Category Archives: Comparative philosophy

Open-Rank Position in Chinese Philosophy at NCCU

The Department of Philosophy at National Chengchi University (Taipei, Taiwan) invites applications for a position of professor, associate professor, or assistant professor. Appointments are effective from August 1, 2016

Qualifications: Ph.D. in Philosophy or related fields. Applicants should be able to offer English and Chinese taught courses.

Specialization: Western Philosophy (Kant’s philosophy or German idealism preferred) or Chinese Philosophy (neo-Confucianism preferred)

Deadline: All application materials should be postmarked no later than April 6 (Wednesday), 2016.

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Papers for Rutgers Workshop; Final Call for Reservations

The website for our upcoming Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP), “Conversations with Western Philosophers,” is now live; see here. It contains a full program and links to the papers that will be presented. (One of them is password-protected and not available for general distribution, at the request of the author.) If you would like to attend, please RSVP immediately; the room is almost at capacity based on existing reservations.

Two New Books on Modern Chinese Philosophy

Two books in Brill’s “Modern Chinese Philosophy” series have recently been published:

Xiaoqing Diana Lin, Feng Youlan and Twentieth Century China: An Intellectual Biography

http://www.brill.com/products/book/feng-youlan-and-twentieth-century-china

King Pong Chiu,  Thomé H. Fang, Tang Junyi and Huayan Thought: A Confucian Appropriation of Buddhist Ideas in Response to Scientism in Twentieth-Century China

http://www.brill.com/products/book/thome-h-fang-tang-junyi-and-huayan-thought

Harvey Lederman – Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Lecture: “Weakness of the Will and Liangzhi in Wang Yangming”, Mar.18 @ 5:30pm

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes: HARVEY LEDERMAN (New York University)
With responses from: STEVE ANGLE (Wesleyan University)

Please join us at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, MARCH 18th at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:

“Weakness of the Will and Liangzhi in Wang Yangming”

This paper starts from Wang Shouren’s (王守仁, Yangming 陽明 1472-1529) doctrines concerning weakness of the will, with the aim of developing an interpretation of his theory of “intuition” (l ́ıangzh ̄ı 良知). Wang famously insisted on the “unity of knowledge and action” (知行合一). “Action” is understood in this claim as the subject’s affect; to act appropriately is to have the ethically appropriate affective response. In claiming that knowledge and action are one Wang claims that one form of weakness of the will is impossible: if one knows piety (for example), one is guaranteed to have a pious affective response, that is, to act piously. Wang held that humans have an innate capacity to respond to stimuli with ethically appropriate affect, and that the explanation of this capacity somehow involves the faculty of “intuition” (良知), the faculty by which one obtains moral knowledge. But how does intuition yield moral knowledge? And how does this knowledge guarantee that one will have the affect appropriate to the circumstances? Continue reading →

International Young Philosophers Roundtable at Oberlin

At its meeting this year at Oberlin College (July 13-17), the Society for Values in Higher Education will be hosting the International Young Philosophers Roundtable—an organization recently created by the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). The roundtable will be composed of 4-6 Chinese scholars and 4-6 Western scholars writing on the following topics in the broader area of Public Discourse:

1. Public Discourse and Civil Society

2. Disagreement

3. Relativism

4. Pluralism

5. Culture and Public Discourse

6. Religion and Public Discourse

7. Public Discourse in Chinese Philosophy

8. Public Discourse Across Cultures

9. Public Discourse and Cultural Psychology 

Scholars chosen for this symposium will submit papers by JUNE 1, allowing other participants to read them well in advance of the meeting. At the meeting, papers will be discussed and revised in order to prepare them for possible publication in a special issue of Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal. All participants are responsible for travel to Oberlin and room and board (costs approximately $550-650 for room and three meals per day). The registration fee for the conference ($200+), however, will be waived.

The topics listed were chosen to fit with the theme of this year’s SVHE meeting (The Politics of Dissent: Satire, Sarcasm, and Spite in Civil Society). If you know of anyone who might be interested in this symposium, please forward this e-mail to them. Inquiries should be directed to Eric Bain-Selbo (bain-selbo@svhe.org). There is no formal application process. Interested scholars simply need to contact Eric Bain-Selbo and provide a brief abstract of the paper they would submit.

Zarrow at Neo-Confucianism Seminar Tomorrow

The next session of the Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies (University Seminar #567) will convene March 4, Friday, 2016 from 3:30 to 5:30pm in the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

Peter Zarrow will present the paper “Utopianism and Moralities of the Self: Views of Chinese Radicals, 1900-1925.” 

All are welcome to attend.   Please feel free to forward this message to interested colleagues.  Please join us after the seminar for dinner at a location to be announced.

Looking ahead to April, our April speaker will be Brook Ziporyn.  To avoid conflicting with the annual AAS conference, the April 2016 meeting will convene on April 22.