New Book – Nothingness in Asian Philosophy

Nothingness in Asian Philosophy – Routledge 2014

by Douglas Berger (editor) & Jeeloo Liu (editor)

From the Description at Amazon:

“A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions—including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of “nothingness” must play a primary role.”

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“Short Course” at APSA on Teaching Chinese and Islamic/Arab Political Thought

This should be of interest both to anyone attending the American Political Science Association meetings this coming fall, and also those of us in other fields who might want to try something similar at our own disciplinary meetings. Does the APA ever have such “short courses”? If you have any questions about the course, please contact Professor Browers.

Deparochializing Political Theory: How to Teach Chinese and Islamic/Arab Political Thought

Wednesday August 27, 1:30-5:30pm

APSA Annual Conference, Washington, DC (exact location TBA)

Michaelle L. Browers, Wake Forest University; Loubna El-Amine, Georgetown University

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Conference: Philosophical Method in Chinese and German Philosophy

International Conference:

Philosophical Method in Chinese and German Philosophy.

Conference at Akademie für Politische Bildung Tutzing in Cooperation with Gesellschaft für Interkulturelle Philosophie (GIP e.V.), the University of Cologne, and Sihai Confucius Academy, Beiing, from Juli 1st to July 4th.

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New Newsletter from APA’s Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophy and Philosophers

APA Newsletters, Spring 2014 (Volume 13, Number 2)

Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies
From the Guest Editor, “The CAAAPP Year in Review: New Trends in Asian Philosophy and Postcolonial Theory,” Leah Kalmanson
Articles
“Expressing Conventional Truths,” Amy Donahue
“Gandhi’s Satyagraha: Reinterpreting Satyakriya (Act of Truth) as a Political Strategy,” Veena Rani Howard
“The Concept of Minjung: Inventing “a People to Come,” Boram Jeong
“Populism, Pueblos, and Plutocracy: Notes on Radical Democracy from Latin America,” Grant Silva
Announcements
“Announcement on the Society for Teaching Comparative Philosophy,” Sarah Mattice

Nomination Deadline Approaching

The American Philosophical Association deadline for committee nominations is MAY 31, 2014. There are a couple of openings on the Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies committee. If you are an APA member and you would like to nominate someone — yourself or someone other than yourself — for the committee, visit this site: https://nominations.apaonline.org/. Note that you must log into the site using your APA online username and password in order to enter a name and select a committee.

Julie Lee Wei’s Translation of Nineteen Lectures Now Available

Julie Lee Wei, who has been embroiled in a long-running copyright dispute over her translation of Mou Zongsan’s Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosopy, has decided to post her complete, 490-page translation on the internet:

http://nineteenlects.com

(One technical note: for reasons I cannot explain, sometimes the links on this site have not worked for me, but I find that if clicking on a link gives you a url of this form — http://ninteenlects.com/page.php?p=Titlepage — then changing that to this form (note the “nine” instead of “nin”) will work — http://nineteenlects.com/page.php?p=Titlepage)

As Ms. Wei explains there, a few years ago her translation was accepted for publication by Columbia University Press, but the copyright dispute has put that on indefinite hold. During a stretch of time when she and Columbia believed that they had secured permission, though, I was asked to write an Introduction to the translation, which I did. That essay has languished along with Ms. Wei’s translation, and I have chosen to make it freely available on my own website:

Stephen C. Angle, “Mou Zongsan and his Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy”

I hope that my essay, and especially the translation, prove useful to those who would like to engage more deeply with this extremely important twentieth-century Confucian philosopher.

Malik’s Piece on Buddhism and Bigotry in the NYT

I thought this was interesting, though Malik clearly undermines his own implied connection between Buddhism and the bigotry late in the article. Worth a quick read perhaps? Here’s a little bit to get you started:

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more appealing than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, and scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and psychology.

Even some of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure. For most of its Western sympathizers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar take a very different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh. Early Muslim settlements there date from the seventh century. Today, in a nation that is 90 percent Buddhist, there are some eight million Muslims, of whom about one in six is Rohingya.

For the Myanmar government, however, the Rohingya simply do not exist…