Abstract:
Theories of ritual that developed in classical China are among the most complex in world philosophy.  This paper will explore these theories in relationship to theories of ritual that have developed recent Western thought.  I will argue that the theories from classical China have much to offer contemporary discussions.

About the speaker: Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.  He is the author of The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity.