Confucian Political Philosophy a Hot Topic in 2014

According to the Guangming Daily, “the interpretation of Confucian political philosophy” was one of the ten “hot” areas within Chinese academia in 2014. According to the newspaper’s staff, one of the key questions that scholars sought to answer was “What conceptual resources does the Confucian tradition have that can assist with the design of institutions in today’s China 儒家传统对今日中国之制度设计有哪些可资借鉴的思想资源?” For those with Chinese, some more details, and the other nine hot areas, are below. (It is item 3 on the list.)

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Hansen’s MOOC on edX

Chad Hansen has created a MOOC on edX called “Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought,” available here. Here is some copy from the course description:

Think along with Classical Chinese masters as they explore and debate how and where we can find ethical guidance in nature.

We make ethical or behaviour guiding right / wrong judgments all the time but have you ever wondered where Ethics comes from, what it is about and why it is important? This course provides an introduction to traditional Chinese ethical thought and focuses on the pervasive contrast in the way Chinese and Westerners think about ethical guidance or guidance concerning what is right and what is wrong, good or bad.  Traditional Western orthodoxy uses the metaphor of a law – in its most familiar popular form, the command of a supernatural being backed by a threat of eternal punishment or reward – to explain ethical guidance. The Classical Chinese philosophers by contrast were all naturalists. They talked about ethical guidance using a path metaphor – a natural dào…

Publication of volume: Masters of Disguise? – Conceptions and Misconceptions of ‘Rhetoric’ in Chinese Antiquity

The volume Masters of Disguise? – Conceptions and Misconceptions of ‘Rhetoric’ in Chinese Antiquity, edited by Wolfgang Behr and Lisa Indraccolo, has recently been published in a special issue of Asiatische Studien/ Études Asiatiques.

It can be accessed through http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/asia.2014.68.issue-4/issue-files/asia.2014.68.issue-4.xml for those who have access to DeGruyter online, and the contents page & introduction of the volume can be found under https://uzh.academia.edu/WolfgangBehr/Books.

A plaintext version of the contents follows below.

AUF AUGENHÖHE — FESTSCHRIFT ZUM 65. GEBURTSTAG VON HEINER ROETZ

Please see below a message from Prof. Wolfgang Behr, University of Zurich.

***

Dear colleagues,

two days ago, Heiner Roetz turned 65 and was presented –to his great
surprise and visible pleasure!– with a Festschrift entitled “Auf
Augenhöhe” by some of his former students and current colleagues. Since
it contains quite a few articles on Chinese philosophy, especially for
those of you who read German, I am reproducing the table of contents
below.

Pages 5-38, including a tabula gratulatoria, a short appreciation and
full bibliography of Heiner Roetz’ work are available as PDFs here:
https://uzh.academia.edu/WolfgangBehr/Books

Best,
Wolfgang

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New “Traditional Culture” Textbooks in China

China Daily reports: “A series of textbooks featuring gems of traditional Chinese culture, including Analects of Confucius and The Art of War, will be used by primary and middle school students across China, reported Beijing Daily. The new textbooks, compiled by China Center of Traditional Culture, aim to cultivate youngsters’ values and characters by teaching them Confucian classics, poems, Chinese medicine and the like….”

See: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-01/07/content_19262804.htm