Tong Shijun

Tong spent the first six years of his life in a village of Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province before moving to Shanghai, where he went to elementary and middle school.[3] In 1975, Tong was dispatched to work on a farm on Chongming Island.[2] When the Chinese National College Entrance Examination resumed in late 1977 following the Cultural Revolution, Tong gained entry to ECNU to study philosophy.[2]

He received both his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from ECNU in 1982 and 1984 respectively.[2] In 1988, Tong traveled to the University of Bergen in Norway as a visiting scholar.[4] He ultimately earned a PhD in philosophy from the university in 1994,[2] studying under Norwegian philosopher Gunnar Skirbekk.[4]

Tong began teaching in ECNU’s Philosophy Department as a lecturer in 1984, becoming associate professor in 1991 and full professor in 1994.[5] After graduating from the University of Bergen, Tong served as the chair of the philosophy department at ECNU from 1995 to 1998[3] and was appointed deputy dean of the School of Humanities from 1997 to 2000.[3] In 2000, Tong spent a year at Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar.[3]

Tong joined the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) in 2004 as a researcher and as deputy party secretary, becoming the director of the academy’s Institute of Philosophy from 2009 to 2011.[3] In 2011, Tong returned to ECNU as professor of philosophy and secretary of the university’s Communist Party Standing Committee[3]

Tong is the author of 10 original books on philosophy,[5] including his most recent work, 当代中国的精神挑战 [Spiritual Challenges in China Today] (2017).[6] Tong’s scholarship focuses primarily on philosophic paths for dialogue between China and the West and philosophy’s application to contemporary society.[5][4] Much of Tong’s work relates to the concept of communicative rationality introduced by Jurgen Habermas,[7] whose 1992 work Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy was translated into Chinese by Tong.[8] Tong is also the author (with Li Guangcheng) of the Chinese translation of Hilary Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History.[9]

Tong continues to serve as director of ECNU’s National Institutes of Educational Policy Research.[10] He is a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters[11] and member of the board of consulting editors for the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism.[12] He has also served as an advisory member of the Shanghai Ministry of Education and of the Shanghai Municipal Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).[5]