Monthly Archives: July 2012

A Spate of Reviews

Scott helpfully drew our attention recently to a review of Roger Ames’s Confucian Role Ethics (thanks!); I’d like to point out that the same issue of the Journal of Chinese Studies has several other extended and interesting reviews of other relevant books:

On Research: How Chinese Should Chinese Philosophy Be?

I’d like to do a little informal poll on two questions relating to research and publication on Chinese philosophy. I welcome your responses.

First, what do you think of scholars who can’t read primary sources publishing on Chinese philosophy? Is being able to read original sources important? I should perhaps clarify that what I mean are not the “translations” one sometimes finds (e.g., of the Laozi) by people who don’t read classical Chinese, but scholarly articles or books.

The second question concerns use of secondary literature. My own observation is that Western scholars, even those who read Chinese, often don’t refer to Chinese secondary literature. By “secondary literature” I mean specifically 20th and 21st century academic work, not traditional commentaries. I’m curious why this is and what other people in the field think about it. Is it a problem? Or is it instead a sign of the development of the field, that we have our own English-language debates just as specialists in ethics might have debates about Kant that don’t refer to the German literature at all?

Zhou Youguang on Modern Confucianism

I pass along this announcement from Victor Mair:

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of a new work by Zhou Youguang, the world-renowned scholar and father of Hanyu Pinyin: “To Inherit the Ancient Teachings of Confucius and Mencius and Establish Modern Confucianism.”

This work, the two-hundred-and-twenty-sixth issue of Sino-Platonic Papers, can be downloaded for free from our Web site at http://www.sino-platonic.org/

Direct link to this issue: http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp226_zhou_youguang_modern_confucianism.pdf

Sino-Platonic Papers will publish a Mandarin edition of this work at a later date.

Philosophy Encyclopedias and Chinese Philosophy

One of the things I subscribe to in Google Reader, but almost never look at, is a feed from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing new or updated articles. Why am I subscribed to this? I have no idea. But yesterday I clicked on it, and started to scroll back through the new stuff posted there over the last months. Increasingly, I found myself wondering: how come none of these concern Chinese philosophy? A fair number dealt with figures or concepts from Indian or Tibetan philosophy, but not until I got all the way back to Dec 6, 2010 did I find a mention of China. That’s when Kwong-loi Shun updated his article on Mencius. You want the most recent new article on Chinese philosophy? That would be October 1, 2009, when Alan Chan posted one on Neo-Taoism. Continue reading →

Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography

I’d like to pass on some information I’ve received concerning the “Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography” (DCB), from Marjolijn (Mar) KAISER 柯悠伦, China Projects Coordinator. She writes:

…We are proud to present a set of sample pages, including three articles from different periods, by Frank Billé, Frances Wood, and Jonathan Fenby, an introduction by our editor in chief, Kerry Brown, a list of entries, and character lists and glossaries. You can view these sample pages here: http://ow.ly/bLoUx.

Certain articles have proven to be more difficult to assign than expected, including many emperors, military leaders, and even philosophers. We are very keen on including the following unassigned figures; please contact me if you are interested: Continue reading →