In this episode, we are joined by Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Eliaser Chair of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading scholar of early Chinese thought. Our conversation draws on his new book, Confucius: A New Tradition (Reaktion Books, 2026), and its striking portrayal of Confucius as a “ritual prodigy.” Through several passages from Book 10 of the Analects, we explore what ritual expertise involves, whether moral and practical wisdom can be innate, and how seemingly minor details of dress and conduct express or instantiate important social and ethical values. We also discuss Confucius’s participation in an exorcism ritual, changing interpretations of ghosts and spirits, and the famous story of Confucius’s reaction to the burning of his horse stables. Along the way, we consider how successive biographies and commentaries have continually reconstructed Confucius to address new philosophical and historical concerns. Continue reading →
Category Archives: Sinology
What is the Best Way to Cite Texts?
In this comment to a recent post, Bill Haines expressed frustration concerning how best to cite passages from texts like Mozi or Li Ji, and wondered if the readers of Warp, Weft, and Way might be able to uncover and then publicize some best practices. We have had some brief discussion of citing Ctext.org here, but a more general discussion would be great. Please share your thoughts!
Tao Jiang – Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Lecture: “Between Philosophy and History: The Challenge of Authorship to Classical Chinese Philosophy in the Western Academy”, Sep.23 @ 5:30pm
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: TAO JIANG (Rutgers University)
With responses from: ESKE MØLLGAARD (University of Rhode Island)
Please join us at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23rd at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“Between Philosophy and History: The Challenge of Authorship to Classical Chinese Philosophy in the Western Academy”
ABSTRACT: The tension between philosophical and historical inquiries has been a perennial problem. Within the modern academy, the disciplines of philosophy and history are protected by their respective institutional norm and practice, without much need for interaction. However, Chinese philosophy, situated between Sinology and philosophy in the western academy, has encountered extraordinary challenges from both Sinologists (most of whom are historians) and (Western) philosophers. At the root of the difficulty facing Chinese philosophy lies its very legitimacy, torn between the historicist orientation of Sinology and the presentist orientation of mainstream contemporary Western philosophy. Such divergent disciplinary norms have put scholars of Chinese philosophy in a difficult position. On the one hand, they have to defend the philosophical nature, or even the philosophical worthiness, of classical Chinese texts in front of contemporary Western philosophers whose interests tend to be more issue-driven and in the philosophical integrity of ideas, rather than the historicity of ideas. At the same time, these scholars of Chinese philosophy, when dealing with Sinologists, need to justify the basic premise of their philosophical approach to the classics due to the historical ambiguity and compositional instability of these texts. Continue reading →
New On-Line Collaborative Text/Translation Project
The Ten Thousand Rooms Project at Yale may well be of interest to readers. Funded by the Mellon Foundation and Yale, the project makes available sophisticated tools for on-line, collaborative projects to annotate and/or translate pre-modern Chinese texts. More information is at the project’s website.
A Report on “Philosophy of the Past: Early Chinese Philosophy in Context”
Philosophy of the Past: Early Chinese Philosophy in Context
Report by:
Tom Mazanec, Kay Duffy
On a chilly late-winter morning, as the sun pierced through leafless tree branches and the dotted snowscape melted into auguries of spring, a small band of scholars met in Princeton University’s Jones Hall to discuss methods for studying early Chinese philosophy.[1] Organized by two Princeton graduate students, Mercedes Valmisa and Sara Vantournhout, the conference drew approximately twenty-five attendees to hear four main presentations and several hours of lively debate. Martin Kern (Princeton) served as moderator for presentations by Carine Defoort (KU Leuven), Jane Geaney (University of Richmond), Mark Csikszentmihalyi (University of California, Berkeley), and Paul Goldin (University of Pennsylvania) on topics ranging across a wide variety of early texts, employing four distinct methodologies.
Thesaurus Linguae Sericae
Just added a link to this online tool in the ‘References & Tools’ link list. The description of the site reads: “An Historical and Comparative Encyclopaedia of Chinese Conceptual Schemes.” The General Editor of the site is: Christoph Harbsmeier 何莫邪; Associate Editor is: Jiang Shaoyu 蔣紹愚.
Here is the front matter you’ll encounter when you go to the site:
