Prof. Dr. Christoph Harbsmeier

Bild von Christoph Harbsmeier

Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung "Schicksal, Freiheit und Prognose. Bewältigungsstrategien in Ostasien und Europa"




Curriculum vitae

  • 1966-73: Robert Birley scholarship, read Chinese at Merton College, Oxford (M.A. 1973)
  • 1981 dr. phil. (Copenhagen): Aspects of Classical Chinese Syntax (published London 1981).
  • 1973-1976 Lecturer in Oriental Philosophy, University of Penang, Malaysia
  • 1980-1985 Senior lecturer in Chinese, University of Oslo
  • 1981 - 1986 President, Norwegian Oriental Society
  • 1986-91 Vice President, Norwegian Oriental Society
  • 1985- Professor of Chinese, University of Oslo.
  • 1985 - Collaborator responsible for the volume Language and Logic in Traditional China, in J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge 1953ff
  • 1985 (June to December): Research Fellow, Institute of East Asian Philosophies, National University of Singapore (with A.C. Graham, London)
  • 1986 March, Guest Lecturer, Hong Kong University
  • 1988, May 1 - May 31: Visiting professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
  • 1988: Research Prize for outstanding research in the humanities, Norwegian Research Council (2.5 million NOK towards research in East Asian Studies)
  • 1989 - Member, Norwegian Academy of Sciences
  • 1990, August, to June 1991: Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin.
  • 1990, November 28, Research Prize, (10 million lire) Centro Piemontese di Studi sul Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Torino ( main prize: Jacques Gernet)
  • 1989- External examiner in sinology, University of Copenhagen
  • 1990 - 1993 Chairman, Department of East European and Oriental Studies, University of Oslo
  • 1992 - Co-editor Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, Paris
  • 1993, May 1 - 31: Visiting Directeur d'?tudes, Ecole Franaise d'Extrme-Orient
  • 1993, Oct - 1994 Feb: Visiting Professor, University of Heidelberg.
  • 1993- 2004 Member of the Editorial Board T'oung Pao, Leiden
  • 1996, Feb. to June, Humanities Lecturer, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University
  • 1996- Advisory Professor, Fudan University, Shanghai
  • 1997- Advisory Professor, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai
    • 1997- Permanent Guest Professor, Dept of Chinese, Peking Unversity
  • 1998- Co-director, International Center for Research on Bamboo and Silk Documents (Director: Pang Pu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
  • 1998- Permanent Fellow, National Centre for Linguistic Research, Peking University
  • 1998- Member of the Editorial Board, "Studies in Historical Linguistics", Chengdu, Sichuan
  • 1999, August -2000, July: Group Leader, Chinese Philology, Centre for Advanced Study, Academy of Sciences, Oslo (participants including Qiu Xigui and Jiang Shaoyu (Peking Univ), A. Plaks (Princeton), Michael Puett (Harvard), David Keightley (Berkeley), Lothar von Falkenhausen (UCLA), Edward L. Shaughnessy (Univ of Chicago), Ken-ichi Takashima (UBC, Vancouver).
  • 2000- member, Advisory Council of the European Center for Digital Resources in Chinese Studies, Heidelberg
  • 2001 - Advisory Professor, Department of Chinese, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
  • 2001, January 8-14, visiting professor, Dept of Chinese, Leuven University, Belgium
  • 2001, January 15 - February 15, visiting professor, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris
  • 2001, March to July, Fellow, Centre for Advanced Study, Collegium Budapest
  • 2001 - Member of the Editorial Board of STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS, Peking University
  • 2001 May 25, Herlee Glessner Creel Memorial Lecturer, University of Chicago
  • 2001 May 22, Andrew Markus Memorial Lecturer, University of Washington, Seattle
  • 2001- member of the editorial board, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm
  • 2001 - Advisory Profoessor, Dept of Chinese, East China Normal University, Shanghai.
    • 2001 - member of the editorial board, Zhonggu jindai Hanyu yanjiu (Journal of Medieval and Premodern Chinese Linguistics), Zhejiang University.
  • 2001 September 7 - Oct 5, visiting professor, Dept of Chinese, Peking University
  • 2001 October 7 to December 31, visiting professor, Charles University, Prague
  • 2002, January 1 to March 29, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Merton College, Oxford
  • 2002, May/June, visiting professor, Charles University Prague.
  • 2002 - Permanent Guest Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
  • 2002 - member of the editorial board of the journal for classical Chinese studies, Changjiang Xueshu (Changjiang Scholarship), Wuhan University
  • 2002, August to December, visiting Professor of Philosophy, Dept of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
  • 2003, March 23-29: Visiting Professor, Catholic University, Leuven
  • 2003, April 4-29: Visiting Professor, Charles University, Prague
  • 2003, July-December, Directeur d'Etudes, CNRS, Paris
  • 2004, Jan-April, Visiting Professor, University of Michigan
  • 2004, May 26 29, visiting fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  • 2004, August to 2005, June, fellow and organiser of a research group on Chinese cognitive schemes at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS) in Uppsala.
  • 2005 Elector, Shaw Professorship of Chinese, Oxford University
  • 2005 Oslo University Research Prize (Universitetets Forskningspris)
  • 2008 Editor of the Series Conceptual History and Chinese Linguistics, Brill Publishers, Leiden, Netherlands
  • 2008 Nansen Award for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences
  • 2009 Jan-June: Visiting Professor in the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (succeeding Glen Dudbridge)
  • 2011 Adjunct Professor, Dept of Chinese, Xinjian University, Urumqi
  • 2011 April-May Visiting Fellow, Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study
  • 2011 May-June Peking University Humanities Lecturer for 2011 (5 lectures, succeeding the first Humanities Lecturer, in 2010, Stephen Owen, Harvard)
  • 2011 July 8-10 Invited Lecturer (20 hours of lecturing on Chinese linguistics) Oxford University
  • August 2014-June 2015 Vigeland Visiting Professor, University of Chicago



