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Tao Jiang’s primary research interest is Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy (Madhyamaka and Yogācāra), classical Chinese philosophy (Confucianism and Daoism) and cross-cultural philosophy. In his book, Contexts and Dialogue: Yogācāra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind (Hawaii, 2006), he proposes that a cross-cultural approach to ideas needs to contextualize those ideas first in their indigenous backgrounds and then to recontextualize them by bringing them into the new comparative setting. The contextualization and recontextualization should be carried out by examining their contents (what), rationales (why) and ways of formulation (how), both respectively and comparatively. In this respect, Contexts and Dialogue brings together three conceptions of the subliminal mind as the book moves through a series of contexts, from the context of seventh-century Yogācāra Buddhism to that of twentieth-century modern psychology and eventually to the unfolding contemporary context of increasing cross-cultural dialogical engagement. His comparative study has shown that the Yogācāra notion of ālayavijñāna (the storehouse consciousness) and the unconscious in modern psychology operate within vastly different paradigms with regard to personhood, shedding new light on the cultures that have produced them. He is the translator of A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, and is co-editor of an anthology, The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China: China’s Freudian Slip (Routledge, 2013), with Philip J. Ivanhoe.

Jiang's new book, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. He is working on another book manuscript on Linji's Chan/Zen philosophy.

Jiang is an associate graduate faculty member of Philosophy Department. He is co-directing the Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) with Dean Zimmerman of Philosophy Department and Stephen Angle of Wesleyan University. He co-chairs Buddhist Philosophy Unit under the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and is a co-chair of the Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar at Columbia University. He is serving on several editorial boards of Asian philosophy journals.

• “Ambivalence of Family and Disunity of Virtues in Mencius’ Political Philosophy,” in Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 33, 2020
• “Oneness and its Discontent: Contesting Ren in Classical Chinese Philosophy,” in The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self, edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe, et. al., Columbia University Press, 2018
• “Character Is the Way: The Path to Spiritual Freedom in the Linji Lu,” in Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy, edited by Youru Wang and Sandra Wawrytko, Springer, 2018
• “The Problem of Authorship and the Project of Chinese Philosophy: ZHUANG Zhou and the Zhuangzi between Sinology and Philosophy in Western Academy,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 15.1. 2016.
• "Incommensurability of Two Conceptions of Reality: Dependent Origination and Emptiness in Nagarjuna's MMK,"Philosophy East & West 64.1 (January 2014).
• "Xuanzang and Freud:  A Buddhist-Freudian Engagement on the Subliminal Mind," in The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China: China's Freudian Slip, edited by Tao Jiang and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Routledge, 2013.  This is an expanded version of "the Storehouse Consciousness and the Unconscious: A Comparative Study of Xuanzang and Freud on the Subliminal Mind," published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72:1.
• "Isaiah Berlin's Challenge to the Zhuangzian Freedom," Journal of Chinese Philosophy (2012, supplementary issue).
•  "Two Notions of Freedom in Classical Chinese Thought: The Concept of Hua in the Zhuangzi and the Xunzi," Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy X.4 (December 2011).
• "Linji and William James on Mortality: Two Versions of Pragmatism," in Mortality in Traditional China, edited by Amy Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe, State University of New York Press, 2011.
• "Augustine and Aquinas on the Will" (in Chinese), in Frontiers of Western Philosophy, edited by Jiyuan Yu. Beijing, China: Renmin University Press, 2008.
• "The Dilemma of Skillful Means in Buddhist Pedagogy:  Desire and Education in the Lotus Sutra," in Education and Their Purposes:  A Philosophical Dialogue among Cultures, edited by Roger Ames and Peter Hershock, University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
• "Intimate Authority: The Rule of Ritual in Classical Confucian Political Discourse," Chapter Two in Confucian Cultures of Authority in Practice: China, edited by Roger Ames and Peter Hershock, State University of New York Press, 2006.
• "The Problematic of Continuity: Nishida Kitaro and Aristotle," Philosophy East & West 55:3 (July 2005).

• Book Review Editor, Journal of Buddhist Philosophy (SUNY).
• Member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Chinese Philosophy
• Member of the Editorial Board, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy
• Member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture
• Co-chair, Buddhist Philosophy Unit, a program unit under the American Academy of Religion, 2018-present.
• Program Committee member, American Academy of Religion, 2016-2020
• Co-chair, Neo-Confucian Studies Seminar at Columbia University, 2010-present.
• Co-director, Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy, 2012-present
• Best First Book Award Jury, American Academy of Religion, 2013-2016

• American Academy of Religion (AAR)
• American Philosophical Association (APA)
• Association for Asian Studies (AAS)