Dr Waldemar Brys

Research Fellow in the History of Chinese Philosophy, Centre for the History of Philosophy
BA, MA, MPhil, PhD

Email: waldemar.brys@nd.edu.au

• Biography

  Waldemar Brys is Research Fellow in the History of Chinese Philosophy at the Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy, and Research Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

  He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of New South Wales, supported by a prestigious Scientia PhD Scholarship. He holds an MA in Philosophy from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, an MPhil in Chinese Philosophy from Fudan University, China, and a BA in History and Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin.

  Waldemar’s research focuses on early Chinese Philosophy, with a particular emphasis on pre-Qin Confucianism. His research is informed by the guiding idea that an engagement between early Confucianism and contemporary analytic philosophy can be mutually enriching. To this end, he has published on Confucian ethics and epistemology in leading generalist philosophy journals, such as European Journal of Philosophy, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, and Inquiry.

  He is currently writing a monograph on the concept of knowledge-to in classical Confucianism (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

• Research Expertise and Supervision

  • Early Chinese Philosophy (esp. Mencius and Xunzi)
  • Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism
  • Epistemology
  • Normative Ethics (esp. Virtue Ethics)

• Books

  • Knowing-to in Classical Confucianism. Cambridge University Press. (Under Contract)

• Book chapters

  • “Mengzi on Knowledge and Epistemic Virtue,” in The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd ed., ed. Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup, and Kurt Sylvan (Wiley Blackwell, forthcoming)
  • “Knowing-to in Wang Yangming,” in Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Justin Tiwald (Oxford University Press, 2025), 415–31
  • “Zhuangzi’s ‘Difference Stories’ and Patient Moral Relativism,” in Ethics in the Zhuangzi: Dialogues on the State of the Field, ed. Huang Yong and Hu Xiangnong (Springer, 2024), 65–76
  • “Epistemology in the Mencius,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, ed. Yang Xiao and Kim-chong Chong (Springer, 2023), 491–514
  • “The Epistemology of Mengzian Extension,” in Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy, ed. Karyn L. Lai (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 43–62

• Journal articles and proceedings

  • “Action-based Benevolence,” European Journal of Philosophy 33, no. 3 (2025): 1154–69, https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13058
  • “The Difference Between Ren and Yi: Mengzi’s Anti-Guodianism at 6A4-5,” Sophia 64 (2025): 345–60, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00926-z
  • “Mengzian Knowledge Practicalism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2024), https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2024.2407033
  • “Virtuous Actions in the Mengzi,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31, no. 1 (2023): 2–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2101431
  • “Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104, no. 3 (2023): 511–28, https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12429
  • “Target-Centred Virtue Ethics: Aristotelian or Confucian?” with Philippe Brunozzi, Inquiry 68, no. 10 (2023): 4061–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2023.2220125

• Book reviews

  • Review of Franklin Perkins, Doing What You Really Want: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mengzi. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31, no. 1 (2023): 137–40

• Awards

  • HDR Research Output Award, University of New South Wales, 2023
  • HDR Research Output Award, University of New South Wales, 2022
  • HDR Research Output Award, University of New South Wales, 2021
  • Scientia PhD Scholarship, University of New South Wales, 2019
  • Chinese Government Scholarship, 2016