Selected Publications

Books, Books Edited, Articles

  • Wilhelm von Humboldts Brief an Abel-Rémusat und die philosophische Grammatik des Altchinesischen, (Grammatica Universalis vol. 17) Stuttgart 1979, (297 p.)
  • Aspects of Classical Chinese Syntax, London: Curzon Press, 1981 (303p.)
  • Language and Logic in Traditional China (= Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 7.3, Cambridge University Press, 1998 (480 p.)
  • Socialism with a Buddhist Face: The Cartoonist Feng Zikai, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1985. (Two Chinese translations of this have been published, one in 2001 and the other in 2004, second edition 2005)
    • Konfuzius und der RŠuber Zhi, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1978 (166p.).
  • "Eroticism in Early Chinese Poetry. Sundry Comparative Notes", in H. Schmidt-Glintzer, Das andere China. Festschrift fuer Wolfgang Bauer, Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1995, pp. 323-380.
  • "Current issues in Classical Chinese grammar", in Acta Orienatalia 41 (1980) p. 126-148
  • "Where do Classical Chinese nouns come from?" in Early China 9-10 (1983-1985, published 1987) p. 77-163.
  • "The classical Chinese modal particle yi", Proceedings on the Second International Conference on Sinology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, June 1989, pp. 471-503
  • "Some desultory speculations on non-restrictive modification of nouns and parentheses in Latin and pre-Han Chinese", in B. Arendrup et. al. ed., The Master Said: To Study and ... To S¿ren Egerod on the Occasion of His Sixty-Seventh Birthday, East Asian Institute, University of Copenhagen, ( = Occasional Papers no. 6) 1990, pp. 107 - 117
  • "Marginalia sino-logica" R. Allinson ed. in Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots (London: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp. 59 - 83.
  • "Marginalia sino-theologica", in Exegetisk Aarskrift (Uppsala), no. 1, 1988, pp. 26 - 42.
  • "La logique bouddhiste en Chine " in Sylvain Auroux ed., Les Notions Philosophiques, Paris: Presses Universitaires, Paris, 1990
  • "The grammatical particle fú in Classical Chinese" in From Classical fú to 'Three Inches High'. Studies on Chinese in Honor of Erik ZŸürcher Louvain and Apeldoorn: Garant Publishers, 1993, pp. 1-60.
  • "Conceptions of knowledge in ancient China", in H. Lenk and G. Paul, eds., Epistemological issues in classicl Chinese philosophy, New York: SUNY Press, 1993, pp. 11-31
  • "La connaissance du chinois" in Sylvain Auroux, ed., Histoire des id?es linguistiques, tome 2, Paris: Mardaga, 1992 (1993), pp. 299-312
  • "The grammatical particle fú in Classical Chinese" in From Classical fú to 'Three Inches High'. Studies on Chinese in Honor of Erik ZŸürcher Louvain and Apeldoorn: Garant Publishers, 1993, pp. 1-60.
  • "John Webb and the early history of the study of the classical Chinese language in the West", Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Sinology, Taipei April 17 - 22, 1992, London: Han Shan Tang, 1995, pp. 297-338
  • Co-editor responsible for China, Lexicon Grammaticorum, ed. H. Stammerjohann, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1996, XXVII,1047 pages
  • "Some notions of time and of history in China and in the West", in Chun-chieh Huang and E. ZüŸrcher eds., Time and Space in Chinese Culture, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995, pp. 49-72
  • "Authorial presence in some pre-Buddhist Chinese texts", in Viviane Alleton and Michael Lackner ed., De l'un au multiple: traduction du chinois vers les langues Européennes, Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1999, pp. 219 - 254
  • "Weeping and Wailing in Ancient China", in Minds and Mentalities in Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. H. Eifring, Peking: Culture and Art Publishing House, 1999. pp. 317 - 422 (Also published in Chinese)
  • "Xunzi and the problem of first person personal pronouns", EARLY CHINA 1997.2 pp. 181 - 220
