit between human beings’ moral orientation as well as existential-religious sense of connectedness with the world and the fundamental structure and workings of the cosmos. I explore how ritual addresses the problem of such theoretically irresolvable moral and religious tensions by constructing limited notions of unity and belonging that can be stably inhabited by human beings.