We’d like to pilot a new discussion forum page (you can access it through the Discussion tab on the tab menu). Post your own items or questions there for discussion. Go over and reply to my discussion post topic if you have thoughts about it. If it seems easy and convenient as a way of replacing the current Question Board then we’ll gradually phase out the latter. Your feedback will help us. Cheers.
Author Archives: Manyul Im
Call for Commentators-ACPA at APA Eastern 2013
MOVED TO TOP WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:
We still need commentators, and please let me know if you are interested. Dr. Kim’s and Mr. Lu’s papers already have commentators (and there are three other commentators who are not set on any particular paper yet). Thanks!
– Tongdong Bai (baitongdong@gmail.com)
ACPA Group Meeting at the APA Eastern Convention
December 27-30, 2013, at the Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore
Session 1: Moral Cultivation and Moral Agency in Confucianism and Western Philosophy
1. Mental Blindness and Moral Rectitude: The jiebi chapter of the Xunzi
David Chai, University of Toronto, Canada, david.chai@utoronto.ca
Abstract: The idea of being figuratively blind is a well-used trope in early Confucian thought. Confucius referred to blindness of virtue while Mencius to blindness of the senses and speech. For Xunzi, blindness stems from a person having ‘two minds,’ that is, one’s mind is caught between two principles or goals of moral conduct. Xunzi’s solution, like Guanzi’s theory of ‘mental arts’ (xinshu 心術), was to engage in ‘singular concentration’ (jing 精). Through a close hermeneutic reading of chapter 21 of the Xunzi (jiebi 解蔽, “Removing Blindness”), this paper will examine Xunzi’s use of jing and how cultivating one’s mental essence by adhering to Dao can result in overcoming mental blindness. It will also look at one of the more interesting metaphors Xunzi uses, that of brightness (ming 明). Moral brightness is a quality every person should strive for in that it reflects the perfect virtue of Dao. For Xunzi, using ming to nurture jing is not enough to cure a person completely of their mental blindness however; they must endeavor to replicate the mind of Dao. How they do this is through studying the principle of men’s minds as Xunzi so clearly illustrates: “Sageliness consists in a comprehensive grasp of the natural relationships between men. True kingship consists in a comprehensive grasp of the regulations for government. A comprehensive grasp of both is sufficient to become the ridgepole for the world.” (Xunzi, 21.9)
PDF download plugin added
I’ve added a plugin that allows you to download a PDF version of a post. This may be of use for some purposes, however, the current plugin does not include the comments for a post (which can be very illuminating). Nor does it convert non-Latin characters or accented Latin ones. It is what it is. Also, videos from popular sites such as YouTube or Vimeo are converted to links in the pdf. Please note the header, which indicates the presumptive intellectual property ownership by the author of the particular post. For citation norms governing blogs, see this MLA style summary.
There is a link along the bottom of each post for the purpose. Cheers.
CFP: Inaugural English Edition of Heritage and Transition
[On behalf of Ben Hammer, Shandong University]
A Call for Drafts for the Inaugural English-language Edition of Heritage and Transition: Studies in Chinese Humanities
Shandong University’s Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy (《文史哲》Wen Shi Zhe) is one of mainland China’s most well-known and well-respected academic journals. It has appeared bi-monthly for more than half a decade and has gained the highest repute among Chinese scholars. The Journal focuses on presenting scholarly work on various aspects of China’s traditional culture and society.
Due to the rising demand and desire for international dialogue as well as the rising prominence of sinology in Western countries, the editorial board has decided to begin publishing an edition in English, entitled Heritage and Transition: Studies in Chinese Humanities. It is our goal to help foster such international dialogue and provide a platform for important academic exchange.
This notice is to officially extend an invitation to Western scholars to take part in Heritage and Transition’s inaugural English-language edition. The theme of the inaugural edition is “The Forms and Formation of Chinese Society” (中国社会形态的问题). All entries must be original works somehow related to this theme.
There is no fee to submit. All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board. All accepted submissions will receive payment. Furthermore, along with being published in the English edition, accepted works will also be translated into Chinese and published separately in the Chinese edition.
The deadline for the first edition is September 30, 2013. Submissions should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words in length. If you are interested in contributing or have questions, please contact Dr. Ben Hammer at benkhammer@sdu.edu.cn
Benjamin Hammer
Assistant Editor, Heritage and Transition
Lecturer, Advanced Institute of Confucian Studies
Shandong University
Jinan, Shandong, China, 250100
+011-86-152-6411-3113
ACPA call for papers
(Just moving this up to the front, by way of reminding those who might be interested, of the April 30 deadline.)
