Robert Allinson

Robert Allinson, PhD

Faculty - Full-Time
Generic Portrait Outline
Professor of Philosophy
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Professor Allinson has published more than 200 single-author academic papers. As of 2000 (the last year calculated), he had more than 40 citations to his works in the Philosopher’s Index in addition to more than 400 citations to his work in refereed books and refereed journal articles to date.

He is editor or referee for nine international journals including the Journal for Chinese PhilosophyAsian PhilosophyPhilosophy East & WestBusiness Ethics Quarterly, Journal for Business Ethics, International Journal for Management and Decision Making, Business Ethics Yearbook, and Philosophical Inquiry. Fellow Editorial Board Members of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy include Tu Wei Ming, Karl Apel, Donald Munroe, Alasdair Maclntyre and Herbert Fingarette.  His work has been published in the Encyclopaedia of Chinese Philosophy and such journals as PhilosophyEast & WestPhilosophical Inquiry, Journal of Chinese PhilosophyMonumenta SericaRevue Internationale de PhilosophieRevue Indépendante de PhilosophieJournal of ReligionZen Buddhism TodayThe Eastern BuddhistDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (in the December, 2003 edition with Richard Rorty), The Journal of Fudan University (in Chinese translation), History and TheoryChinese Academy of Social SciencesThe Institute of World History, Beijing, China, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Journal of Business Ethics. He has published seven articles in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy alone including one for the Special Double IssueThirtieth Anniversary EditionChinese Philosophy as Knowledge and Value: 30 Years (1973-2003) and Beyond, December 2003. His philosophic poetry has been awarded an Academy of American Poet’s Award (Octavio Paz, Nobel Laureate, judge) and has been published in the same international edition with poems by Nobel Prizewinners, Odysseus Elytis, and Boris Pasternak. 

In 2004, Business Ethics Quarterly, on which he serves as editor, received the Golden Page Award (chosen from 400 journals together with the Harvard Business Review, for editorial excellence and the quality of refereeing).

His books have been reviewed in publications as wide-ranging as The Far Eastern Economic Review to The Journal of Chinese PhilosophyIyyan, the Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, and Philosophy published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy at Cambridge University. His Understanding the Chinese Mind has been acclaimed in a review in Philosophy, East & West, by David Wong of Duke University as making “a substantial contribution to the field” and by the late Ninian Smart, formerly president of American Academy of Religion, in a rare second review in Philosophy, East & West, “as an important book.” His Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation has been termed by Mark Elvin, formerly of Oxford University, as “an exceptional achievement.” In a 2005 review of his A Metaphysics for the Future, by the well-known philosopher Robert Neville of Boston University it is stated that “Allinson has written a brilliant defense of a rigorous phenomenological approach to metaphysics … The reference circle for Allinson’s argument is classical Western philosophy of the ancient and modern periods. The footnotes are a wonderful source of continuing commentary on contemporary problems of reading the history of Western philosophy … No one has made the case for phenomenological certainty as well as Allinson.”

He has been invited to be the keynote speaker for the plenary session of the first conference of the European Society for Asian Philosophy, held at the University of Nottingham, U.K. He has been invited by Tang Yi-jie to lecture at the International Academy of Chinese Culture in Beijing and for the graduate students in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at Peking University.

He was an official Exchange Professor from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to the Department of Philosophy at Fudan University. He was official Exchange Visiting Scholar at Soka University of Japan. He was invited to deliver a seminar for the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China. He was Visiting Professor to Waseda University in Tokyo. He has been invited twice to take part in seminars at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Italy (1998, 2002) and contributed a chapter to Intercultural Phenomenology, Munich, Germany: ludicium Press, 1998.

In 2002 he was invited to present a paper in the European Parliament for the European Ethics Summit. In 2003, he was selected by the United Nations to represent Asia as part of a small group of international experts to conduct a symposium on responsibility in world business in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2004, his chapter on Hong Kong, China was published in the book, Responsibility in World Business published by the United Nations University. In 2004 he was invited to address the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Shanghai and to offer a paper with Richard Rorty at a special meeting of the International Society for the study of Chinese and Western philosophy.

He has been a co-participant in a workshop with Hilary Putnam, Alisdair Maclntyre, Richard Rorty, and Karl-Otto Apel He has been invited to be Visiting Fellow or Senior Associate Member at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Balliol College, University of Oxford, Holywell Manor, the Graduate School of the University of Oxford, personally invited by Joseph Needham to the Needham Research Institute of Cambridge University and by John Smith to the Graduate School of the Department of Philosophy, Yale University. In 2002, he was invited to be co-consultant with Richard Rorty of Stanford University and the late, distinguished Donald Davidson of the University of California at Berkeley to the International Society for Comparative Philosophy (USA).

His Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation has been cited in the 2005 Encyclopedia Britannica as one of two leading reference sources for the study of Chuang-Tzu. In 2004 Professor Allinson was invited to nominate candidates for the Kyoto Prize in the Humanities. Professor Allinson was invited to nominate candidates for the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in the field of Ethics and Thought (former awardees have included Noam Chomsky, Sir Karl Popper, William Van Orman Quine, and Paul Ricoeur).

In 2005 Professor Allinson was invited to become a member of the American Biographical Institute’s distinguished Research Board of Advisors (the Institute publishes such volumes as 500 Leaders of InfluenceLeading Intellectuals of the WorldGreat Minds of the 21st Century).

