Yu Liu is a Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University and holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. She works as a scholar, writer and poet, previously serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and a lecturer in Politics at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on comparative politics, democratic transition and political culture. She is the author of works including Details of Democracy and The Art of Possibility, which explore the connections between institutional contexts, individual destiny and life choices. Her representative literary works such as A Bullet for You, May You Grow Up Slowly and Remnants of Joy confront modern people’s loneliness, inner friction, emotional regret, value trade-offs, and the spiritual quest for peace in midlife.

Kieran Setiya is a Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research fields cover ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, with a special focus on action theory, virtue ethics, and ethical knowledge. His intellectual tradition draws on Aristotle and Hume. He is the author of numerous monographs, including Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, and Knowing Right From Wrong. His works have been published by MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press. He also engages in public philosophy, exploring humanistic themes such as love, regret and rights, and has published a number of essays in public philosophy.