Category Archives: Comparative Political Theory

Book talk with Melissa Williams

Book talk with Melissa Williams, Co-Editor of East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide

Monday, April 3, 2017, 4:15pm to 5:30pm; Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Suite 200N, 124 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge

Join us for a discussion with Melissa Williams, Professor of Political Science, and founding Director of the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, Senior Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Editor of “East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide“, and Tongdong Bai, the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University in China and Berggruen Fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Archon Fung, Academic Dean and Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship, HKS, will moderate.

Co-Authored Essay “In Defense of Hierarchy” at Aeon

A new essay called “In Defense of Hierarchy,” the joint responsibility of several of us but largely written by Julian Baggini, has been published at Aeon. It is the fruit of discussions at a conference sponsored by the Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center, and is an interesting example of comparative or what some folks are now calling cosmopolitan philosophy. Enjoy!

Angle reviews Kim, Public Reason Confucianism

My review of Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge, 2016) recently appeared in Ethics 127:3. The first paragraph of the review follows. A pre-publication version of the whole review is available here.
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CFP: MANCEPT workshop: Confucian Political Theory

Manchester Workshops for Political Theory, Monday 11 September to Wednesday 13 September, 2017

Conveners: Elton Chan (Yale-NUS College), Larry Lai (University of Hong Kong) and Baldwin Wong (Chinese University of Hong Kong) 

Venue: Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester

Abstracts of 500-1000 words, prepared for blind review, are due by 26th May, 2017; see below for further details.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest among Anglo-American political theorists in comparing the diverse ways of how the Western and Chinese thinkers address political issues.

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Perkins Reviews Harris, The Shenzi Fragments

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2017.03.05 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Eirik Lang Harris, The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation, Columbia University Press, 2016, 173pp., $55.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780231177665.

Reviewed by Franklin Perkins, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

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Wang Hui et al on Contemporary China (Harvard)

Thursday, February 23, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Liberalism, Globalization, Populism and Nationalism in the World Today
Wang Hui, Professor of literature and history at Tsinghua University
David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Harvard University
Malika Zeghal, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life, Harvard University
Mahdav Khosla, B. R. Ambedkar Academic Fellow, Columbia Law School and Ph.D. candidate in political theory, Harvard University.
James Kloppenberg, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Harvard University
Moderator: Peter Bol, Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
S010, Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge

New Draft Essay on Human Rights and Chinese Tradition

I have recently completed a draft chapter, titled “Human Rights and Chinese Tradition,” for the Handbook on human rights in China being edited by Sarah Biddulph and Joshua Rosenzweig. Anyone interested can take a look; I have uploaded it to my personal archive here. Comments are very welcome!