Jay Goulding’s Daoist Phenomenology, A Vertical Reading
Friday, 13 March 2026 | 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. | Room 280A, Second Floor, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University
Jay Goulding’s Daoist Phenomenology: A Vertical Reading (Bloomsbury 2025) is a lifelong project of interpolating the works of hermeneutic phenomenologist Martin Heidegger with the interweaving of Daoism and Zen. Vertical Reading is a hermeneutic strategy that captures the depth of connection between phenomenology and Daoism, especially Heidegger and classical Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi. A page of writing is not spatial but temporal, unfolding time as you sink down into its etymology, incorporating you into different levels of its realm as you appear and disappear into and throughout the text. As an archaeology of thinking, Vertical Reading is a treasure hunt that starts with a hermeneutic dive into the text. What strange new worlds you find along the way is a phenomenology of context. This method reveals Daoist implications of Dōgen’s Zen and draws on writing and ideas from popular culture including Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, George Lucas’ Star Wars universe and martial artist Bruce Lee. Provocative and wide-ranging, this approach to phenomenology and Daoism promotes intercultural dialogues between two great traditions in world philosophies.
Dr. Jay Goulding is recognized by Journal of Chinese Philosophy as a distinguished scholar in Chinese philosophy, comparative thought, and hermeneutics. This year, he penned a commemorative article for JCP that recalls personal encounters with Cheng Chung-ying (1935–2024), a pioneer of Chinese and comparative philosophy. Goulding contributed a monograph length chapter entitled “Heidegger’s Daoist Phenomenology” for the first book dedicated solely to Daoism and Heidegger, Daoist Resonances in Heidegger: Exploring a Forgotten Debt, edited by David Chai (Bloomsbury 2022). For the series Daoism and the Human Experience, his book Daoist Phenomenology, A Vertical Reading (Bloomsbury 2025) uncovers intersections of Heidegger, Friedrich Schelling, Dao and Zen.
Christopher Satoor is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University. His research on German idealism and Jena Romanticism concentrates on F. W. J. Schelling. Having published many articles and book chapters, he has created a digital archive on Classical German Philosophy and Post-Kantian Thought called The Young Idealists that engages discussions with scholars on the lives and philosophies of each thinker. In 2020, he won the Japan Studies Association Pringsheim award for the best student paper “Japanese Schelling: Nishitani Keiji” that was published by JSAC. Satoor is President and co-founder of the Idealist Society of North America (ISNA).
Dr. Livy Visano is former Dean of Atkinson College and currently Undergraduate Program Director in the Department of Equity Studies at York University. As a member of several Graduate Faculties and the recipient of many internationally acclaimed scholarly awards and teaching awards, he is the author of dozens of books, book chapters and articles over a four-decade span; his expertise includes crime and culture, and health and education, alongside a keen interest in hermeneutics and its methodologies.
Trung Ngo is a doctoral candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University. He holds an MA in Philosophy, MBA and B. Mech Eng. His dissertation focuses on phenomenology and hermeneutics of early Indian Buddhism. Fluent in English, French and Vietnamese, he is also studying Sanskrit. For the 2022 Japan Studies Association of Canada Annual Conference at The Ted Rogers School of Management and Toronto Metropolitan University, he presented “Lost in Translation: A Brief Historical and Philosophical Interpretation of the Tale of Kiều,” a paper submitted for upcoming publication by JSAC.
This event is presented by the York Centre for Asian Research and the Department of Equity Studies at York University.
