Lok Wing-Kai (Peter) successfully defended his dissertation and received his doctorate at the VU University Amsterdam on July 5. His dissertation is titled “Foucault, Levinas and the Ethical Embodied Subject”. ICS Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart served as Peter’s supervisor (“promotor”), and VU Professor Wouter Goris served as his co-supervisor (“co-promotor”) in the ICS/VU conjoint PhD degree program. Members of the reading and examining committees included ICS Senior Member Shannon Hoff and Jeff Dudiak, Professor of Philosophy at The King’s University College in Edmonton. In the words of Professor Zuidervaart’s laudatio, “Peter’s dissertation uses the work of two prominent French thinkers to develop a conception of the ethical embodied subject. The dissertation undertakes an extensive comparison between Michel Foucault’s later writings and Emmanuel Levinas’s post-ontological ethics. Peter discovers more in common between Foucault and Levinas than one might have expected. And he argues that where they differ, each can learn from the other. To take up two such prominent thinkers like this and put them into constructive dialogue is a notable achievement.” Dr. Lok currently lives in Hong Kong and teaches at Ling Lam University. The ICS community extends hearty congratulations to Peter and to his family, friends, and colleagues.
