Obryk Reviews Lan, Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric

From the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Version at BMCR home site):

Haixia W. Lan, Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth: The Form and the Way. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 228. ISBN 978147287360. $149.95.

Reviewed by Matylda Amat Obryk, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf (matylda.amat.obryk@uni-duesseldorf.de)

Publisher’s Preview

In Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth. The Form and the Way, Haixia Lan (henceforth Lan), a specialist in the field of comparative rhetoric, follows the latest trend of comparing Aristotle’s and Confucius’ thought.1 Her objective is quite ambitious. The author wants to “to help foster better communication between East and West today”. To achieve this she challenges the view that Eastern and Western thought differ beyond comparison. She fights against stereotypical assumptions that e.g. Aristotle’s concept of essence (which Lan conflates with “truth”) is static and Confucius’ dao-the-way is decentered and therefore incompatible with inferential / discursive thinking (cf. p. 14).

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New Book: Manifestos for World Thought

Rowman & Littlefield has published Lucian Stone and Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, eds., Manifestos for World Thought. The publisher’s description:

This book brings together prominent scholars from varying disciplines to speculate on this obscure question and the many crossroads that face intellectuals in our contemporary era and its aftermath. The result is a collection of “manifestos” that contemplate a potential global future for thinking itself, venturing across some of the most marginalized sectors of East and West (with particular emphasis on the Middle Eastern and Islamicate) in order to dissect crucial issues of culture, society, philosophy, literature, art, religion, and politics. The book explores themes such as as universality, translation, modernity, language, history, identity, resistance, ecology, catastrophe, memory, and the body, offering a groundbreaking alignment of texts and ideas with far-reaching implications for our time and beyond.

More information (including a Table of Contents) is available here.

CFP: NECCT / MCCT

Northeast/Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
April 27-29, 2018
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

The sixth annual Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought and the 14th annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought will be holding their first ever joint conference from Friday, April 27 through Sunday, April 29 2018, at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, CT.

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Crane on Xi Jinping and Classical Chinese Philosophy

Sam Crane has published an essay called “Philosopher King: The classical philosophy that Xi Jinping ignores” via the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. It opens:

In his first five-year term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping regularly cited classical Chinese philosophy in order to bolster his image as a man of learning and virtue. In May 2014, he implied his own rectitude by invoking Confucius in Analects 15.1 at a meeting of young people: “The noble man considers righteousness essential.” Although we’ve been hearing more Marxism in connection to Xi’s name of late, there is good reason to believe he will continue to reach for a neo-traditionalist brand of political legitimation over the next five years. But his apparent erudition is selective….