Holloway Book and Video

Ken Holloway’s new book, The Quest for Ecstatic Morality in Early China, has been published by Oxford. He writes that:

This book is an analysis of religion in the Guodian manuscript the “Xing zi mingchu” 性自命出. In the Appendix, I provide an annotated translation and Chinese edition of the text. When I was in Beijing shortly after I finished writing the manuscript, I made a short movie of an exhibit of a copy of the “Xing zi mingchu” in the Confucian Temple in Beijing.

The movie should now be available via the Oxford blog: http://blog.oup.com/2013/05/antiquity-perceptions-chinese-culture/; enjoy! And congratulations, Ken.

A Busy Week at Fudan University

In addition to the lectures by Kurtis Hagen on Xunzi that I just posted about, there are several other events taking place over the next week at Shanghai’s Fudan University. In chronological order:

Friday May 24, 10:00am, P. J. Ivanhoe (Chair Professor of East Asian Philosophy and Religion, City University of Hong Kong) is speaking on “Kongzi and Aristotle as Virtue Ethicists.” Details are here.

Friday May 24, 6:30pm, P. J. Ivanhoe is delivering the first lecture of a series on “Chinese Research on Confucianism in Global Perspective”; Prof. Ivanhoe’s lecture is titled “Confucian Cosmopolitanism.” Details on this and the subsequent lectures in the series are here.

Saturday and Sunday, May 24-25, an international conference on the topic “Chinese Research on Confucianism in Global Perspective” will take place; details on all speakers and titles are here.

Tuesday May 28, 10:00am, I am speaking on the topic “Progressive Confucianism on Social Criticism and the Values of Deference.” Details are here.

I hope that blog readers lucky enough to be in Shanghai will be able to enjoy some of these lectures!

Research Opportunities for Intellectual Humility Project

Call for Proposals and Applications:  The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility Project at Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University announces a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to explore the subject of intellectual humility. The project will focus on a variety of philosophical and theological issues relevant to the topic of intellectual humility, including: virtue epistemology; regulative epistemology; peer disagreement; intellectual humility, intellectual autonomy and deference to authority; religious pluralism; divine hiddenness; intellectual humility and theological method; biases, heuristics, dual-process theories and evolution; intersubjectivity and mind reading.

This project will fund a variety of activities, including a competition for up to 16 research grants in philosophy and theology, for research between June 2014 to May 2015.

Additional funding opportunities include:

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Call for Commentators-ACPA at APA Eastern 2013

MOVED TO TOP WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:

We still need commentators, and please let me know if you are interested.  Dr. Kim’s and Mr. Lu’s papers already have commentators (and there are three other commentators who are not set on any particular paper yet).  Thanks!

– Tongdong Bai (baitongdong@gmail.com)

ACPA Group Meeting at the APA Eastern Convention
December 27-30, 2013, at the Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore

 

Session 1: Moral Cultivation and Moral Agency in Confucianism and Western Philosophy
1. Mental Blindness and Moral Rectitude: The jiebi chapter of the Xunzi

David Chai, University of Toronto, Canada, david.chai@utoronto.ca

Abstract: The idea of being figuratively blind is a well-used trope in early Confucian thought. Confucius referred to blindness of virtue while Mencius to blindness of the senses and speech. For Xunzi, blindness stems from a person having ‘two minds,’ that is, one’s mind is caught between two principles or goals of moral conduct. Xunzi’s solution, like Guanzi’s theory of ‘mental arts’ (xinshu 心術), was to engage in ‘singular concentration’ (jing 精). Through a close hermeneutic reading of chapter 21 of the Xunzi (jiebi 解蔽, “Removing Blindness”), this paper will examine Xunzi’s use of jing and how cultivating one’s mental essence by adhering to Dao can result in overcoming mental blindness. It will also look at one of the more interesting metaphors Xunzi uses, that of brightness (ming 明). Moral brightness is a quality every person should strive for in that it reflects the perfect virtue of Dao. For Xunzi, using ming to nurture jing is not enough to cure a person completely of their mental blindness however; they must endeavor to replicate the mind of Dao. How they do this is through studying the principle of men’s minds as Xunzi so clearly illustrates: “Sageliness consists in a comprehensive grasp of the natural relationships between men. True kingship consists in a comprehensive grasp of the regulations for government. A comprehensive grasp of both is sufficient to become the ridgepole for the world.” (Xunzi, 21.9)

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A review (or two) of comparative studies

Being a comparativist of ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy, I thought I’d dedicate my first post to two review articles on Sino-Hellenic comparative studies that readers of the blog may or may not be aware of.

Back in 2009, the Journal of Hellenic Studies published a review article by Jeremy Tanner, reader in classical and comparative art at University College London, entitled ‘Ancient Greece, early China: Sino-Hellenic studies and comparative approaches to the classical world.’ (The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Vol. 129, (2009), pp. 89-109. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6779876). Tanner memorably opens the article by addressing an all-too-realistic problem: ‘Classicists have long been weary of comparisons’ (2009:89). He proceeds to provide a useful summary of the developments in the different spheres of Sino-Hellenic comparative studies, including history of medicine, philosophy and literature. Tanner ends on the positive note that ‘there is every possibility that Sino-Hellenic studies will become one of the most stimulating disciplinary sub-field within both Classics and Sinology’ (2009:109). Being one of the first (if not the first) review article on Greek and Chinese comparative studies to be published in a major journal on Hellenic studies, it may be fair to say that the article was in some sense groundbreaking.

Earlier this year in March, the International Journal of the Classical Tradition has just published an article by Ralph Weber from the University of Zurich on comparative philosophy that responds to Tanner’s review and proposes to supplement it. The article entitled ‘A Stick Which may be Grabbed on Either Side: Sino-Hellenic Studies in the Mirror of Comparative Philosophy’ (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12138-013-0318-7) identifies four different approaches to comparative philosophy, addresses certain pitfalls, and ultimately focuses on the question of the close association between the subject-matter of comparisons and the political purposes that motivate them, being altogether a very different kind of review to Tanner’s.

It is always very interesting to take a step back from the work one is constantly preoccupied with and look at it in a broader context, in a sense rather like looking at a picture by ‘stepping outside the frame’. So what do you think of these two reviews?

Position in Asian Philosophy at Nanyang

Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Philosophy
(Asian Philosophy or Asian Religion)

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, invites qualified academics to apply for a newly created position of tenure-track assistant professor in Asian Philosophy or Asian Religion.

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