Waldemar Brys studied Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin (B.A.), the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (M.A.), and Fudan University (M.Phil.). He completed his Ph.D. at the University of New South Wales, funded by the highly competitive Scientia PhD Scholarship.

Brys’s research focuses on early Chinese Philosophy, with a particular emphasis on pre-Qin Confucianism. His research is informed by the guiding idea that an engagement between early Confucianism and contemporary analytic philosophy can be mutually enriching. To this end, he has published on Confucian ethics and epistemology in leading generalist philosophy journals, such as the European Journal of Philosophy, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, and Inquiry.

He is currently writing a monograph on the concept of knowledge-to in classical Confucianism (under contract with Cambridge University Press), supported by a Research Fellowship from the University of Notre Dame Australia.

Research Interests

Confucianism, Normative Ethics (esp. Virtue Ethics), Epistemology

Representative Publications

Books

Brys, W. Knowing-to in Classical Confucianism. Cambridge University Press. (Under contract)

Brys, W. Early Confucian Ethics. Cambridge University Press. (Under contract)

Journal articles

Brys, W. (2025a). “Action-based Benevolence.” European Journal of Philosophy 33 (3): 1154-1169. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13058

Brys, W. (2025b). “The Difference Between Ren and Yi: Mengzi’s Anti-Guodianism at 6A4-5.” Sophia 64: 345-360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00926-z

Brys, W. (2024). “Mengzian Knowledge Practicalism.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (Early View). https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2024.2407033

Brys, W. (2023a). “Virtuous Actions in the Mengzi.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (1): 2-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2101431

Brys, W. (2023b). “Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (3): 511-528. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12429

Brunozzi, P. and Brys, W. (2023c). “Target-Centred Virtue Ethics: Aristotelian or Confucian?” Inquiry (Early View). https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2023.2220125

Book chapters (peer-reviewed)

Brys, W. (Forthcoming). “Mengzi on Knowledge and Epistemic Virtue.” In The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd ed., edited by Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup, and Kurt Sylvan. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

Brys, W. (2025). “Knowing-to in Wang Yangming.” In Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Justin Tiwald, pp. 415-431. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199945498.013.0031

Brys, W. (2024). “Zhuangzi’s “Difference Stories” and Patient Moral Relativism.” In Ethics in the Zhuangzi: Dialogues on the State of the Field, edited by Huang Yong and Hu Xiangnong, pp. 65-76. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69804-0_4

Brys, W. (2023). “Epistemology in the Mencius.” In Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, edited by Yang Xiao and Kim-chong Chong, pp. 491-514. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27620-0_25

Brys, W. (2022). “The Epistemology of Mengzian Extension.” In Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy, edited by Karyn L. Lai, 43-62. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79349-4_3