Jiyuan Yu

Jiyuan Yu (July 5, 1964 – November 3, 2016) was a Chinese moral philosopher noted for his work on virtue ethics. Yu was a Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo starting in 1997. Prior to his professorship, Yu completed a three-year post as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England (1994-1997). He studied in China at both Shandong University and Renmin University, in Italy at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and in Canada at the University of Guelph. His primary areas of research and teaching included Ancient Greek Philosophy (esp. Plato, Aristotle), and Ancient Chinese Philosophy (esp. Classical Confucianism).

He served on the Editorial Boards of History of Philosophy Quarterly (2002-2005), World Philosophy (2000-present), Frontiers in Philosophy (2006–present), the Chinese translation of the Complete Works of Aristotle (1988-1998), and the book series on Chinese and Comparative Philosophy (New York: Global Publications). He received the University's Exceptional Scholar (Young Investigator) Award, as well as the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002. He was appointed a 2003–2004 Fellow at the National Humanities Center and a SUNY Buffalo Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow in the spring of 2008.

Yu was Director of the Confucius Institute at SUNY Buffalo. He was a Wu Yuzhang Chair Professor (2007-2009) at Renmin University, and a Changjiang Chair Professor at Shandong University. Yu also served as President (2012-2013) and Executive Director (2012-2016) of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP).

On November 3, 2016, Yu died from cancer in Buffalo, New York at age 52.