Alexander Garton-Eisenacher is a Young Research Professor at Fudan University’s School of Philosophy. He holds BA, MPhil and PhD degrees in the field of philosophy of religion from the University of Cambridge, and has previously conducted research at the universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen in Germany. Prior to joining Fudan University, Alexander was a postdoctoral research fellow at Zhejiang University. His research interests includes comparative philosophy of religion, metaphysics (particularly the concepts of time and eternity), classical Christian theology, 20th century German Christian theology, pre-Qin Daoist philosophy, and narratology.
This lecture challenges the commonly held claim that pre-Qin Daoist and classical Christian metaphysics are fundamentally contradictory by examining the area where this perceived contrast is supposedly most prominent—the nature of time. The lecture observes that both traditions’ understandings of time are underpinned by statements about how a posited “ultimate origin” relates to it. It then demonstrates that, as it pertains to this relation between the ultimate origin and time, the two traditions in fact show significant commonalities that have largely remained unexplored. The lecture concludes by reframing the relationship between pre-Qin Daoist and classical Christian understandings of reality, offering a more nuanced assessment of the underlying conceptual divergences that make European and Chinese metaphysics distinctive.
Prof Alexander Garton-Eisenacher
