Victor Chung graduates this year from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Music, but the occasion marks more than the completion of a degree. It is a moment of quiet culmination—of years spent navigating two disciplines, two modes of thought, and a deepening commitment to questions that resist easy answers.
Though his official program was in music, Victor’s academic life has always extended beyond the boundaries of a single faculty. Victor’s first encounter with philosophy came not through a formal shift in academic focus, but through a curiosity sparked in an aesthetics course during his first year. The class spent weeks circling the deceptively simple question: What is art? Each proposed definition was met with counterexamples, each answer unravelled by further questioning. Rather than seeking resolution, Victor found himself drawn to the structure of the inquiry itself—the way philosophy invited him to hold competing intuitions in tension, to test assumptions, and to remain open to revision. “There was always something more to say,” he recalls of those first discussions. “It felt like stepping into a conversation that had been going on long before I arrived.”
That conversation continued. Over the next four years, Victor pursued philosophy with the same quiet intensity he brought to the violin. He took courses in ethics, metaphysics, and political theory, eventually developing a particular interest in the conceptual foundations of markets and capitalism. His undergraduate research, including a project on workplace democracy supervised by Joseph Heath, reflects a careful, sustained engagement with questions that are both abstract and urgent. “I’m interested in how we talk about these things,” he says. “What we mean when we say efficiency, or democracy, or capitalism. Often people are using the same words but meaning very different things.”
This attention to language—its possibilities and its limits—has shaped Victor’s approach to both philosophy and teaching. As a TA in the Socrates Project and the founder of Philosophy for Youth, a not-for-profit offering summer programs for high school students, he has worked to make philosophical thinking accessible without simplifying it. “It’s not just about content,” he says. “It’s about how we engage with each other’s ideas. Being charitable, listening carefully, asking what someone is really trying to say.”
That ethic of interpretation—of slowing down, of resisting the urge to win an argument—runs through much of Victor’s work. It also informs his reflections on music, which remains a steady presence in his life. He continues to teach violin, volunteers at his former high school, and still practices regularly. But he resists drawing direct lines between music and philosophy. If there is a connection, it is not thematic but tonal: a shared attentiveness, a willingness to dwell in complexity.
“There are some experiences that language can’t quite capture,” he says. “Some things you only understand by spending time with them.” It’s a view that has tempered his earlier confidence in the power of definition. He still values clarity, but now sees its limits more clearly. “There’s a kind of humility that comes with that,” he adds. “Not everything can be said.”
Victor’s time at U of T has been shaped by this balance—between rigor and openness, structure and receptivity. He speaks with appreciation for the faculty who made space for his questions, for the quiet corners where he could work undisturbed, and for the students who challenged and inspired him. “I’ve learned a lot here,” he says simply.
As he prepares to begin a master’s degree in philosophy this fall, Victor remains open to where the next stage might lead—perhaps doctoral work, perhaps teaching, perhaps something else entirely. What’s clear is that he will continue to ask questions that matter, and to ask them carefully.
For now, though, he marks this moment of graduation with characteristic understatement. “U of T has been a good place to think,” he says. And then, after a pause: “I’m grateful.”
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