The Sungkyun Institute for Confucian Studies and East Asian Philosophy (SICEP) at Sungkyunkwan University will be hosting an international conference on September 6-7th, featuring the title: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Kantian Moral Theory.
For further details, please see here for the poster and the webpage.
SUNY Press has published Shaun O’Dwyer, Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment. SUNY’s website is here.
The publisher’s blurb: In Confucianism’s Prospects, Shaun O’Dwyer offers a rare critical engagement with English-language scholarship on Confucianism. Against the background of historical and sociological research into the rapid modernization of East Asian societies, O’Dwyer reviews several key Confucian ethical ideas and proposals for East Asian alternatives to liberal democracy that have emerged from this scholarship. He also puts the following question to Confucian scholars: what prospects do those ideas and proposals have in East Asian societies in which liberal democracy and pluralism are well established, and individualization and declining fertility are impacting deeply upon family life? In making his case, O’Dwyer draws upon the neglected work of Japanese philosophers and intellectuals who were witnesses to Japan’s pioneering East Asian modernization and protagonists in the rise and disastrous wartime fall of its own modernized Confucianism. He contests a sometimes Sinocentric and ahistorical conception of East Asian societies as “Confucian societies,” while also recognizing that Confucian traditions can contribute importantly to global philosophical dialogue and to civic and religious life.
SUNY has brought out a major work by Jim Behuniak: John Dewey and Daoist Thought: Experiments in Intra-cultural Philosophy, Volume One and John Dewey and Confucian Thought Experiments in Intra-cultural Philosophy, Volume Two.
There is also a significant savings in buying the two volume set; see here. Congratulations, Jim! Summaries follow.
Volume One:
In this timely and original work, Dewey’s late-period “cultural turn” is recovered and “intra-cultural philosophy” proposed as its next logical step—a step beyond what is commonly known as comparative philosophy. The first of two volumes, John Dewey and Daoist Thought argues that early Chinese thought is poised to join forces with Dewey in meeting our most urgent cultural needs: namely, helping us to correct our outdated Greek-medieval assumptions, especially where these result in pre-Darwinian inferences about the world.
Oxford University Press has now published Amy Olberding’s The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern C
ivility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy.
A short description follows. I also recommend that people look at the brief blog entry that introduces some major themes and the remarkable first-person approach of the book to these issues. Anyone familiar with the look-to-oneself-first methodology and tenor of so much Confucian reflection will particularly appreciate this approach, and it makes the book all the more compelling reading as well.
Description:
In a time of fractious politics, being rude can feel wickedly gratifying, while being polite can feel simple-minded or willfully naïve. Do manners and civility even matter now? Is it worthwhile to make the effort to be polite? When rudeness has become routine and commonplace, why bother? When so much of public and social life with others is painful and bitterly acrimonious, why should anyone be polite? Continue reading →
The Centre of East Asian and Comparative Philosophy of City University of Hong Kong is hosting a public seminar on 19 August, 2019, titled: “Can Confucianism Meet Contemporary Challenges in Hong Kong?” The speaker is professor Baogang He from Deakin University, Australia. For more information, please see the event flyer here.
Sam Crane has just published “Prolegomenon to a Theory of Philosophical Transposition, with Reference to Confucianism in America” in Metaphilosophy 50:4. I’ve pasted the abstract below.
The May 2020 issue will be dedicated to Vietnamese Confucianism, including its religious traditions, official ideologies and specific philosophical approaches.
The revitalization of the Confucian traditions during the 20th century has assumed increasing relevance and significance in recent decades. Today, the revival of these complex philosophical heritages belongs to the most important theoretical currents in contemporary East Asian theory. In this context, the term East Asia does not refer to a geographic or geo-political, but rather to a cultural zone, namely a zone that is defined through various common cultural heritages, especially through the common Confucian ideational tradition. In this cultural context, Vietnam, for instance, is also part of Eastern Asia, although in a strictly geographic sense it belongs to Southeast Asia.
The latest issue of Asian Philosophy (Volume 29, Number 2, 3 April 2019) has been published. See here or below for the Table of Contents.
My guess, really just a guess, is that the discussion of role ethics or relational ethics might benefit from some direct attention to a couple of fallacies available for commission—one minor, one major. I don’t know whether they’re actually committed or directly discussed in the literature. Possible examples of each can be found in Henry Rosemont’s essay “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons” (in Mary Bockover, ed., Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, Open Court 1991, pp. 71-101). I’ll make that my text. I don’t understand it.
A brief article from the South China Morning Post that is relevant for anyone interested in the uses and abuses of Confucianism in the modern world: “China runs Confucian culture courses for religious leaders in bid to boost control.”
