Since then Jullien has been head of the Antenne Française de Sinologie in Hong Kong (1978–1981), a guest of the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo (1985–1987), president of the Association Française d'Etudes Chinoises (1988–1990), director of the East Asia department (UFR) of Paris Diderot University–Paris VII (1990–2000), president of the Collège International de Philosophie (1995–1998), professor at Paris Diderot University, and director of both the Institut de la Pensée Contemporaine and the Centre Marcel-Granet.

Among the most recent are: Jullien received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in Germany in 2010 and the Grand Prix de Philosophie of the Académie Française for his body of work in 2011.

"[1] When Jullien was awarded the Grand Prix de Philosophie of the Académie Française (2011), Angelo Rinaldi presented his work as follows: "The variety of subjects this philosopher-sinologist has taken on could lead one to imagine a scattershot oeuvre.

The priority for François Jullien is to constitute this exteriority, and the remainder of his work consists of a reevaluation of the foundations of European thought.

Awaiting us at the far end of this road are the general questions that interest us all directly: does 'the universal' exist, what might we hold in 'common,' what is the meaning of 'unity,' 'difference,' or 'conformity'?

What we now call the 'dialogue of cultures' is clearly at the center of this philosopher's concerns, and it is this ever-present theme that makes him relevant for us today."

[2] Since first establishing what he refers to as his philosophical construction yard (chantier) to explore the écart between Chinese and European thought François Jullien has been organizing a vis-à-vis between cultures, rather than comparing them, so as to map out a common field for reflection.

His work has led him to examine such various disciplines as ethics, aesthetics, strategy, and the systems of thought (pensées) of both History and nature.

The aim of this "deconstruction" from without (du dehors) is to detect buried biases, in both cultures, as well as to elucidate the unthought-of (l'impensé) in our thought.

It serves also to bring out the resources (ressources) or fecundities (fécondités) of languages and cultures, rather than consider them from the perspective of their "difference" or "identity."

Jullien has argued in response that the way to produce the common (produire du commun) is to put écarts to work.

The world of management has begun to adopt such concepts as situational potential (potentiel de situation), as opposed to "plans of action"; maturation (of conditions), as opposed to projected modelizations; and the initiation of silent transformations ("transformations silencieuses"), to induce change rather than impose it.

Si parler va sans dire, 2006); and the concepts of the allusive (l'allusif), availability (la disponibilité), indirectness (le biais), and obliquity (l'obliquité) (cf.

For a collective reply to the criticism of Jean-François Billeter, see Oser construire, Pour François Jullien, with notable contributions from Philippe d'Iribarne, Jean Allouche, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Wolfgang Kubin, Du Xiaozhen, Léon Vandermeersch, Bruno Latour, Paul Ricœur, and Alain Badiou.