Song Reviews Liu, Neo-Confucianism

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2019.03.33 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

JeeLoo Liu, Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, 316pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781118619414.

Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College

This book is clearly one of the greatest accomplishments among English Neo-Confucian philosophical studies in recent decades. JeeLoo Liu uses clear language and rigorous philosophical reasoning to analyze eight pivotal Neo-Confucian figures regarding three major areas: metaphysics, moral theory and moral practice. The book can be aptly used as both an introduction to Neo-Confucianism for beginners and a top reference for researchers, which is itself a rare achievement.

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New Book Series: Oxford Chinese Thought

Eric L. Hutton and I are very pleased to announce the launch of a new book series devoted exclusively to translations of Chinese philosophical and religious texts, Oxford Chinese Thought. The series will be published by Oxford University Press and, at least initially, all books will be released immediately into paperback. As most readers of this blog know, there is a vast body of philosophical and religious literature in Chinese and only the thinnest slice of it — barely a sliver — has been translated into English, which has created major obstacles to teaching and scholarship on Chinese thought, especially to teaching the post-classical thinkers in depth. Oxford Chinese Thought aims to address this longstanding challenge by providing high-quality English translations that are well suited for classroom use.

Translations are solicited by the series editors in consultation with the advisory board. We intend to focus primarily on post-Han texts that played significant roles in shaping Chinese thought. Continue reading →

Survey Request on English Translations of the Analects

Message from Professor Tao:

I am a professor of translation studies at Fudan University, Shanghai. This questionnaire is designed for my Fulbright project, investigating the feedback of English readers of translations of The Analects. If you are an academic scholar (graduate students included) in the West, whose working language is English, and have read the English version of The Analects of Confucius, please help, and answer each question. There are no right or wrong answers. After you complete the survey, please send me your email address to taoyoulan@hotmail.com, and I will reward you a $20 Amazon gift card. If you could accept a further interview with me please let me know. Feel free to contact me at 0086-13671600660 (or American cellphone 15715087149) if my questions are not clear. If you visit Shanghai I hope I can meet you there someday.

https://kent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cRTPj5t8is2QM1T

Thank you for your expertise, and taking time to complete the survey and participating in this study!

Youlan Tao

SKKU Conference on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Kantian Moral Theory

The Sungkyun Institute for Confucian Studies and East Asian Philosophy (SKKU) is delighted to announce that it will host an International Conference on the theme Confucianism, Buddhism, and Kantian Moral Theory, 6-7 September 2019 on the campus of Sunkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. This event is made possible by a generous grant from The American Council of Learned Societies with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

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CFP: “Paul Tillich and Ruism (Confucianism)”

The North American Paul Tillich Society is organizing a panel on “Paul Tillich and Ruism (Confucianism)” in its 2019 annual meeting at San Diego on Nov. 22nd, which takes place together with the 2019 annual meeting of American Academy of Religion.

Papers for this panel may bring any aspect of Tillich’s thought into conversation with concepts and/or figures from the Ru tradition. Constructive proposals are especially desired. We are looking forward to abstracts of 350 words of high quality, and will eventually accept 3-4 panelists. Submissions can be turned into Lawrence Whitney (lwhitney@bu.edu) before May 1st. Please click here for more information.

Kang accepts position at Washington and Lee

Li KANG writes to let us know that she has accepted a tenure-track offer from Washington and Lee University, and will be joining the Philosophy Department as an Assistant Professor starting in Fall of 2019. Her bio:

I got my philosophy degrees on three continents: a B.A. from Wuhan University (China), an M.Phil. from University of St Andrews (UK), and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University (US). From 2017 to 2019, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. My main areas of research are metaphysics and Chinese Buddhism. While half of my work involves developing views within the analytic tradition, the other half involves showing how the analytic tradition and non-Western traditions enrich each other. Currently, I am working on discovering and developing the metaphysics of Chinese Buddhism in relation to analytic philosophy and cognitive science.

Congratulations, Li!

Hongladarom Reviews Epistemology for the Rest of the World

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2019.03.30 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Masaharu Mizumoto, Stephen Stich, and Eric McCready (eds.), Epistemology for the Rest of the World, Oxford University Press, 2018, 295pp., $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780190865085.

Reviewed by Soraj Hongladarom, Chulalongkorn University

When I was a graduate student at the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana back in the 1980s, I took the program’s required epistemology course. What struck me then was that its content was very much tied to the English language. It was not exactly the kind of English that I studied in my English major classes back home, but a simple one focusing on only a few words. The main analysis was of sentences such as “S knows that p”. Naturally, I came across the famous paper by Edmund Gettier, and I remember that I spent a large amount of time figuring out what was going on. Somebody had a true and justified belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, but in the end, he does not know that. I wondered what was going on. So I translated the whole thing into Thai thinking that doing so might help me understand the whole thing better, but to no avail. To a normal Thai-speaking person it was strange to think that such a scenario could ever happen. I remember that I had to impose the strangeness of the situation onto my intuition of English. Since I am not a native speaker, I assumed that English speakers might have some kind of intuitive understanding of how the word ‘know’ was used.

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Timothy Connolly – Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Lecture: “Confucian Approaches to Intergenerational Ethics” Friday Mar 29 at 5:30pm

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes: Timothy Connolly (East Stroudsburg University)
With a response from: Susan Blake (Bard College)

Please join on us at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, March 29th at 5:30 PM for his lecture entitled:

Confucian Approaches to Intergenerational Ethics

ABSTRACT: Since Confucianism is an intergenerational phenomenon, it should have unique insights into ethical issues surrounding our obligations to future generations. Continue reading →

Call for Registration – Curing through Questioning: Philosophy as Therapy Across Ancient Traditions and Modern Applications

Call for Registration – Curing through Questioning: Philosophy as Therapy Across Ancient Traditions and Modern Applications

1st-2nd June 2019
Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre
Worcester College, University of Oxford

Registration is open for a two-day interdisciplinary conference – ‘Curing through Questioning: Philosophy as Therapy Across Ancient Traditions and Modern Applications’ – to take place on 1st-2nd June 2019 at the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Worcester College, University of Oxford.

We are glad to confirm the following invited speakers:

Amber D. Carpenter (Yale-NUS College)
Jessica Frazier (University of Oxford)
Barbara Jikai Gabrys (Zen Master in the Hakuin-Inzan line of the Rinzai tradition; University of Oxford)
Christopher Gill (University of Exeter)
Livia Kohn (Boston University)
Karyn Lai (University of New South Wales)
Graham Parkes (University of Vienna)
Graham Priest (City University of New York)
Katja Vogt (Columbia University)

Seven graduate/early career researchers selected through our CfA will also be giving papers:

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