New Book: Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi

This valuable collection of illuminating analysis of skill stories from the Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Daoist text opens up new lines of inquiry in comparative East-West philosophical debates on skill, cultivation and mastery, as well as cross-disciplinary debates in psychology, cognitive science and philosophy.

Thanks to the editors of the series, PJ Ivanhoe, Sungmoon Kim and Eirik Lang Harris.

What a delight for Wai Wai Chiu and me to work with such amazing contributors: Frank Perkins, David Machek, Timothy Connolly, Romain Graziani, Steve Coutinho, Eric Schwitzgebel, James Sellman, Lisa Raphals, Chris Fraser, Wim De Reu, Albert Galvany, Chong Kim-chong and Hans-Georg Moeller.

https://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/skill_and_mastery/3-156-69c8f1cc-26a8-4f2f-93c9-c833de2da7a7

ISCWP Newsletter

The August 2019 ISCWP Newsletter has been published. This issue features:
1/Updates from several of the society’s members on their various activities
2/A call for panel/paper proposals and volunteers for the 2020 APA-Pacific Division Meeting in San Francisco
3/Notice of group sessions at the 2020 APA-Eastern Division Meeting in Philadelphia
4/Notice of group session at the 2020 APA-Central Division Meeting in Chicago
5/A call for dues and donations
This and past newsletters are available on the ISCWP web site at the following address:

http://www.iscwp.org/news.html

Three reviews in JAS

The most recent issue of the Journal of Asian Studies has reviews of three books of interest to readers of this blog:

  • Curie Virag reviews Michael Nylan, The Chinese Pleasure Book (Zone Books, 2018)
  • Yunte Huang reviews Haun Saussy, Translation as Citation: Zhuangzi Inside Out (Oxford, 2017)
  • Patrick Buck reviews Bryan Van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (Columbia, 2017)

New translation of Xinyu 新語

Just a quick announcement that Elisa Levi Sabattini and I are about to publish a new translation of Xinyu:

https://brill.com/view/title/56294?rskey=msXfbz&result=1

Also watch out for my new book on classical Chinese philosophy, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.  Since I’m not ashamed of self-promotion, I’ll be posting with details in due course.

New Books: Behuniak, Experiments in Intra-cultural Philosophy

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.

Continue reading →

New Book: The Wrong of Rudeness

Oxford University Press has now published Amy Olberding’s The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility 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 →