A new issue of Hume Studies (49:2) includes three comparative essays that look at Hume’s moral, aesthetic and epistemological projects on taste, tradition and the self, side by side with Confucian texts such as Mengzi, Analects, and Xunzi, as well as works on Buddhist concepts like the two truths. Please read more to see information regarding the essays: Continue reading
Two articles related to Chinese philosophy have appeared over the last year in the journal Hypatia:
Click on the DOI links for abstracts and more information.
I am happy to report that my article “Methodologies and Communities in Comparative Philosophy” has just been published on-line in Metaphilosophy. A read-only version can be accessed here. The abstract:
There is considerable disagreement and even confusion over what forms of border-crossing philosophizing are most appropriate to our times. Are comparative, cross-cultural, intercultural, blended, and fusion philosophy all the same thing? Some critics find what they call “comparative philosophy” to be moribund or problematically colonialist; others assert that projects like “fusion philosophy” are intellectually irresponsible and colonialist in their own way. Can we nonetheless identify a distinctive project of comparative philosophy and say why it is important? Based on a broad survey of approaches, this essay offers schematic answers to these questions, clarifies some persistent confusions, and stresses the constitutive gamble that lies at the heart of all comparative philosophy. There are several different ways to do comparative philosophy well; which method to employ depends on the values that motivate and the pragmatic situation that frames one’s inquiry, and on the ways in which one or more communities receive and respond to one’s contribution.
Bin Song’s article “A Study of Cheng Yi’s Quiet-Sitting Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in the Confucian Context” has been published by the Journal of Contemplative Studies. The journal has a very nice website, where readers can view and download the article in multiple formats: https://contemplativejournal.org/#/texts/67516.
Shuchen Xiang has just published a paper “Decolonising Sinology: on Sinology’s Weaponisation of the Discourse of Race” in Social Dynamics: A journal of African Studies. Please read on for the abstract and how to access the article:
Professor Rošker (University of Ljubljana) has some recent (2023) publications that may be of interest to blog readers — read on for details!
George Israel published a lovely on-line essay titled “The Trouble with Wang Yangming” a little over a year ago, but it remains highly relevant. If you are interested in all the enthusiasm about Wang in the contemporary PRC, or about Wang more generally, this is essential reading.
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, P. J. Ivanhoe published an essay engaging with Harvey Lederman’s account of Wang Yangming titled “The Introspective, Perceptual, and Spontaneous Response Models of Wang Yangming’s Philosophy.” Lederman has published a reply, currently uploaded to PhilPapers here. Enjoy!
PS–the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture website was down for a week or more, apparently because Sungkyunkwan University (the host of JCPC) decided to block overseas access to protect itself from a spate of attacks from Chinese hackers … but the site is back up now and hopefully will remain so!
Two articles on Confucianism and Just War have been published in the latest Philosophy Compass:
Enjoy!
Waldemar Brys’ article “Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account” has recently been published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. In this article, Brys argues that kindness cannot do all the theoretical work that Mengzi wants it to do if one interprets it as an emotion. Brys concludes in this article that the notion of extending kindness is best understood as the exercise of a capacity for intelligently performing kind actions. Please click here to read the article.