  • PhD, Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin with Highest Distinction in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Doctoral Advisor, Charles Hartshorne, "The Leading Metaphysician of the Twentieth Century," Encyclopedia Britannica 
  • MA, Literature, University of Texas at Austin 
  • BA, Philosophy and Literature, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale with Great Distinction, Honors Program
  • Advanced Topics in Philosophy 
  • Philosophy East and West
  • Ethical Frameworks
  • Original Philosophy 
  • Eastern and Western Integrative Philosophy
  • Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. Mao Zedong’s Philosophical Influences and Reflections. Single author monograph, pp. 256, Bloomsbury Press: London, New York and Sydney, 2019.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. Space, Time and the Ethical Foundations. Single author monograph, pp. 215, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, London and New York, 2019.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. A Metaphysics for the Future. Single author monograph, pp.288. Routledge Revivals, Routledge, Taylor & Francis: London and New York, 2017.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. “An Aesthetic Theory in Four Dimensions: Collingwood and Beyond.” In Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, Vol. 8, edited by Fabian Dorsch and Dan-Eugen Ratiu, 24-37. Fribourg: The European Society for Aesthetics, 2016.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. “Leibniz, Infinity and the Nature of the Divine.” In Four Decades after Michael Polanyi, Three Centuries after G.W. Leibniz, edited by Charles Tandy, 43-56. Vol. 14 of Death and Anti-Death. Ann Arbor: Ria University Press, 2016.
  • Allinson, Robert E. “An Aristotelian Renaissance: Aristotelian Ethics for Today.” In Greek Philosophy and Moral and Political Issues, edited by Maria Adam and Maria Veneti, 9-25. Athens: Ionia Publications, 2015.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. “The Unity of Heaven and Earth in the Zhuangzi,” Chinese Culture and Human-Nature Relations, Society for the Study of Religious Philosophy, Taiwan, Republic of China, 2015, pp. 373-392.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. “How Metaphor Functions in the Zhuangzi: The Case of the Unlikely Messenger,” ed. Livia Kohn, New Visions of the Zhuangzi, Three Pines Press, pp. 102-124, 2015.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott. “The Relationship Between Intelligibility and Truth in Basic Arithmetic Propositions.” Analele Universităţiidin Craiova Seria: Filosofie, 39, no.1 (2017): 67-75.
  • Allinson, Robert E. "Nachman Krochmal and the Argument from Design." Judaica Petropolitana, no. 7 (2017): 19-33.
  • Allinson, Robert E. “Nachman Krochmal and the Argument from Design.” Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia 15, (2017): 127–39.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott, “Mao’s Contributions to Marxism and Dialectical Materialism,” Dialogue & Universalism, 3, (2018): 203-233.
  • Allinson, Robert. “The Ethical Relevance of Risk Assessment and Risk Heeding: the Space Shuttle Challenger Launch Decision as an Object Lesson.” Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, no. 7 (2016): 93-120.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott, “Searle's Master Insight and the Non-Dual solution of the Sixth Patriarch: Sorting Through Some Problems of Consciousness,” Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches Toward World Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 1, January, (2017): pp. 82-93.
  • Allinson, Robert Elliott, “Integrative Dialogue as a Path to Universalism: The Case of Buber and Zhuangzi,” First Prize, Jacobsen Research Paper Dialogue and Universalism, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, (2016), pp. 87-104.
  • Allinson, Robert. “The Ethical Relevance of Risk Assessment and Risk Heeding: the Space Shuttle Challenger Launch Decision as an Object Lesson.” Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, no. 7 (2016): 93-120.
  • Allinson, Robert E. “Zhuangzi and Buber in Dialogue: A Lesson in Practicing Integrative Philosophy.” Dao 15, no. 4 (December 2016): 547–62.
  • Williams, James D., and Robert E. Allinson. “Key Pedagogic Thinkers: Jean Baudrillard.” Journal of Pedagogic Development 6, no. 2 (2016).
  • Allinson, Robert. “Intercultural Dialogue: The Chinese Classic, The Yijing, (The Book of Changes), Replies to Huntington’s View of Irreconcilable Cultural Differences,” Dialogue and Universalism, Values and Ideals: Theory and Praxis, Institute of Philosophy, of the Polish Academy of Sciences (July 2016) pp. 12-13.
  • Allinson, Robert E. “Of Fish, Butterflies and Birds: Relativism and Nonrelative Valuation in the Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 25, no. 3 (July 2015): 238–52.
  • Allinson, Robert E. “How to Say What Cannot Be Said: Metaphor in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41, no. 3–4 (2014): 268–86.

Additional Scholarly Works

  • Saving Human Lives, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005
  • Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation, Jiangsu People's Press, Chinese translation, 2004; Korean translation, 2004; CD-ROM, Boulder, 2000 
  • Understanding the Chinese Mind, Oxford University Press, 2000, Tenth Impression
  • Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation, State University of New York at Albany, 1996, Sixth Impression
  • Global Disasters, Prentice-Hall, 1994
  • Contemporary Perspectives, East and West, Chinese University Press, 1988
  • "Intercultural Hermeneutics," Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, 2003
  • "The General and the Master," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 2004
  • Public Lecture, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2004
  • Science and Prestige Lecture, University of Canterbury, 2001
  • 2004–Present, Professor of Philosophy, Soka University of America
  • 1977–2004, Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • 2001, Visiting Professor, Waseda University
  • 1998, Nordic Fellow, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen
  • 1988, Visiting Professor, Peking University
  • 1988, Visiting Professor, Fudan University
  • 1983, Visiting Scholar, Soka University of Japan
  • Nominator, Kyoto Prize for Humanities, in Ethics and Thought, 2004
  • Erskine Fellow, The University of Canterbury, 2001
  • Visiting Fellow, Yale University, The Graduate School of Arts and Science, Department of Philosophy, 1997
  • Visiting Fellow, Oxford University, 1991
  • Senior Associate Member, St. Antony's College, Oxford University, 1987
  • Associate Member, Balliol College, Oxford University, 1987
  • Academy of American Poet's Award,.Honorable Mention, Octavio Paz, Nobel laureate, Judge, 1979