Valmisa Dissertation Information

Mercedes Valmisa asked me to post the below information about her recently defended dissertation; congratulations, Mercedes! Her dissertation is available for download through ProQuest and Academia.edu, and anyone who is interested can also contact her to get a copy (regatular@gmail.com or mvalmisa@princeton.edu).

Changing Along with the World: Adaptive Agency in Early China
Mercedes Valmisa
Dissertation Adviser: Willard Peterson
Committee: Martin Kern, Melissa Lane, Franklin Perkins

Abstract

One of the major philosophical problems in Early China was the relationship between the person and the world, and in particular, how to act in relation to the world. This dissertation addresses the problem of agency in Early China, and pursues three main guiding questions: how to act efficaciously in different situations, how to cope with uncertainty and unpredictability in ordinary life, and how to achieve control and freedom.

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CFP: SACP at 2018 Eastern APA

CALL FOR PAPER AND PANEL PROPOSALS

2018 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association
January 3-6th, 2018. Savannah Convention Center, Savannah, GA.

Submission deadline: June 16th, 2017

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) group sessions at the 2018 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA).

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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!Mending Clothes - Ming cropped

Huang asking for help on Confucian Political Philosophy course

Yong HUANG asked me to post the following here; please post comments/replies here, addressed to him.

Inspired by a similar project that Steve Angle did a few years ago (on which see here, for the original plan, and here, for the outcome), I plan to offer a graduate level course on recent studies of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world this fall. To have a better focus, I tentatively plan to limit it to Confucian political philosophy. At the end of the semester, each student will be required to write a substantive critical essay on the book he or she chooses to write. I’ll invite those students of high quality papers to do revision until I deem them publishable. Then I’ll invite authors of the books discussed to make responses to these papers. I’ll then seek a publisher to publish these papers, together with authors’ responses, tentatively with the title: Confucian Political Philosophy: The State of the Field.

After a quick search at Amazon, I’ve got the following list of books more or less explicitly devoted to Confucian political philosophy (I don’t include the edited volumes). Here I solicit your help to see whether I’ve missed some other books on Confucian political philosophy published in English since, say, the year of 2000. I’ll be also grateful, of course, if you guys have any other suggestions regarding what I plan to do in this course.

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Olberding on the Confucian role for etiquette in resisting injustice

Amy Olberding’s “The Moral Gravity of Mere Trifles” at LSE’s The Forum. She begins:

“Some of the most heated critiques of etiquette emphasize a tension between progressive political values and conformity to polite norms. Insistence on polite rules of interaction may, so the worry goes, stifle righteous dissent, suppress critique of the powerful, and mire us all in hidebound tradition. Better to forcefully call out injustice when we see it than abide by polite rules that sacrifice moral progress to surface social accord. In these critiques, etiquette can seem an enemy of salutary change and a barrier to justice. This reasoning, the early Confucians would argue, misses much about how etiquette works and what it contributes to moral life….”