The Association of Chinese Philosophers in North America [ACPA]
Call for Papers and Abstracts – ACPA Group Meeting at the APA Eastern Convention
Submission deadline: April 30, 2013
December 27-30, 2013, at the Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore
Description: ACPA group meetings at the APA conventions have been successful in providing scholars an opportunity to try out new ideas and receive inputs for further development of the paper. The attendance has been good, and we have always arranged one commentator for each paper presented. We now welcome scholars to submit completed drafts, paper abstracts, or panel proposals for the 2013 APA Eastern Meeting. With one session devoted to the panel for DAO best essay award, we shall continue to host another session with three to four papers, with commentators for each paper. We will try to organize the session in keeping with a cohesive theme. Therefore, the selection of the paper for presentation will be partially based on how well it can be worked into a good session.
Question Board Cleaning
Just to let you know that I will be clearing off the Question Board on Saturday, April 13, as part of a periodic cleanse. If you see anything on there you want to save, please copy and paste into your own archives. Cheers.
Japan Times Review of Watanabe
Michael Hoffman of the Japan Times reviews the English translation of A HISTORY OF JAPANESE POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1600-1901, by Hiroshi Watanabe (Translated by David Noble. LTCB International Library Trust, International House of Japan, 2012). Hoffman focuses on the “evolution of Japan’s turn away from Confucian ideas.” Looks interesting. Here is some of the review (read the whole review at the Japan Times).
Maybe all ideas are inherently strange, given the nonsense time tends to make of them. Imagine how odd our thinking will seem 100 years from now — or would have seemed 100 years ago. Is “freakish” too strong a word? Whether it is or not, the ideas Watanabe discusses here with such clarity and vigor are the ones that animated two of the most astonishing phases of Japanese and, arguably, world history: the 2½ centuries of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1867) and the subsequent national transformation of backwater Japan into superpower Japan.
What were these ideas? You could, simplifying just a bit, divide them into two categories: Confucian and anti-Confucian. For pre-modern Japan, China was civilization itself, and Confucianism was what made it so — “perhaps the most powerful political ideology yet conceived by the human race,” writes Watanabe. To devotees, its “rites and music,” “five relationships” and “five virtues” are what separate us from the beasts and make us human. To doubters — and the doubts grew as Japan’s stagnation became more evident — it was a retarding force. “Ours is a world in which living things are confined and regimented as if dead things,” wrote one exasperated samurai-scholar in 1838. Continue reading →
NYT Columnist Brooks on Chinese Education
This was kind of a fun read. (Read the rest at the New York Times website, here.) Any thoughts?
THE LEARNING VIRTUES
DAVID BROOKS
Jin Li grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the madness was over, the Chinese awoke to discover that far from overleaping the West, they were “economically destitute and culturally barren.” This inspired an arduous catch-up campaign. Students were recruited to learn what the West had to offer.
Li was one of the students. In university, she abandoned Confucian values, which were then blamed for Chinese backwardness, and embraced German culture. In her book, “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,” she writes that Chinese students at that time were aflame — excited by the sudden openness and the desire to catch up.
Li wound up marrying an American, moved to the States and became a teacher. She was stunned. American high school students had great facilities but didn’t seem much interested in learning. They giggled in class and goofed around. Continue reading →
Daoist Nazi Problem – a response
[Guest poster and friend of the blog, Mark Saltveit, posts an extended response to Donald Sturgeon’s “Daoist Nazi Problem” below.]
Can There Be a Nazi Dao?
By Mark Saltveit
Of all the religious philosophies, Daoism is the one most concerned with practical, daily life. Seeking and practicing the pure, perfect way to do something is itself a spiritual practice, a small Dao that may lead you to the Big Dao. That’s why there are so many books with titles like “The Tao of Tool Crafting” and “The Tao of Large Animal Husbandry.”
Last October, Donald Sturgeon wrote a piece on Warp Weft and Way that raises a fascinating question: does every task, no matter how “wrong” or unDaoish, have its own Dao? Specifically, can there be such a thing as “The Dao of Nazism”?
This is one of the few topics I have some actual academic knowledge about. I studied the Nazis for a while as an undergraduate, in my multidisciplinary social science major at Harvard. (After a year, it got too grim, and I changed my focus to a much cheerier topic – the Vietnam War.)
I think the short story is that, if you choose to pursue Nazism, there are some less effective and more effective ways to pursue it; the more effective ways might be considered a sort of Dao of Nazism. However, both the goals of Nazism and the techniques you would use to pursue it inevitably corrode your ability to act in Dao, so it would prove quickly self-defeating. Continue reading →
Japanese Philosophy
Friend of the blog, Carl Johnson, has his own blog about Japanese philosophy, here: http://japanphilosophy.com/. From his About page:
The Japanese Philosophy Blog is a blog that is aimed helping publicize English language resources for thinking about Japanese philosophy, ancient and modern. Currently, the blog is maintained by Carl M. Johnson of the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, but anyone interested in collaborating is invited to contribute. Please contact me if you have something you would like publicized on the site, or you would like to become a contributor.
(We will add this to our links list.)
