Bin Song, who holds a PhD in Western philosophy from Nankai University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Religious Studies at Boston University, has begun a series of blog posts in the Huffington Post under the general title, “A Catechism of Confucianism.” As he explains there, “as a Buddhist-Christian Confucian, the primary focus of Bin Song’s spiritual and academic life is to increase the relevance of traditional Confucianism to the contemporary global human society through a on-going dialogue with ordinary people, a variety of philosophical traditions, and non-Confucian world religions.”
Experimental Philosophy Through History – February 2, 2016 at NYU
Many of you know me as a scholar of Chinese philosophy. But I also have research interests that I pursue through the methods of experimental philosophy, which seeks to investigate philosophical questions through the methods of the empirical sciences (in my case, experimental psychology).
I’m co-organizing this workshop with Joshua Knobe and Kevin Tobia (Yale), which will concern (as its name implies) questions at the intersection of history of philosophy and experimental philosophy. It seems that many of the questions that have arisen recently in debates about experimental philosophy have also been discussed in other periods in the history of philosophy, including general issues surrounding armchair and experimental approaches to philosophy. We thought it would be helpful to hold a workshop in which scholars working in the history of philosophy could discuss these issues.
In my presentation, I will be outlining the ways in which this basic dynamic has played out in some periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. Continue reading →
Ziporyn Blogging at Huff Post
Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, has recently been blogging at the Huffington Post. His most recent piece is titled “Death and the Atheist Mystic: Zhuangzi’s Last Words.” Check it out!
Junior Research Fellow in Manuscript and Text Cultures
Queen’s College (Oxford) has recently announced a Junior Research Fellow in Manuscript and Text Cultures, and invites applications from graduates of any university for election to a three-year post-doctoral position as a Junior Research Fellow in Manuscript and Text Cultures, with a research specialism in knowledge-production and text-transmission in pre-modern literate societies. See here for more information.
2016 Summer School program at CEU on Comparative Philosophy
What Makes Us Human? Philosophical and Religious Perspectives in China and the West
Central European University (CEU) Summer School, July 4, 2016 – July 15, 2016, Budapest, Hungary
Application deadline is February 14, 2016; more information can be found here. (Participating faculty with expertise in East Asian thought include Curie Virág, Chris Fraser, and Donald Harper.)
AAS CIAC Small Grants
The China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC) of the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) has a Small Grant program that funds projects with up to $2,000. The application deadline is February 1, 2016, and details are here.
New Book – Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy
Alexus McLeod’s new book Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy: A Comparative Approach has been released by Rowman and Littlefield International (part of the new “Critical Inquiries in Comparative Philosophy” series). The book deals with contemporary debates surrounding truth in early Chinese thought, as well as investigates conceptions of truth in the early Chinese texts themselves, from the Warring States through Eastern Han period. More information here: [http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/theories-of-truth-in-chinese-philosophy].
Alexus is currently at Colorado State University but will be moving to the University of Connecticut starting in the Fall term of 2016.
12th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought (CFP)
12th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
The University of Chicago
March 11-12, 2016
The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. Submissions are invited for papers on any aspect of Chinese thought, as well as papers dealing with comparative issues that engage Chinese perspectives.
This year’s conference will be held on Friday, March 11 and Saturday, March 12 at the University of Chicago. Our keynote speaker will be Chad Hansen, Chair Professor of Chinese Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Hong Kong.
Professor Hansen will discuss classical Chinese ethical naturalism, which elaborates dao (ways, paths) as its focal normative metaphor. Extending his career-long argument that Daoist texts ground normativity in emergent natural contexts, he will present a broadly Zhuangist response to the is-ought problem and moral anti-realism. Modern science does not dispel the mystery of natural ways, but only demarcates more clearly their boundaries. Natural ways include normatively-laden social practices, and seeing those practices as part of nature does not rule out our finding, choosing, constructing and following them correctly. Such a stance does render normative relativism likely and skepticism a constant threat, but this fact need neither paralyze us nor undermine our free and easy pursuit of dao in a rich and complex natural context.
Please submit a 1-page abstract to Stephen Walker at scwalker@uchicago.edu by January 15, 2016 for blind review. For more information, visit the conference website here.
ICCC Journal welcomes submissions
International Communication of Chinese Culture (ICCC) is a cross-disciplinary journal in the areas of China Studies, Communication, and Cultural Studies. The journal is committed to publishing high-quality research on the analysis, communication, perception and representation of Chinese culture within China and in the world. ICCC invites authors to submit original research articles and provide new critical perspectives on what constitutes Chinese culture, how Chinese culture has taken shape in various forms and through different means and media, and its interactions and exchanges with other cultures in both historical and contemporary contexts. Manuscripts on other related areas are also welcomed. ICCC also features cultural critiques, reports, and book reviews. ICCC publishes in English. All articles will be double-blind peer-reviewed.
NEH Summer Institute: Confucian Asia
This multidisciplinary program, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, will offer five weeks of context-rich and critical engagement with Confucian teachings, practices and primary texts (in translation), examining how they have shaped and been shaped by the cultures and societies of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The program will consider how Confucianism addressed both personal and social needs in ways that were inseparable from the dynamics of intellectual exchange, artistic production, social organization and politics.