  • C. Harbsmeier ed., Jiang Shaoyu, Peking University co-ed., Synonyma Serica Comparata, An Dictionary of Classical Chinese Synonyms and Antonyms Print-out of main results concerning 902 synonym groups, October 1999, 500 pages.
  • "Confucius Ridens: Humour in the Analects", in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (June 1990) pp. 131 - 161.
  • "Humour in ancient Chinese philosophy" in Philosophy East and West 39.3 (July 1989) pp. 289-310.
  • "H.C. Andersen in China", in Anderseniana 1978/9, p. 84 - 111.
  • "Chinese Rhetoric", T'oung Pao 85 (1999) pp. 114-127
  • "The Rhetoric of Premodern Prose Style", in V. Mair, ed., COLUMBIA HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE, Columbia University Press, 2001, pp. 881 - 908
  • "May Fourth Linguistic Orthodoxy and Rhetoric: Some Informal Comparative Notes", in Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz eds., New Terms for New Ideas. Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China, Leiden: Brill, 2001 pp. 373-410
  • "Some Deliberations on Abstraction in Classical Chinese", in Festschrift for Rudolf Wagner, Heidelberg: Sinologisches Seminar, 2001
  • Manhuajia Feng Zikai: juyou fojiao secai de shehuixianshizhuyi, tr. Chen Jun, Hangzhou: Xilingyinshe, 2001 (175 pp)
  • "The semantics of qíng" in H. Eifring, Emotions in Chinese culture, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 32-108
  • "The Axial Millennium in China" in Johann P. Arnason, S.N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock, eds., Axial Civilisations and World History, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 468-507 "Entelektüel Tarihe Elestirel Bir Bakis" Boskurt Güvenc, in Mesa ve Yasam, 2007 pp. 18-19
  • He Moye zhu (i.e. C. Harbsmeier), Zhang Bin yi, Feng Zikai - yige you Pusaxinchang de xianshizhuyizhe, Shandong Huabao Chubanshe, 2005 (257 pages)
  • "Globalisation and Conceptual Biodiversity", Quatre-vingt-uniéme session annuelle du Comité, Oslo, du 1er au 6 juin 2007, Compte Rendu, Secrétariat Admiminstratif de l'Union Académique Internationale Palais des Académies, Bruxelles, pp. 23-39
  • "Kürsselesme ve Kavramsal Biocesitlilk", in Türk Dili 10/2007, pp. 630-641
  • TRIBUTE TO THE CARTOONIST LIAO BINGXIONG (1915- Sept. 22, 2007) in Problemy vostocnoj literatury, vol. 3, St. Petersburg 2008 pp.
  • "The Philosophy of Post-nominal zhě","The Philosophy of post-nominal zhe," Pang Pu jiaoshou bashi shouchen jinian wenji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), pp. 301-308.
  • F. Bottéro and C. Harbsmeier, "Xu Shen and the History of the Human Sciences", in Asia Major (2008) vol. 21, part 1, pp. 249-271.
  • Clavis Syntactica. A Key to Some Basic Syntactic Categories in Classical Chinese (I). I: Han yu shi xue bao 漢語史學報. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Jiaoyu Chubanshe 浙江教育出版社 2010 ISBN 9787544431460. s. 35-56
  • Clavis Syntactica. A Key to Some Basic Syntactic Categories in Classical Chinese (II). Han yu shi xue bao 漢語史學報. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Jiaoyu Chubanshe 浙江教育出版社 2011 ISBN 9787544431460.
  • “On the Very Notions of Language and the Chinese Language”. Histoire Epistemologie Langage 2010 ;Volum 31.(2) s. 143-161
  • “Autochthonous Chinese Conceptual History in a Jocular Narrative Key: The Emotional Engagement Qing”. in: The Benefit of Broad Horizons.Intellectual and institutional preconditions for a global social science. Brill Academic Publishers 2010 ISBN 978-90-04-19284-3. s. 293-313
  • "The Conceptual Analysis of Forgiveness in a Comparative Perspective", forthcoming in Christel Fricke, ed., Forgiveness, London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 2011, pp. 13-30
  • "Towards a Conceptual History of Some Concepts of Nature in Classical Chinese", in. Hans Ulrich Vogel et al. eds., "Understanding Nature in China Europe until the Eighteenth Century - A Cross-Cultural Project", pp. 231-69 Brill Academic Publishers 2010, ISBN 978 9004 18526-5
  • “Glück im Taoismus und Konfuzianismus” in Glück. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Frankfurt: Metzler, 2011, p. 338ff
