A website with the schedule and more information about the “1st Oxford Symposium on Comparative Political Philosophy” is now live: see here!
Category Archives: Comparative philosophy
Philosophy as a Way of Life website goes live
I am excited to announce that the Philosophy as a Way of Life website is now live at https://philife.nd.edu/. There is information there about the Mellon-funded PWOL project hosted at Notre Dame, and also a blog and library of resources, both of which are sure to grow over time. Check it out!
Behuniak Reviews Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China
Jim Behuniak has published a review in Dao — currently “Online First” — of Ted Slingerland’s new book, Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (OUP, 2019). The full review is available (I believe; this might only be for 50 people?) here: https://rdcu.be/buskr. The opening of the review:
I would like to confess my bias at the outset. Before even reading this book, I was predisposed to report that it was brilliant. Edward Slingerland’s cross-disciplinary work in the fields of Chinese philosophy, cognitive science, and metaphor—plus his contributions with respect to consilience in the humanities and natural sciences—establish him as a singularly important scholar and one that we are lucky to have as a contemporary. His 2008 work, What Science Offers the Humanities, was instrumental in shaping my own philosophical approach in two books that will soon be going to press. I regret not giving Slingerland more credit in those pages….
The problem with Slingerland’s work, however, is that it tends to have two distinct components: one positive, one negative. The positive generates real insights. The negative, however, generates unfair criticisms by hastily identifying specific individuals with large-scale, odoriferous tendencies “in our field.” When challenged on this practice, Slingerland will apologize, acknowledge his “inaccuracies,” admit to his own “sloppiness,” and retreat (see Slingerland, “Reply to Prof. Moeller’s Response,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10.4 [2011]: 537–539). In the present volume, given the sheer number of us implicated, mending fences might prove a little more difficult….
Mills Reviews Dorter, Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts?
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2019.04.14 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
Kenneth Dorter, Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts?: A Comparative Study in Metaphysics and Ethics, University of Notre Dame Press, 2018, 276pp., $50.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780268103538.
Reviewed by Ethan Mills, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Philosophers specializing in non-Western traditions today face a dilemma. On one hand, the virtues of encouraging non-specialists to engage with non-Western material are obvious: it enhances collegiality between specializations, opens up philosophically fertile comparisons, and creates more visibility for non-Western traditions among our mono-cultural colleagues. On the other hand, there are risks of non-specialist engagement with non-Western material: linguistic limitations, less familiarity with contemporary scholarship, lack of understanding of cultural and philosophical context, and a tendency to make sweeping pronouncements about non-Western traditions based on limited exposure.
Symposium at Oxford on Pluralising Philosophy
Pluralising Philosophy: Learning From the Case of Chinese Thought
Sunday 23 June 2019
Lecture Room (2nd Floor), Faculty of Philosophy, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter 555, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG

There are increasing calls to pluralise philosophy: to look beyond the parochial, the colonial, the exclusive. This one-day symposium jointly organised by Minorities and Philosophy Oxford and Philiminality Oxford brings together three leading philosophers to explore the tensions within “canonical”/”Western” philosophy regarding the status of “non-Western” philosophies, with a particular focus on the case of Chinese thought.
ToC: Comparative Philosophy 10:1 (January 2019)
Here is information on the current issue (volume 10 no. 1 / 2019 issue) of the peer-reviewed, open-access international journal Comparative Philosophy (ISSN 2151-6014), which came out in January 2019. This is also a special issue celebrating the 10th anniversary of the journal. Full text is available at the journal website www.comparativephilosophy.org.
ToC: Asian Philosophy, Volume 29, Number 1, 2 January 2019
The latest issue of Asian Philosophy (Volume 29, Number 1, 2 January 2019) has been published. See here or below for the Table of Contents.
Song Reviews Liu, Neo-Confucianism
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2019.03.33 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
JeeLoo Liu, Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, 316pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781118619414.
Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College
This book is clearly one of the greatest accomplishments among English Neo-Confucian philosophical studies in recent decades. JeeLoo Liu uses clear language and rigorous philosophical reasoning to analyze eight pivotal Neo-Confucian figures regarding three major areas: metaphysics, moral theory and moral practice. The book can be aptly used as both an introduction to Neo-Confucianism for beginners and a top reference for researchers, which is itself a rare achievement.
SKKU Conference on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Kantian Moral Theory
The Sungkyun Institute for Confucian Studies and East Asian Philosophy (SKKU) is delighted to announce that it will host an International Conference on the theme Confucianism, Buddhism, and Kantian Moral Theory, 6-7 September 2019 on the campus of Sunkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. This event is made possible by a generous grant from The American Council of Learned Societies with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
Kang accepts position at Washington and Lee
Li KANG writes to let us know that she has accepted a tenure-track offer from Washington and Lee University, and will be joining the Philosophy Department as an Assistant Professor starting in Fall of 2019. Her bio:
I got my philosophy degrees on three continents: a B.A. from Wuhan University (China), an M.Phil. from University of St Andrews (UK), and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University (US). From 2017 to 2019, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. My main areas of research are metaphysics and Chinese Buddhism. While half of my work involves developing views within the analytic tradition, the other half involves showing how the analytic tradition and non-Western traditions enrich each other. Currently, I am working on discovering and developing the metaphysics of Chinese Buddhism in relation to analytic philosophy and cognitive science.
Congratulations, Li!
