Paul Napier

Paul Napier is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Born in Canada and raised in Scotland, he studied Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Glasgow before leaving Britain to live and work in various countries across Europe and Asia. Eventually he found himself in Shanghai, where he embarked on a period of intensive self-study of Chinese language, literature and history. In 2019 he was awarded a Chinese government scholarship and in 2022 he completed a master’s in philosophy at Shanghai Jiaotong University, specializing in classical Chinese philosophy.

His research at Oxford examines the historical ontology of Kang Youwei (1858-1927), a heterodox late-Qing Confucian scholar. Recognised today for his role in a failed 1898 attempt to overthrow Empress Dowager Cixi and initiate sweeping institutional reforms, Kang was also a bold and complex thinker whose ideas developed though creative engagement with indigenous Chinese tradition. Specifically, he drew on Gongyang hermeneutical schools purporting to decode esoteric philosophical principles hidden in classical Confucian texts. By adopting Gongyang’s historical ontology – the “Three Ages” – as its theoretical fulcrum, Paul’s research will interrogate the internal logic of Kang’s inconsistencies, arguing that he was necessarily inconsistent, given his intellectual heritage and the historical pressures he faced. Kang is a key figure in the formation of modern Chinese nationalism. Accordingly, a deeper understanding of his ideas can produce insights pertinent to contemporary philosophical debates on modernity and nationalism, more broadly considered.