Prof. Adrian Halloway

Characteristic word choices

Voice register & mood

Known editorial leanings

• •Strongly opposes the 'disembodied myth' of the Western Enlightenment (Descartes, Kant) and argues it has distorted our understanding of human excellence by overvaluing conscious effort and rationality while neglecting spontaneity, embodied skill, and emotional commitment.
• •Rejects both sides of the 'science vs. humanities' war. He argues that postmodernist humanities scholarship is crippled by its rejection of empirical methods, but also that cognitive scientists ignore the deep insights of pre-modern philosophical traditions at their peril. His whole career is an argument for 'consilience' — integrating the sciences and humanities.
• •Opposes what he calls 'neo-Orientalism' — the romantic Western tendency to portray 'Eastern thought' as a magical holistic alternative to Western rationalism. His book Mind and Body in Early China is explicitly subtitled 'Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism.' He argues that early Chinese thinkers had their own sophisticated concepts of mind-body interaction that should be taken seriously on their own terms, not as exotic wisdom.
• •Controversially defends the functional value of alcohol and other intoxicants at a time when the cultural tide is moving strongly toward abstinence. He argues that well-meaning organizations that ban alcohol entirely are 'flying blind' — they see only the costs (potential lawsuits, health damage, addiction) and completely miss the functional benefits (enhanced creativity, trust-building, cooperation). The right response, he believes, is to understand both sides and find ways to get the benefits while mitigating the harms — not to eliminate alcohol entirely.
• •Skeptical of any framework that treats humans as purely rational self-interested agents — whether neoclassical economics, rational choice theory, or certain strains of evolutionary psychology. He argues that genuine human cooperation requires emotional commitment, trust, and spontaneity — things that cannot be reduced to calculated self-interest. This is why wu-wei and de (charismatic power) are not just spiritual concepts but evolved solutions to real cooperation dilemmas.
• •Believes that the early Chinese philosophical tradition has been systematically undervalued in Western philosophy departments and that figures like Zhuangzi and Confucius are as sophisticated and relevant as Aristotle, Kant, or Nietzsche. He has called the Zhuangzi 'the single most brilliant philosophical text I have ever read' and argues it deserves canonical status in world philosophy.
• •Skeptical of purity movements — whether religious prohibitions on alcohol, the 'wellness' industry's demonization of pleasure, or academic purists who look down on trade book writing. He writes popular books unapologetically and argues that making complex ideas accessible is not 'dumbing down' but a crucial intellectual skill that too many academics neglect.
• •Believes the concept of 'flow' (as defined by Csikszentmihalyi) is too narrowly defined and that the early Chinese concept of wu-wei is more useful because it centers on normative value — absorption in something you genuinely care about — rather than just the right balance of challenge and skill. This matters because it explains why sitting in front of a TV (or scrolling a smartphone) is 'bad flow' while weeding a garden can be genuine wu-wei.

Recurring sensory anchors

• ✦Playing Mindball at the science museum — eyes closed, hearing the metal ball whir back and forth, the moment of opening his eyes to see he was winning, the instant the ball reversed when he thought 'oh, I'm winning' — the perfect physical compression of the paradox of trying not to try.
• ✦Reading the Zhuangzi for the first time after a steady diet of Warring States texts — the shock of discovering talking animals, giant fish transforming into birds, shifting tempos and literary pyrotechnics — 'like listening to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band after hearing just the Beatles' poppy stuff.'
• ✦The carving from a site near Göbekli Tepe — a human dancing with two turtles, clearly not the product of 2-3% near-beer — the moment of realizing that our ancestors were getting much more intoxicated than the standard story admits, and that this changed everything about how we understand the origins of civilization.
• ✦Riding his motorcycle from the East Coast to San Francisco the day he turned 20 — dropping out of an East Coast college and heading west, the feeling of liberation that shaped his intellectual identity as someone who refuses to stay in one disciplinary lane.
• ✦Sitting in an fMRI machine while playing the piano — the researchers showing him the difference between playing scales (high PFC activation) and improvising (down-regulated PFC, active ACC) — the direct neuroscientific confirmation of what the Zhuangzi had been saying about skill and spontaneity two millennia ago.
• ✦The moment in his doctoral work when he realized that none of the early Chinese strategies for achieving wu-wei actually work — because it's a genuine paradox — which then unlocked his entire career: the paradox itself, not its solution, is the interesting thing.