  • “Some Philosophical Notrd on the Guodian manuscript Yucong 1, in Proceedings of the International Conference of Pre-Han and Han Traditional Chinese Texts, Peking: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2011, pp. 30-73
  • “Vasilii Mikhailovich Alekseev and Russian Sinology”. T'oung pao (Print) 2011 ;Volum 97.(4-5) s. 344-370
  • “Reading the One Hundred Parables Sūtra: The Dialogue Preface and the Gāthā Postface”.in: Zen Rhetoric and Doctrine - Indian Origins and East Asian Developments. Brill Academic Publishers 2012
  • ”Plurality and Subclassification of Nouns in Classical Chinese” in Xu Dan, ed., Plurality and Classifiers in Languages Across China, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013, pp. 121-142
  • Concepts That Make Multiple Modernities: The Conceptual Modernisation of China in a Historical and Critical Perspective. I: Institute of Chinese Studies Visiting Professor Lecture Series (III). : Institute of Chinese Studies 2013 ISBN 978-962-633-504-8. s. 23-46
  • “Improper subjects: towards the philosophical grammar of existence predicates in classical Chinese”, in Hilary Chappell, Guangshun Cao, Redouane Djamouri and Thekla Wiebusch, Breaking down the bariers: interdispciplinary studies in Chiense linguistics and beyond, pp. 382-402 Festschrift Alain Peyraube, Taipei: Institute of Linguitics, Academia Sinica, October 2013
  • The Birth of Confucianism from Competition with Organized Mohism. Journal of Chinese Studies 2013 (56) s. 1-19
  • Zhao Qi he Hanyu kouyu de lishi (Zhao Qi and the History of Colloqual Chinese). I: Hanyu shumianyu de Lishi yu xian zhuang (Written Chinese. The Present and the Past). Peking University Press 2013 ISBN 978-7-301-22686-5. s. 117-125
  • “A Reading of the Guōdiàn Manuscript Yǔcóng1 as a Masterpiece of Early Chinese Analytic Philosophy and Conceptual Analysis”, Studies in Logic, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2011): 3–56
  • “Living up to contrasting portraiture: Plutarch on Alexander the Great and Sima Qian on the First Emperor of China”, in Hans van Ess, Olga Lomová, and Dorothee Schaab-Hanke, Viwes from Within, Views from Beyond: Approaches to the Shiji as an Early Work of Historiography, Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2015, pp.263-296
  • “The Philosophy of the Analytic Apperçu”, in J. Gentz and Dirk Meyer, eds., Literary Forms of Argument in Early China, Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 158-174
  • “Early Buddhist translators on translation”, in E. Aussant, ed., La traduction dans l’histoire des idées linguistiques, Paris: Geuthner, 2015 pp. 259-273
  • “Good fortune and bliss in early China”, in R. King, ed., The Good Life and Conceptions of Life in Early China and in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015, pp. pp. 145-157 R-King-ed-The-Good-Life-and-Conceptions-of-Life-in-Early-China-and-Graeco-Roman-Antiquity
  • B. Arendrup et al, eds. China in the 1980s - and Beyond, London: Curzon Press, 1986, pp. 30-77
  • "On the Nature of Early Confucian Classical Chinese Discourse on Ethical Norms", in Journal of Value Enquiry vol. 49, no.4, December 2015, pp. 517-541.
  • F. Bottéro and C. Harbsmeier, Chinese Lexicography on Matters of the Heart. An Exploratory Commentary on the Heart Radical in Shuo wen jie zi , Paris: EHESS/CRLAO, 2016
  • C. Harbsmeier, Irrefutable Conjectures. A Review of William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, Old Chinese. A New Reconstruction, Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies, 64. 2, 445-504, December 2016
  • C. Harbsmeier, Hans Christian Andersen in China, CompLit and World Literature, no.9, p.65-79, 2016.
  • F. Bottéro, C. Harbsmeier, 说文解字与中国传统人文科学, China, 2014.
    • Harbsmeier-The_Emotional_Engagement_Qing_2010.pdf
  • C. Harbsmeier, Autochthonous Chinese Conceptual History in a Jocular Narrative Key: The Emotional Engagement Qing, Festschrift for Björn Wittrock on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, p. 294-313, 2010.

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