Category Archives: Comparative philosophy

Song Reviews Li, “A History of Classical Chinese Thought” (Lambert, trans.)

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2020.06.17 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Li Zehou, A History of Classical Chinese Thought, Andrew Lambert (tr., intr.), Routledge, 2020, 353pp., $160.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780367230128.

Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College

It is a daunting task for me to review Li Zehou’s work, not least because while born in and always philosophizing about the same land, Li had entered his intellectual heyday in the 1980s when I was not yet a teenager. While reading Li’s work using Andrew Lambert’s stellar translation, I repeatedly asked myself: what is the difference between him and me regarding the approach to doing comparative Chinese philosophy? Why is there such a difference? What can I learn from him? And what inspirations can Li’s work generate globally.  Since there are English resources[1]that introduce Li’s thought, I won’t dwell on those questions. Instead, I will critique Li’s philosophy as presented in this book.

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New ISCWP Officers

On behalf of my colleagues on the 2020 International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) Election Committee, I am happy to formally announce that Prof. SUN Wei has been elected Vice President, and Prof. Mercedes Valmisa has been elected Secretary-Treasurer, both for three-year terms beginning on July 1, 2020. Congratulations to both!

Many thanks to our retiring President (Prof. PENG Guoxiang) and Secretary-Treasurer (Prof. Mat Foust) for all of their efforts on behalf of the ISCWP, and congratulations to our current Vice-President, who will automatically take over as President, Prof. Alexus McLeod!

With best wishes to all for healthy, restorative, and fruitful summers,

Steve

2019 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 are 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 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 revision and review, will be published in the last issue of Dao each year.

The selection process consists of two stages. At the beginning of each year, a nominating committee of at least three editorial 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 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 2019, and the award is given to:

Alexei Procyshyn and Mario Wenning, “Recognition and Trust: Hegel and Confucius on the Normative Basis of Ethical Life.” Dao 18 (2019): 1-22.

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Bliss reviews Ma and van Brakel, Beyond the Troubled Water of Shifei

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2020.05.15 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, Beyond the Troubled Water of Shifei: From Disputation to Walking-Two-Roads in the Zhuangzi, SUNY Press, 2019, 283pp., $32.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781438474823.

Reviewed by Ricki Bliss, Lehigh University

Interpretation is always underdetermined and indeterminate. It is underdetermined by the data and it is indeterminate because meaning doesn’t allow it to be any other way. Interpretation is by no means a hopeless enterprise, however. Necessary conditions on the activity of interpretation are: (i) the assumption, on the part of the interpreter, of the family resemblance of forms of life; (ii) the assumption that all general concepts and conceptual schemes in all languages are family resemblance concepts; and (iii) a principle of mutual attunement.

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New Book: Deparochializing Political Theory

Cambridge University Press has published Melissa Williams, ed.,
Deparochializing Political Theory — a terrific collection of essays. Here’s the editorial description:

In a world no longer centered on the West, what should political theory become? Although Western intellectual traditions continue to dominate academic journals and course syllabi in political theory, up-and-coming contributions of ‘comparative political theory’ are rapidly transforming the field. Deparochializing Political Theory creates a space for conversation amongst leading scholars who differ widely in their approaches to political theory. These scholars converge on the belief that we bear a collective responsibility to engage and support the transformation of political theory. In these exchanges, ‘deparochializing’ political theory emerges as an intellectual, educational and political practice that cuts across methodological approaches. Because it is also an intergenerational project, this book presses us to re-imagine our teaching and curriculum design. Bearing the marks of its beginnings in East Asia, Deparochializing Political Theory seeks to de-center Western thought and explore the evolving tasks of political theory in an age of global modernity.

More info is here, and the Table of Contents follows.

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APA Newsletter on Translating Chinese Philosophy

The latest APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies has been published and is available here. The contents:

From the Guest Editor
“The Timeliness of Translating Chinese Philosophy: An Introduction to the APA Newsletter Special Issue on Translating Chinese Philosophy,” Ben Hammer

Articles
“Preparing a New Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy,” Roger T. Ames

“The Impossibility of Literal Translation of Chinese Philosophical Texts into English,” Tian Chenshan

“Translating Today’s Chinese Masters,” Dimitra Amarantidou, Daniel Sarafinas, and Paul J. D’Ambrosio

“Three Thoughts on Translating Classical Chinese Philosophical Texts,” Edward L. Shaughnessy

“Introducing Premodern Text Translation: A New Field at the Crossroads of Sinology and Translation Studies,” Carl Gene Fordham