The 2015 ACPA Newsletter has been published, and can be accessed via their website at: http://www.acpa-net.org/news.html.
NECCT 4 Call for Abstracts
We hereby request submissions of abstracts for the Fourth Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought (NECCT), to be held at Southern Connecticut State University on Saturday and Sunday, November 7-8, 2015.
Interested scholars should send an abstract of no more than one single-spaced page, plus a current CV, to Tom Radice (radicet1@southernct.edu) and Xiaomei Yang (yangx1@southernct.edu) no later than June 1, 2015. All files should either be in Word or .pdf format.
MARKUS: A great tool for classical Chinese texts
MARKUS is an on-line tool that allows users to upload a file in classical Chinese and tag personal names, place names, temporal references, and bureaucratic offices automatically, and that’s just for starters. It looks powerful and helpful; check it out here. Hilde de Weerdt describes some recent updates to MARKUS here.
NEH and SEP
I recently received a letter from the editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), suggesting that those who have benefitted from the NEH’s support for SEP might tell the nEH this, as part of the 50th anniversary of the NEH. Given SEP’s openness to non-Western philosophy, I thought this idea was a good one, and wanted to share the letter here, and encourage others to write to NEH as well!
New MOOC on Confucianism
Prof. Alan Chan of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore is currently working on a six-week MOOC on Confucian Philosophy. The course is now open for registration on Coursera, and will begin on 28 Sep 2015. More details of the MOOC can be found here: https://www.coursera.org/course/ntucp.
APA Pacific Commentator Needed
Due to some unexpected conflicts, the ACPA now needs another commentator for one of its sessions at APA Pacific 2015 (G7B: Ethics and Meaning of Life in Confuican and Daoist Philosophy, April 3, Friday evening 7-10pm). The paper is: Sean Drysdale Walsh (University of Minnesota Duluth), “Mencius and Aristotle on the Negative Duty to Flourish.” If anyone would be interested in commentating Prof. Walsh’s paper, please contact Huaiyu Wang as soon as possible.
NECCT 4 Information
The 4th Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought (NECCT) will be held on November 7 – 8, 2015 at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, CT. It will be co-sponsored with Yale’s Center for East Asian Studies and Wesleyan’s College of East Asian Studies. Expect an official call for abstracts in the near future.
Weingarten review of Dissertation on Motherhood in Early China
Oliver Weingarten’s review of Smadar Winter’s University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, “Motherhood in Early China,” is available online. A couple highlights (from the review, not the dissertation itself):
- “…An example of her disagreement with earlier scholarship is her response to attempts by Catherine Despeux and Livia Kohn to highlight the “prominence of motherhood” in the Laozi 老子. Winter counters this claim with a well-conceived alternative reading that argues for the secondary importance of motherhood in the text.”
- “…In her conclusion, Winter revisits debates about two paradigms in the gender history of early China: “woman as victim” and “woman as agent.” While she acknowledges the importance of the latter, she reminds her readers that “women’s agency was always defined in the service of male interests.” (p. 215) To acknowledge this is crucial so as to not to forget the “forms of oppression from which early Chinese women have suffered.” Consequently, Winter argues against “a neutral-to-positive tone which seems to be saying: Yes, there was oppression, but women were still able to lead meaningful lives and fulfill their humanity in the roles that subordinated them.” (p. 216)”
Sung in NDPR on Hutton’s Xunzi
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2015.03.16 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
Xunzi, Xunzi: The Complete Text, Eric L. Hutton (tr.), Princeton University Press, 2014, xxxi+ 397pp., $39.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780691161044.
Reviewed by Winnie Sung, Nanyang Technological University
David Elstein – Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Lecture: “The Possibility of a Confucian Doctrine of Free Expression”, Mar. 27 @5:30pm
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: DAVID ELSTEIN (SUNY New Paltz)
With responses from: WARREN FRISINA (Hofstra University)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, MARCH 27 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“The Possibility of a Confucian Doctrine of Free Expression“
ABSTRACT: Most contemporary New Confucian advocates for democracy take a robust right of free expression for granted as a necessary condition for democratic practice. Yet whether or how Confucianism can justify such a right is often passed over without much analysis. On the face of it, the case does not look good. Classical Confucians of course do not mention any such right, and what they do say is generally neutral or outright hostile to free expression. Various limitations on free expression have also been endorsed by later Confucians, including some contemporary thinkers. The usual liberal justifications of free expression as protecting individual autonomy and preserving access to truth probably will not work for Confucians. For one thing, autonomy is not valued in the same way as in liberalism. Second, Confucians have generally been confident that truth and falsehood can be reliably distinguished by the more enlightened and there is not much to be gained by allowing the persistence of obviously false doctrines. The bigger concern is the harm false doctrines can cause. In this paper I will examine Confucian opposition to free expression, where Confucians will disagree with liberal views, and consider whether Confucianism can justify free expression along with how the Confucian right may differ in application. Continue reading →
