China Archives • Richard Carrier Blogs

Some Ancient Chinese Philosophy on Why We Ought to Be Moral

12 June 2022

When looking for “the objectively correct” answer to the question of why we should be moral, we also should look to what the ancient Chinese had to say on the matter. Not because it is any more likely to be correct than Western answers; but because ancient...

Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference?

30 November 2021

It’s often asked, why did the Scientific Revolution occur only in Europe and not China? By which I shall here mean what I explain in my book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire as the normalization of effective scientific methods across (at least literate)...

Heroic Values in Classical Literary Depictions of the Soul: Greece, Rome, China

6 September 2013

Something unusual for today. Rummaging through my old papers it returned to my attention that I had never published my senior thesis. So I have put it on my website and am making it available: Richard Carrier, “Heroic Values in Classical Literary Depictions of...

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About the Author

Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.