I-Kai JENG
鄭義愷

I-Kai Jeng is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. He received a joint degree (PhD Philosophy / MA Classical Studies) from Boston University. He joined National Taiwan University in 2017. He specializes in Ancient Greek Philosophy, with particular attention to Plato. One of his major research interests concerns the interaction between philosophy and other genres of literature (epic, drama, history), and specifically how a given genre of writing can presuppose and imply worldviews. At the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Jeng is preparing a monograph under the working title Comedy and Philosophy: Rival Claims to Wisdom in Aristophanes and Plato. By drawing on contemporary theories of humor and laughter, he shows why jokes are both the medium and the message for Aristophanes’s view of human life, and why Plato’s rival view makes his own attitude towards laughter much more ambivalent and uneasy.