New Book: Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion

Sun_coverExciting news: Anna Sun (Kenyon College)’s book on Confucianism has been published. Congratulations!

Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities

Anna Sun

Princeton University Press | Cloth | 2013 | $35.00 / £24.95 | ISBN: 9780691155579 | 266 pp. | 6 x 9 | 1 line illus. 9 tables

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn’t? From ancient Confucian temples, to nineteenth-century archives, to the testimony of people interviewed by the author throughout China over a period of more than a decade, this book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion.

The book begins at Oxford, in the late nineteenth century, when Friedrich Max Müller and James Legge classified Confucianism as a world religion in the new discourse of “world religions” and the emerging discipline of comparative religion. Anna Sun shows how that decisive moment continues to influence the understanding of Confucianism in the contemporary world, not only in the West but also in China, where the politics of Confucianism has become important to the present regime in a time of transition. Contested histories of Confucianism are vital signs of social and political change.Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn’t? From ancient Confucian temples, to nineteenth-century archives, to the testimony of people interviewed by the author throughout China over a period of more than a decade, this book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion.

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Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy lecture on Confucian and Daoist views of agency April 12 @5:45pm

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes intrepid Warper & Wefter MANYUL IM,  Department of Philosophy, Fairfield University

With responses from Michael Brownstein, Department of Philosophy, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on April 12, 2013 at 5:45pm for his lecture entitled

Spontaneity, Deliberation, and Valuing in Early China

ABSTRACT: Continue reading →

Next Columbia Neo-Confucianism Seminar

The next session of the Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies will convene on Friday, April 12 (the second Friday of the month, a departure from our usual first-Friday format), from 3:30 to 5:30pm. We will meet in the Komoda Room in the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

We will have two presenters for this session (listed here in alphabetical order).

  • Theresa Kelleher of Manhattanville College will present the paper “Looking at the Quotidian Dimensions of Neo-Confucianism: Excerpts from the Journal of Wu Yubi (1392-1469).”
  • Zhou Zehao of York College will present the paper “Confucius and the Cultural Revolution: A Brief Comparison of the Two Anti-Confucian Campaigns during the Cultural Revolution.”

Copies of their papers will be distributed soon. All are welcome to attend. Please feel free to forward this message to interested colleagues. Please join us after the seminar for dinner at the Columbia Cottage restaurant, which is located on the corner of Amsterdam and 111th Streets.

Conference: The Classic of Documents and the Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy

International Conference: “The Classic of Documents and the Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy”

Princeton University, May 17-18, 2013

The conference is open to the public. It will focus on a series of case studies on individual chapters from the Shangshu, with an emphasis on rhetoric and ideology. Those interested in attending should email Martin Kern (mkern@princeton.edu) for preregistration and further information.

Moral Exemplars and Moral Connoisseurs

A number of scholars in our field have suggested that the model of connoisseurship is helpful in understanding Confucian moral education and the nature of the Confucian moral exemplar (the junzi or sage). Eric Hutton’s “Moral Connoisseurship in the Mengzi” (in Liu and Ivanhoe, eds., Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, 2002) is a classic essay; more recently, Hagop Sarkissian (“Confucius and the Effortless Life of Virtue,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 27:1 [2010]) and P.J. Ivanhoe (“McDowell, WANG Yangming, and Mengzi’s Contributions to Understanding Moral Perception,” Dao [2011]) have also developed related ideas.

I’m going to excerpt here a bit from an essay of mine that is currently unpublished, part of a volume that will eventually wend its way through the review process and see the light of day. My concern in the essay is to further develop some comparisons between Neo-Confucians and contemporary psychological literature that I began in Sagehood and continued in “A Productive Dialogue? Contemporary Moral Education and Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian Ethics,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy (2011). In particular, I refine the idea of “active moral perception” introduced in Sagehood, and as part of that process, find myself arguing against the idea that moral exemplars are best understood as people who have honed their sensitivities to moral reasons or moral properties in a connoisseur-like way. My target here is not, at least explicitly, the interpretations of Kongzi and Menzi suggested in the essays cited above, but rather to argue that a common-sense idea (supported by recent psychological research) of what moral exemplars are like, and what they do, actually fits very well with key elements of Wang Yangming’s picture. I’d love feedback!

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Malik on Confucianism and Communism

Friend of the blog Patrick O’Donnell suggested that Warp, Weft, and Way readers might enjoy this posting by Kenan Malik on the intertwining of Confucianism and Communism in the last hundren years in China. Malik writes that:

What had been a surreptitious nod towards Confucian ideology in Maoist China, became after Mao an open embrace, as China opened itself up to competition and the market, and hence also potentially to greater social dislocation and disorder. The quicker has been the pace of economic reform over the past three decades, the greater has been the desire of the Chinese government to proclaim its commitment to Confucianism…. Alongside the government’s new-found admiration for Kongzi, there has emerged a new cadre of Confucian academics. Many work independently of the state, and many have found themselves at times in conflict with the state.  Nevertheless, the academic renovation of Confucianism and the state’s embrace of Kongzi have become closely intertwined.

Malik ends with some discussion of Jiang Qing, whom he calls “perhaps the most important of the new generation of Confucian philosophers.” I have just finished writing a review of Jiang Qing’s new book in English, A Confucian Constitutional Order, and plan on publishing an excerpt or two here soon. In the meantime, any comments on Malik’s ideas or on Jiang Qing would be welcome.

Opportunity to Participate in 2013 Reischauer Lectures

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION—2013 EDWIN O. REISCHAUER LECTURES
The 2013 Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures will take place at Harvard on April 10, 11, and 12, featuring Shigehisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History, presenting three lectures on the topic “Toward an Archaeology of Distraction.” On April 10 the theme will be “What Truly Matters?”; on April 11, “Curiosity and Distraction”; and on April 12, “Playful Science.” The public is invited to submit their thoughts on five preview elements for each lecture.
For more information, go to: http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/event/2013-reischauer-lectures
See also the call for participation: http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/call-participation2013-reischauer-lectures-kuriyama

Fulbright Taiwan

Some information for professors (U.S. citizenship) who might be interested.

I met today with the executive director of Fulbright Taiwan and the chair of the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University, where I am currently doing a teaching Fulbright. Both of them expressed the sentiment that this is a good association and that the U.S.-Taiwan relationship would be well-served by continuing it. Fulbright depends on the initiative of applicants, however, rather than putting out calls for participation. So they can only accommodate a philosopher if a philosopher applies. A special interest was expressed for political philosophy, especially related to the potential democratization of China. (I’m teaching American Pragmatism and Comparative Moral Psychology–at the graduate level.)  They both thought it would be a good idea to get the word out on this blog.

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