A book symposium was recently published in the Journal of Social and Political Philosophy about Shuchen Xiang’s book Chinese Cosmopolitanism. It comprised comments by David C. Kang, Byung-ho Lee and Huaiyu Wang and a response from the author. The issue is here; direct links to the comments and response, as well as summaries of a couple of the comments, follow below.
Author Archives: Steve Angle
Job Opening at Univ. of Toronto
The University of Toronto is seeking to fill a position at the Associate or full Professor level: the Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture. Please see here for more information.
ISEAP 2025: On-Line Registration Now Open
For those who wish to participate virtually in the 2025 International Society for East Asian Philosophy conference, please complete the following Google Form by Monday, August 25. The links will be sent to you by email on Wednesday, August 27.
Google Form for “Registration for Online Attendees”
https://forms.gle/yp88EirfTovoGNxc7
The conference program and abstracts can be downloaded from the conference website. https://iseap.jp/iseap-2025-conference/
Angle Reviews Ziliotti, Meritocratic Democracy
The Review of Politics recently published a review I wrote of Elena Ziliotti’s excellent book Meritocratic Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Political Theory (Oxford, 2024). Please see here for the review.
Workshop on the “Foundations of Justice” in Venice this week
An International Workshop on the “Foundations of Justice: Chinese and Western Perspectives on Law, Ethics and Governance” will be held on 24-25 July at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; please see this poster and this program for more information.
Workshop zu Kai Marchals Im Spiegel der All-Einheit
There will be a workshop (in German) on Kai Marchal’s new book on Zhu Xi, Im Spiegel der All-Einheit (details on book here). The Workshop is co-organized by Philippe Brunozzi (TU Dortmund) and Dominik Perler (Humboldt University Berlin). In-person or on-line attendance is encouraged; contact Philippe Brunozzi, philippe.brunozzi@tu-dortmund.de for details. The flyer with more information is here.
Song Reviews Xin, Lure of the Supreme Joy
In the latest issue of the Journal of Chinese Studies, Bin Song has published a review of Xin Conan-Wu’s intriguing 2024 book, Lure of the Supreme Joy: Pedagogy and Environment in the Neo-Confucian Academies of Zhu Xi. For more on the book itself, see the publisher’s site here; for Song’s review, see here.
New Book: Yong LI, Confucian Comparative Political Philosophy
Routledge has just published Yong LI’s new book, Confucian Comparative Political Philosophy; see here for the publisher’s webpage. Here’s its description and Table of Contents:
Invitation to attend: “Discursive and Non-Discursive Reasoning in Chinese Philosophy,” University of Zurich, 11–13 July 2025
This international workshop explores how processes of thinking and reasoning are understood in Chinese philosophy, including modes that are not easily captured by formal or discursive logic. Topics include vision, cognition, and intuition in Chinese philosophical traditions, Buddhist approaches to reasoning and the limits of thought, mathematical reasoning and patterns of knowledge, as well as the aesthetic and affective dimensions of understanding.
Speakers include Stephen Angle, Andrea Bréard, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, Michael Lackner, Chen-kuo Lin, Kai Marchal, and many others.
Open to all, with online participation possible.
Please note: all times in the program are given in Central European Time (CET/CEST).
➡️ Program & registration: https://www.aoi.uzh.ch/en/institut/events/conferences/reasoning.html
Winner of 2024 Dao Annual Best Essay Award
Dao has established “The Annual Best Essay Award” since 2007. In addition to a certificate of achievement, the award comes along with a prize of US$1,000. The award winners will be noted in the website of the journal as well as the website of Springer, the publisher of the journal. The award ceremony is held each year at the American Philosophical Association Annual Meeting (Eastern Division) in early January, where a special panel on the theme of the award-winning essay is held. The critical comments and the author’s responses to them presented at the panel, after review and revision, will be published in the last issue of Dao each year.
The selection process consists of two stages. First, a nominating committee of three editorial board members, who have not published in Dao in the given year, is established. This committee is charged with the task of nominating three best essays from all those published in the previous year. These three essays are then sent to the whole editorial board for deliberation. The final winner is decided by a vote by all editorial board members who are not authors of the nominated essays.
The editorial board has just finished its deliberation on the best essay published in 2024, and the result is:
2024 Dao Annual Best Essay Award
Kevin M DeLapp, “Confucian Ritual and Aristotelian Habit,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 23 (2024): 173-189 (Free Access to the Paper)Kevin M DeLapp’s “Confucian Rituals and Aristotelian Habits” goes far beyond the simple comparison between these two ideas. Fully aware of their significant differences, DeLapp reveals what he calls their structural analog: they play a similar role in underwriting their more general ethical frameworks. He debunks the stereotypes of Aristotle as individualistic and rationalistic and of Confucius as parochial and non-rationalistic, and also shows the ways in which virtue ethics and role ethics can be complementary. The paper is textually sensitive and philosophically innovative. It is the type of comparative philosophy Dao aims to promote.
