Zhifeng Zhan received his BA and MA from Beijing Normal University and was a short-term visiting student at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales). As a PhD candidate in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, he is writing an intellectual history of French Nietzscheanism in the post-war period. In this project, he argues that Nietzsche’s sudden rise in French intellectual culture was implicitly supported by a counter-metaphysical vitalism, which established a vital pre-individual realm essential for the co-habitability of the self. The necessity of this vitalist (pre-)subjectivity had already been revealed—whether negatively or through neglect—within the thought of Catholic and existentialist philosophers before the advent of Nietzscheanism. Furthermore, the alliance between vitalism and Nietzsche’s moral naturalism played a crucial role in shaping conceptual innovations in France concerning puissance, reason, savoir, body, and normativity, as seen in the works of Deleuze, Klossowski, Foucault, Canguilhem, and others.

Research Interests

• 20th-century French philosophy and literature (Deleuze, Blanchot, Klossowski, Foucault, Sartre)
• French Catholic thought and social movements (de Lubac, Mounier, Gilson, Marcel)
• Nietzsche and relative meta-ethical problems (truthfulness, virtue, genealogy as a moral approach)
• Europe modernism
• Chinese intellectual history since 14th century

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