François Jullien is Professor at the Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot and director at the Institut de la Pensée Contemporaine, France. He is the author of Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (2004), The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China (1999), and In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics (2004).