Thomas D. Carroll

10 favorite bands/artists to get to know me.

A Tribe Called Quest
William Basinski
David Bowie
John Coltrane
The Cure
Bob Dylan
Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Joy Division
Sonic Youth
Tom Waits

HKFP Lens: Each day, shortly before the sun rises, observant devotees of Theravada Buddhism wait by the side of roads with freshly prepared sticky rice, called khao niew, amongst other things, to offer to monks. Photography by Ayesha Sitara.

In full: hongkongfp.com/2026/02/18/h...

Islamic China with Rian Thum

Islam has been part of China’s religious and cultural fabric for over a millennium, yet often it is seen as a foreign element. The author of a new study explains just how wrong that is.

Listen to the new episode of the podcast: chinabooksreview.com/2026/02/03/r...

This Nation’s Violence Is No Longer Private Once confined to prisons and wars, our worst human instincts are no longer hidden—they’re paraded on city streets.

Vincent Lloyd on the importance of acknowledging state violence as its visibility expands from the margins of U.S. public culture.
sojo.net/articles/opi...

YouTube video by Billy Bragg BILLY BRAGG - CITY OF HEROES

I wrote this yesterday about the hero city of Minneapolis

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOW...

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Photo of lanterns being hung around the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen

Getting ready for the year of the horse 🐴

Inside the effort to organize clergy nationwide to resist ICE (RNS)— Hundreds of clergy from around the country gathered in Minneapolis to learn from Minnesota faith leaders how to protest against ICE enforcement. Then they took to the streets and helped block t...

NEW: I was one of 3 reporters granted access to the convening of 600+ clergy in Minneapolis this week.

It was a striking show of solidarity with MN clergy resisting ICE, but heralded something else: the emergence of a vast, faith-based network trained to resist ICE. religionnews.com/2026/01/23/i...

Weekly Wrap Up - January 16, 2026 Watch now | Eddie reflects on the eve of the first-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s second term, a year marked by significant global and domestic upheaval. Eddie argues that the nation currently sta...

nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

YouTube video by Zhaoze Live｜沼澤《風雪未歸人》溫州大麓音樂節 / Zhaoze "In Snow Storm, Yet Not Back Home" Wenzhou Dalü Music Festival

Live｜Zhaoze "In Snow Storm, Yet Not Back Home" in Wenzhou Dalü

On the last night of 2025, in addition to the over-30-minute rendition of "Birds Contending," Zhaoze also performed their latest EP: "Wind Rising Before Storm Coming " + "In Snow Storm, Yet Not Back Home" .

youtu.be/SOBsq9nZ-ak

China Aims for “Quality” Overseas Students With Entry Exam Experts say the introduction of a compulsory test for all applicants seeking to take undergraduate courses shows the country’s shifting approach to internationalization.

"The exam will be compulsory for recipients of Chinese government scholarships starting this year and later phased in more widely, becoming mandatory for all international undergraduate applicants by 2028."

www.insidehighered.com/news/admissi...

this is all to say that should democrats win the house and senate this november, they should hold similarly dramatic — which is to say televised and highly publicized — hearings on the conduct of ICE and CBP, with testimony from victims. we want as much of *this* as possible in the record. (3/?)

Table of Contents for Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion (Wiley, 2026)

Table of Contents for Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion (Wiley, 2026)

Here's the table of contents --

Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion <p><b>Illuminates Wittgenstein&#8217;s religious epistemology&mdash;bridging faith, reason, and cultural understanding across disciplines</b> <p><i>Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion</i> o...

Looking forward to this new collection on Wittgenstein & Epistemology of Religion (edited by Duncan Pritchard & Nuno Venturinha) coming out next month.

It grew out of a couple of conferences held in Lisbon. Looking forward to reading the finished volume!

www.wiley.com/en-us/Wittge...

American shot dead by Ice agent remembered for ‘formative years’ in Northern Ireland Renée Nicole Good took part in Christian youth missions to Northern Ireland as a teenager

On Renee;
www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Tell your elected officials to do everything in their power to stand up to Trump and prevent war with Venezuela.

Email your Members of Congress: act.indivisible.org/sign/stop-tr...

Call your senators: indivisible.org/resource/cal...

And call your representative: indivisible.org/resource/cal...

Semiotic paradox alert!

Christmas tree on the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen

I'd be interested in hearing more about that. Have you written (or do you have plans to write) on Phillips?

I mention Phillips just a few times in the new book, but I engage with his work substantially in my other book, Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave 2014).

BTW, I'm particularly impressed by what P. F. Bloemendaal and Mikel Burley have written on Phillips.

