Category Archives: Chinese philosophy – 中國哲學 – 中国哲学

Online Lecture: Art and Morality from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping

The USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies is happy to announce that they will be hosting a hybrid lecture on art and morality from Mao Zedong’s 1942 Yenan Talks to Xi Jinping’s 2014 speech on artistic practice. For this lecture the university is welcoming Professor Eva Man. Please click here to register and here for the event link.

Event Date: November 30th, 5:30-6:45pm (PST)

33rd Comparative Philosophy Workshop

Sun Yet-sen University is happy to announce that they will be hosting the 33rd Comparative Philosophy Workshop:

Topic: “It all lies in showing the proper countenance: Confucian relationality as ethical challenge.”
Speaker: Sor-hoon TAN (Professor of Philosophy, Singapore Management University)
Moderator: Jun-Hyeok KWAK (Professor of Philosophy (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University)
Time: November 24th, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm (Beijing Time)
Virtual Meeting through VooV

Please click here to sign up and here for more information about the workshop.

Sor-hoon TAN is Professor of Philosophy and Academic Director of Politics, Law and Economics at Singapore Management University.  Professor TAN received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2000 and before joining the faculty of Singapore Management University, she taught at National University of Singapore. Her main teaching and research interests are in Confucianism, Chinese Political Thought, John Dewey’s Pragmatist Philosophy, and Democratic Theory. She has published numerous books and articles including Confucian Democracy — A Deweyan Reconstruction of Confucianism (State University of New York, 2004) and Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies (Bloomsbury 2016).

CFP: European Association for Chinese Philosophy

The 4th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy (EACP) will take place in Macerata, Italy on June 16-18, 2023. The theme for the conference is “Interpretation and reinvention”. Scholars interested in Chinese philosophy and philosophy in China are invited to submit proposals for individual papers or panels to Selusi Ambrogio.  The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2022. Click here for more information on submissions and the conference as a whole.

Sources of the Philosophy of Confucius

When you teach the philosophy of Confucius, surely you use the Analects as a source–probably your main source, maybe your only source.  What (if anything) else do you use as a primary source for the philosophy of Confucius (not of Confucianism), and why?

Two points of reference: 1) Mark Csikszentmihalyi’s entry on Confucius in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  With reference to the work of Zhu Weizheng and Michael Hunter, he says, “An attack on the authoritativeness of the Analects… broadens and diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct… the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond the Analects.”  Which sources? Specifically mentioned are the following:

  • Records of Ritual, the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual (DaDai Liji 大戴禮記)
  • Family Discussions of Confucius (Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語)
  • Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals
  • Han’s Intertextual Commentary on the Odes (Han Shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳)
  • Recently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period and before

2) Michael Ing, in the Vulnerability of Integrity, adduces passages from the Kongzi jiayu and the Han shi waizhuan in claims about Confucius’ philosophical positions.

I’m sure there are other points of reference, but these should suffice to jump start a conversation.

Why do I ask?  In the past, I have used only the Analects and haven’t felt any reason to reach beyond it.  But Hunter’s work has made me re-think that, and like Csikszentmihalyi, I think that rather than foreclosing the Analects as a source of Confucius’ philosophy, Hunter’s work opens us to more possibilities. Plus, I find some of the sources above interesting and compelling.

Clarifications about this post:
A) Not interested here in how you expand on Confucius’ ideas via other texts, such as Mencius, Zhong yong, etc.  Might be a good topic for another thread.
B) Not interested here in whether we can reconstruct a coherent philosophy of Confucius.  This particular topic is only for those who teach the philosophy of Confucius and, at least provisionally, presuppose that we can discuss his philosophy in a coherent way.  Perspectives on “whether” are a good topic for a different thread.

Online Conference: Comparative Philosophy Workshop

The Sun Yat-sen University is happy to announce that they are hosting the 31st Comparative Philosophy Workshop: Franklin Perkins will present “The Problem of Evil in Early Chinese Philosophy.” The workshop will be held virtually from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM (Beijing Time), on November 11th (Friday), 2022. Click here to sign up for the workshop. Should you have any question about the meeting, please email to the workshop coordinator, JIA Yongze jiayongze97@163.com