Tragic passing of Prof. Young Kun Kim (CUNY)

It is with great sadness that I pass along this news.

Prof. Kim was a member of the doctoral faculty in political science at the CUNY Graduate Center for over four decades. His research was in comparative political thought. Many readers of this blog, especially those in the proximity of New York City, have likely interacted with him in the past, as he was a regular participant in the Columbia Neo-Confucian Seminar as well as the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy.

He was a generous colleague with a warm sense of humor and kind, encouraging words. To have him fall victim to such a heinous crime is heartbreaking. More information can be found at this link. Here is a statement from Prof. Kim’s family.

Our condolences to all those who knew him.

Ivanhoe Moving to SKK University in Korea

Philip J. Ivanhoe, currently Chair Professor of East Asian and Comparative Philosophy and Religion at City University of Hong Kong, has accepted the position of Distinguished Chair Professor in the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. He will assume this post on 15 November 2018. Among Professor Ivanhoe’s duties will be to serve as editor in chief of the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture at the Institute of Confucian Philosophy and Cultures and director of a new research center within the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy tentatively named the Confucian Institute for East Asian Philosophy (CIEAP).

Song Reviews Ivanhoe, Oneness

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2018.05.05 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Philip J. Ivanhoe, Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness, and How We are All Connected, Oxford University Press, 2017, 188 pp., $39.95, ISBN 9780190840518.

Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College

At the center of East Asian philosophical traditions lies a conception of oneness signifying that “we — and in particular our personal welfare or happiness — are inextricably intertwined with other people, creatures, and things,” which Ivanhoe calls the “oneness hypothesis.” (1) While drawing upon the writings of East Asian, especially neo-Confucian, thinkers to elucidate the conception of oneness, this book aims to show how these traditional views “can guide us in constructing contemporary versions of the oneness hypothesis.” (3) In an era when human civilization is constantly alarmed by ecological crisis and societal disintegration, this book has great appeal particularly to those who are willing to employ comparative philosophy to tackle these menacing issues.

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Weekly Articles of Interest (7 May 2018)

Only one article (outside of the standard journals) came to my attention this week:

Hagop Sarkissian, “Neo-Confucianism, experimental philosophy and the trouble with intuitive methods,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2018). Abstract below and here; available for free download here (NOTE: if you have free access to this journal through your institution, please access it that way, saving the 50 free downloads for those without institutional access).

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Joseph Chan to be Princeton Global Scholar

Joseph Chan (University of Hong Kong) has accepted an invitation to be a Global Scholar at Princeton University for the next three spring semesters, starting February 2019. He will be affiliated with the University Center for Human Values and teach one course in Confucian political philosophy in the Department of Politics.

Ernst Tugendhat and Daoism: Workshop in Taipei

On May 7 and 9, the philosophy department of NCCU in Taipei organizes a workshop on the German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat’s book “Egocentricity and Mysticism” (Columbia UP, 2016). One of its translators, Mario Wenning, will discuss with us the philosophical relevance of Tugendhat’s ideas, esp. his interpretation of Daoist and Buddhist teachings. If you happen to be in Taipei and are interested in the topic, please feel free to join our discussion. For all other details see the abstract in Chinese (below).

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A Note About Free Access to Individual Articles

I think it’s a great idea for authors to share “free access” — often limited to a certain number of downloads — with blog readers. As a glance at the map in the righthand sidebar reveals, people access this blog from all over the world, and many of them do not have institutional access to the journals in which we publish.

To keep things manageable, though, I suggest the following process. If the article for which you would like to provide free access is published in one of the journals whose Table of Contents I regularly post (see here), then please add a comment to the relevant ToC post, giving the information about downloading a free copy. If I have missed posting the ToC in question, then please remind me!

If your article is not in one of those journals, then when you tell me about the article (for the weekly digest), please also tell me about the free access information; or else, add it in a comment to the relevant weekly digest.