I am, redundantly, a PhD student of Philosophy in the New School of Social Research in New York City, supervised by Alice Crary, Cinzia Arruzza, and two other undeclared but perhaps unfortunate souls in our ominous and queer city.

I grew up in Guiyang, Guizhou, China, until I was about 15, when I moved to Shenandoah County in Virginia for high school, Massanutten Military Academy. Though only one had home, both had beautiful woods and mountains to breath with and get lost in.

Graduating from Woodstock, VA, I entered St. John’s College in the fall of 2015 to pursue philosophy after a life long interest and belief that I’d be working in either pure math or theoretical physics. A tutorial class reading the Republic with Alex, my U.S. Government teacher then, changed my life. (I know. How very original.) At St. John’s, I studied the much fabled, triumphant, and world-sundering western canon from Homer to about the time of Wittgenstein and de Beauvoir, whom I highlight to give the illusion, but technical truth, that we read more than dead white men.

Brendan, who became my dear mentor and friend through a tutorial on the Theaetetus and the Sophist, helped advise my undergraduate thesis on Plato, Wittgenstein, and de Beauvoir, the jest of which is the necessity of a relational ontology of language, meaning, and hence the ontological propensity of a non-hierarchical and non-dominating social, political world.

I entered NSSR in the fall of 2019 to pursue a similar line of thinking about relational ontology and its politics. In addition to Plato, Wittgenstein, de Beauvoir, and now a host of others, I’ve been reintroduced to Hegel, a naturalist and non-metaphysical one this time, who I imagine and hope would also have a place in my larger project once it takes more concrete shape. My central claim involves try to convince you that Plato was not a Platonist; instead, he is Wittgensteinian, and politically more interesting and critical.

I currently live in Brooklyn with my nesting partner and 4 rescue cats. You can reach me at weiouqing.chen@newschool.edu