Thorsten Jürgen Pattberg is a German philosopher and cultural critic. He wrote several critical texts on language, culture, philosophy and politics, displaying a fondness for Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist terms and concepts. He worked in the German judiciary as a court clerk and, at the age of 24, emigrated on his own from Germany and attended Edinburgh University, Fudan University, Tokyo University und Harvard University, before obtaining his doctoral degree from Peking University, the first German person to do so.