Asian Studies Vol 9 No 1 (2021): Special Issue: The Manifold Images of Asian History
The full issue can be downloaded at the above link. Articles include “Confucian Humanism and the Importance of Female Education,” “The Problem of the Authenticity of the Aesthetic Concept qiyun shengdong: Xu Fuguan’s Analysis and Interpretation,” and many others.
FPC covers nearly all the main branches of philosophy, with priority given to original works on Chinese philosophy and to comparative studies between Chinese philosophy and other types of philosophy in the world.
You are cordially invited to submit research articles, review articles, or book reviews to FPC. Manuscripts should be submitted via email to submissionbjb@126.com. Welcome your submission and any advice
【Current Issue: Vol.15, No.4, 2020】
Available at: http://journal.hep.com.cn/fpc
(Free download through Feb 1, 2021)
16th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
Wright State University
30 April-1 May 2021
The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. Submissions are invited for papers on any aspect of Chinese thought as well as papers dealing with comparative issues that engage Chinese perspectives.
This year’s conference will be held virtually on Friday, April 30 and Saturday, May 1 and hosted by Wright State University. Our keynote speaker will be Robin R. Wang, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University.
Professor Wang will present “Dao of Rou 柔 (Suppleness): Proprioceptive Knowledge and Its Epistemological Value in Early Daoism”:
Through Chinese intellectual history, early Daoism, a Dao-based and inspired teaching and practice, has been considered the philosophy of rou 柔 (suppleness, pliant, yielding, softness), which the Daodejing couples with water, the infant, and the feminine. A popular Chinese binary expression of culture, gen 根 (root/foundation) and hun 魂 (soul/spirit), takes Dao as the root of Daoist teaching and rou as a spirit of Lao-Zhuang. However, rou has often been understood only as de (德) moral virtue or shu (术) strategy, something more practical than conceptual. This talk will respond to this theoretical gap and argue for rou as a form of proprioceptive awareness or bodily knowledge that shapes a cognitive style and an epistemological stance to guide our rational effort, illumination, and well-being. More importantly, this rou style of knowing embodies the epistemic value, such as intellectual humility, openness, receptivity and resilience, for a cognitive success.
Similar to previous conferences, we anticipate selecting 12-16 papers for presentation. For consideration submit a 1-page abstract to Judson Murray at judson.murray@wright.edu by January 31, 2021 for blind review. For more information, visit the conference website here.
PhD (or Postdoc) scholarship in a Kang Youwei project at KU Leuven, Chinese Studies (Belgium) funded by Research Foundation (FWO) – Flanders
4 years PhD (October 2021–September 2025) or 3 years Postdoc (October 2021– September 2024)
This scholarship is offered in the context of a research project on the portrayal of Kang Youwei as an “in-between” figure in contemporary Chinese academia (for more details, see “Project” below). We are looking for a PhD (or Postdoc) student in Sinology, Chinese studies, Chinese philosophy, or Chinese intellectual history willing to research current views on Kang Youwei in relation to past, present and future issues in religion, politics, education, philosophy, or history.
The latest issue of Asian Philosophy (3:4) has been published. The Table of Contents:
Reconciling Confucianism with rule of law: Confucianisation or self-restraint?
Elton Chan
The spaciousness of self-awareness: A phenomenological account of self-reflexivity in Patañjali´s Yoga philosophy
Ana Funes Maderey
Is dharma-nature identical to ignorance? A study of ‘ji ’ in early Tiantai Buddhism
Jenny Hung
The inversion of values and the renunciation of desire and love: an investigation through Max Scheler and Wang Yangming
Yinghua Lu
Xunzi: Moral education and transformation
Xiufen Lu
The problem of evil in the Neo-Confucian context: Wang Yangming’s view on evil
Xiaomei Yang
The University of Washington Press has published The Objectionable Li Zhi:Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China edited by Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee and Haun Saussy. The editorial description:
Iconoclastic scholar Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a central figure in the cultural world of the late Ming dynasty. His provocative and controversial words and actions shaped print culture, literary practice, attitudes toward gender, and perspectives on Buddhism and the afterlife. Although banned, his writings were never fully suppressed, because they tapped into issues of vital significance to generations of readers. His incisive remarks, along with the emotional intensity and rhetorical power with which he delivered them, made him an icon of his cultural moment and an emblem of early modern Chinese intellectual dissent.
In this volume, leading China scholars demonstrate the interrelatedness of seemingly discrete aspects of Li Zhi’s thought and emphasize his far-reaching impact on his contemporaries and successors. In doing so, they challenge the myth that there was no tradition of dissidence in premodern China.
The DRH began as one of the flagship initiatives of the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Now funded by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation and support from UBC, the DRH has become an independent initiative with partners and collaborators from around the world. It is a free and open-access platform dedicated to academic collaboration, rigorous scholarly standards, and interdisciplinary work in the sciences and humanities.
Roger Ames’s new book, Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics (SUNY, 2020) has been published. The editor’s summary:
In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.
The Table of Contents follows.
Sent by the The Berggruen Research Center, Peking University:
The year has been challenging but not without inspiration. The Center’s first book, Intelligence and Wisdom: AI Meets Chinese Philosophers, was published by CITIC Press Group in February and has sold over 6300 copies. In March, while promoting the book, we moved all the Center‘s activities online. We hosted two workshops on “AI Narratives in China”, a collaboration with Cambridge University‘s Leverhulme Center, which explores the effects of local culture and historical narratives on the reception of AI in China. We also held three closed-door workshops for our “Facial Recognition and Privacy” program, which focuses on how facial recognition policies can best reflect cultural values and social practices. The Berggruen Seminar series was relaunched online in July, and we have since hosted four events: “Confucian Common Sense Meets the AI Revolution”, “What Should Care Robots Care About?”, “Digital Personality”, and “AI, Emotion, and Ethics”.
We also launched a new online public program, the Global Thinkers series, which featured Jared Diamond at its inaugural event on risk management in coping with the global pandemic.
In October, the Center launched a new online product, Ruin, which brings together translated articles from Berggruen Institute’s journal Noema and other original contributions sourced locally. We hope that Ruin becomes a public square for creative thinkers where innovative ideas are recognized, debated, enriched, and propagated. We also launched an account on video platform Bilibili, attracting more than 40,000 views over three live streamed events.
The Center welcomed a new cohort of Fellows this year: Bai Shunong, Professor of Biology at Peking University; Duan Weiwen, Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Hao Jingfang, science fiction author and researcher; and Lu Qiaoying and Sabastian Sunday Grève, Assistant Professors at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking University.
The latest volume in the authoritative Dao Companion series has been published: David Elstein, ed., Dao Companion to Contemporary Confucian Philosophy (Springer, 2021). The editorial description:
This edited volume presents a comprehensive examination of contemporary Confucian philosophy from its roots in the late 19th century to the present day. It provides a thorough introduction to the major philosophers and topics in contemporary Confucian philosophy. The individual chapters study the central figures in 20th century Confucian philosophy in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as the important influences on recent Confucian philosophy. In addition, topical chapters focus on contemporary Confucian theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and views of human nature. The volume brings together scholars from around the world to provide a sound overview of the philosophy of the period and illustrate the important current debates. Confucian philosophy has been undergoing a revival in China for more than three decades, and this book presents the most significant work of the past century and more. By giving a detailed account of the philosophical positions involved, explaining the terminology of contemporary Confucian philosophy, and situating the views in their historical context, this volume enables the reader to understand what is at stake and evaluate the arguments.
The Table of Contents follows.