The Biennale theme

The text in the corner of this painting reads: "There is a cake-cafe in Yong-Fu Road in the "French Concession of old Shanghai" renovated in minimalistic nordic interior design sells nerdy-hipster-coffee and cake. Their plates look like old Dutch ware in a touch of the Ming Dynasty."

Allora & Calzadilla, Penumbra and Phantom Forest

Still from a video installation. Here is the text from the didactic: Cheng Xinhao Born in 1985 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, where he lives and works. Musica Proibita, 2024 Single-channel video, color, sound 4:35 min. Re-steal, 2024 Mixed media Courtesy of the artist and Tabula Rasa Gallery There are lines of history, along which human and non-human agents travel. Around a century ago, European and US plant hunters came to Yunnan, and with the help of different intermediaries they brought back plants and photographs of local people. I try to bring these "specimens" back again, for example in Re-Steal, I did so by cutting a branch of a rhododendron tree in a botanical garden in Scotland. The very plant was brought there from Yunnan in 1913 by the famous plant hunter George Forrest. I also reenact past scenes, but with different objects and at a different time. For Musica Proibita I placed a gramophone before a rhododendron tree in southwestern China. It played a recording of the early 20th-century tenor Enrico Caruso singing a romantic salon melody. With this work, I make reference to the Austrian-American botanist and explorer Joseph Rock, who spent a quarter century in Yunnan from the 1920s to the 40s studying its Naxi people as well as botanical diversity in the Hengduan Mountains. Rock found the Naxi to be particularly reluctant to be photographed, but fascinated by the music of his gramophone; he would play them Caruso and document them as they gathered to listen.

There is much else to see at the Biennale. One could easily spend the whole day at the PSA just taking in the different installations.

Image of Shao Fan's monumental painting of Kun

Here is the didactic for the painting

A close up of Kun's head

Detail of the middle

I went to Shanghai this weekend & saw the Biennale at the Power Station of Art. Here are a few images of a painting by Shao Fan of Kun from the opening chapter of the Zhuangzi.

Wittgenstein and the Xunzi on the Clarification of Language - Dao Broadly speaking, language is part of a social activity in both Wittgenstein and Xunzi 荀子, and for both clarification of language is central to their philosophical projects; the goal of this article i...

Sure, there are many angles one could take in linking the two. Here’s one way that I took in an article from several years ago

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I’m fascinated by the link between Wittgenstein and Xunzi. Would be very interested in reading when it comes out

View of the Cao'an Temple from below

Historical background on this site

Entrance to the Cao'an temple. If you zoom in, the altar cloth has the characters "佛光尼摩", which represents Mani as the Buddha of Light

Photo taken of the Mani statue from outside the temple

Today I made it to the Cao'an Temple, a old Manichean site just outside of Quanzhou. It's a really fascinating example of the depths and complexities of Chinese history and the capaciousness of categories like "Buddhism" or "Manichaeism"

Shrine of Confucius at the Quanzhou Confucian Temple

Courtyard with pond at the Confucian Temple

Confucius and Laozi having a chat, Qingyuan Mountain in Quanzhou

Monumental rock sculpture of a deified Laozi (Laojun), at Qingyuan Mountain

Also paid my respects to Confucius and Laozi...

Eastern Pagoda of the Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple in Quanzhou, China

Tianhou Temple in Quanzhou

Much activity at the Tonghuai Guanyue Temple in Quanzhou

Detail from the Qingjing Mosque, just down the street in Quanzhou

I'm visiting Quanzhou this weekend, and I've gotten to see quite a few temples. Highlights were the Tian Hou Temple, the Tonghuai Guanyue Temple (impressive how popular Guanyu and Yue Fei are), and the Qingjing Mosque.

Two New-ish Articles Cross-Cultural Ethics, History of Analytic Philosophy, and Philosophy of Religion

I wrote a short blog post about two articles I wrote that were published earlier this year. While the topics are quite different--atheism and communicative reticence & religious diversity--my interest in Wittgenstein and hermeneutics links the two pieces.

thomasdcarroll.blogspot.com/2025/11/two-...

Sign at Zhejiang University for the School of Philosophy (and History and Literature)

Wittgenstein conference signs

Official photo for the conference

Photo of Wittgenstein scholars

I'm at the Chinese Wittgenstein Society's conference in Hangzhou.

Heard many great papers today & got to meet scholars whose work I know. Was great to meet up with my former dissertation director, Juliet Floyd. Even got to road-test a new project I'm working on. Looking forward to tomorrow!