Bongrae Seok lecture at Columbia this Friday

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY welcomes BONGRAE SEOK (Alvernia University), with formal responses by HAGOP SARKISSIAN (Baruch College, CUNY). Please join us in RM 101 IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION  at Columbia University on November 11th at 5:30 for his lecture entitled, “Embodied Moral Psychology of Confucian Heart.”

In this paper, I will discuss Confucian moral psychology of the human heart from the perspectives of embodied moral emotion. Unlike the other theories of ethics, Confucian moral philosophy is founded upon the embodied human heart that develops into the moral excellence of the ideal human character. Based on this embodied and affective foundation, Confucian masters combine emotion and virtue in their explanation of moral disposition (virtue), learning (moral development), and moral community. Whether this particular combination of emotion and virtue can be regarded as a variant of virtue ethics or moral sentimentalism remains to be seen but it is clear that the way moral
emotions are described, characterized, and discussed in Confucian moral philosophy is very unique and, for that reason, Confucian moral philosophy warrants its own school of moral philosophy and moral psychology: it is a moral tradition of the excellence in the human person founded upon the embodied emotion of the human heart. In the following sections, I will compare and contrast different models of moral cognition and carefully search for the possibility of embodied moral psychology, particularly in the context of Confucian tradition. I will use Mencius’s discussion of moral emotions as a testing ground to see how the embodied approach to the human heart can provide a viable and unique model of moral philosophy and moral psychology.

MEETINGS ARE CONVENED IN ROOM 101 IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION AT 80 CLAREMONT AVENUE.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR DIRECTIONS TO VENUE
http://alturl.com/z3or3

SEATING IS LIMITED AND DOORS CLOSE PROMPTLY AT 5:30 PM- PLEASE ARRIVE ON TIME!

One reply

  1. I wish I could make it to this, but I can’t. I’d be interested in what Seok has to say about qi 氣. If we take the embodied heart seriously, do we also have to take qi seriously in the resulting moral psychology, given what embodiment seems to entail for Mencius? If so, what does that do for the moral psychology’s viability? Or is there some translation of the qi-talk in Mencius to something equivalent in modern psychological terms? Maybe someone could ask for me if the answers aren’t apparent in the talk itself.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.