Lanxin Shi

Hello! I am Lanxin Shi. I come from Nanjing, China. I am currently a sixth-year PhD candidate in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. I earned a B.A. in Humanities from NYU Shanghai in 2021. I was a guest scholar at Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre during summer 2024.

I work on 19th-20th century European philosophy, with a focus on Søren Kierkegaard and Simone de Beauvoir. My dissertation develops an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s account of agency through four important yet underexplored concepts in his corpus: existential trial, eternal happiness, religious responsibility, and the demonic. I argue that these concepts reveal a unified account of the self as an agent whose identity is formed through conflict, risk, and responsiveness to norms that exceed immediate desire or social convention. Beyond my dissertation on Kierkegaard, I also work on Beauvoir's account of devotion.

My email is ls794[at]cornell[dot]edu. 

You can also find me on PhilPeople.