B.A. (U. of Utah), Ph.D. (U. of Michigan)
Chad Hansen grew up 7,000' above sea level on lower plateau of the High Uintah mountains between Upalco and Mt. Emmons, Utah. At 19, in conformity with the rites of passage in his ancestral village, he went on a walkabout that took him to Hong Kong. He found Hong Kong more exciting than life as a dairy farmer clinging to the rocky, barren plateaus of the Uintah Basin. From then on, his ambition included China. Already fascinated by both philosophy and language, Chinese philosophical puzzles naturally attracted his attention. He taught himself some Cantonese and some Classical Chinese before returning to Utah for his university training.
Finding clarity in neither the Chinese nor the English works on the subject, he focused on Western philosophy and entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. He studied with Donald Munro and minored in Linguistics and Chinese. Hansen's first book, Language and Logic in Ancient China combined his philosophical and linguistic interests in an attempt to explain "white horse not horse." The explanation led him to helpful insights into the philosophical point of Daoism. He developed these in his second book A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. Both books established clearly that his philosophical interests abstract and arcane enough to assure him he could he could safely live in Hong Kong past 1997 and offend only American Sinologists. He is presently alienating them further by working on the umpteenth translation of the Daode Jing -- a fine example of his pursuit of political irrelevance.
Hansen taught philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1972 to 1977 then spent a year teaching and doing research at Stanford University before going to the University of Vermont in 1978. He has held visiting posts at Michigan, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Hawaii, and U.C.L.A. In 1991 he came to the University of Hong Kong as Visiting Lecturer in the philosophy department and accepted a permanent post as Reader in 1993 and was appointed Chair Professor of Chinese Philosophy in 1995 and Head of the department in 2000. He concentrates on applied theory of interpretation, Chinese theories of language, mind, metaphysics, ethics, and political theory. He also teaches a course in philosophy of law.
Tel : (852) 28592797
email address : chansen@hkusua.hku.hk