The Department of Philosophy at Peking University was founded in 1912, a date that marks the beginning of philosophy as an academic discipline in modern China. Committed to academic research and philosophical inclusiveness, the Department has become distinctive in its academic culture. With the Department nurturing a diversity of creative minds, it has come to be called the “Cradle of Chinese Thinkers”. In 1995, the first-ever faculty of religious studies in China was launched at this same institution, and is administered together with the faculty of philosophy.

Today, the Department is equipped with a full-fledged academic board that covers almost all subdisciplines of philosophy. It has attracted outstanding teaching fellows and has grown into a strong combination of 64 academic members that includes 42 full professors, 14 associate professors, 7 assistant professors, and 1 lecturer. The balance among faculty members who work on diverse areas within the discipline facilitates the institution’s engagement with contemporary debates in world philosophy. In April 2018, the Department is home to 208 undergraduate students, 87 double-majors and minors, 173 MA, and 246 PhD students.

The Department will continue to shape a balanced and proportionate curriculum and faculty structure, to enhance its contributions to the discipline, and to extend its reach and influence in philosophy. Keeping abreast of current developments in professional philosophy while at the same time promoting its own intellectual tradition, the Department will encourage the kind of innovative research that provides an appropriate framework for a theoretical and practical discourse that can address the problems specific to contemporary Chinese society and global issues. The Department endeavors to educate philosophers who will make a global impact, and who as specialists will serve the discipline as its future leaders. The commitment is to develop the Department of Philosophy at Peking University into an intellectual institution deeply rooted in the Chinese tradition, and at the same time, to maintain its place as one of the world’s top philosophy institutions.