David B. Wong is a contemporary American philosopher at Duke University who works at the intersection of analytic moral philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy. He is best known for developing a sophisticated form of moral relativism he calls 'natural moral pluralism,' arguing that multiple moral frameworks can be equally valid responses to the human condition. His comparative work on Confucian thinkers—particularly Mencius and Xunzi—has been influential in bridging Western analytic ethics and Chinese moral psychology.
Developed 'natural moral pluralism,' a philosophically rigorous defense of moral relativism grounded in human nature and social function
Authored Moral Relativity (1984) and Natural Moralities (2006), foundational texts in analytic moral relativism
Advanced comparative analysis of Mencius and Xunzi's competing accounts of human moral nature
Distinguished multiple interpretations of Mencius's moral psychology, including the contested 'water-metaphor' view
Bridged analytic metaethics and classical Confucian ethics in Anglophone philosophy