David (Zhe) Chen

I am currently working on a WRoCAH funded PhD at the University of Sheffield. I work mostly on American pragmatism, and my current research focus is on Hu Shih’s philosophy.

Hu Shih (1891, Shanghai - 1962, Taiwan) was an influential intellectual leader in mid- twentieth century China. He was one of John Dewey’s favoured PhD students at Columbia University (1915-1917). He served as a national ambassador to the United States from 1938 to 1942, and as the chancellor of Peking University from 1945 to 1948. He was president of Academia Sinica in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962.

While Hu Shih is widely known as the leader of Chinese language reform, the initiator of new poetry, a master of textual criticism, and the foremost Chinese political liberal, very few recognise him as a philosopher and/ or see the role of pragmatism in his activities.

My research aims to develop a revised account of Hu’s philosophy, contextualising it in Chinese history. I argue that not only was Hu Shih a pragmatist in his own right, but that he was an epoch-defining philosopher - the most important in China since Zhu Xi (1130-1200).