Feb. 1 Columbia Neo-Confucianism Seminar

RE: February 1, 2013 Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies

Dear seminar members and friends,

The next session of the Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies will convene on Friday, February 1, 2013, from 3:30 to 5:30pm. We will meet in the Board Room on the first floor of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Please note the earlier starting time.

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

Jennifer Eichman will present the paper “Mind Cultivation: Theoretical and Practical Considerations.”

Richard Stichler will present the paper “Human Nature and Cultures of War.”

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.

If you have any questions or would like a copy of the papers, please contact one of our organizers: Yong Huang, (yhuang@kutztown.edu), Tao Jiang (tjiang@rci.rutgers.edu), On-cho Ng (oxn1@psu.edu), or Deborah Sommer (dsommer@gettysburg.edu>).   Our new rapporteur this year is Yang Liu (yl2435@columbia.edu) of Columbia University.

Weber, The Politics of Confucian Political Philosophy

In this guest post, Ralph Weber of the University of Zurich shares with us his English translation of an opinion piece just published in Germany (as “Politik, Konfuzianismus und konfuzianische politische Philosophie in der VR China heute.” In: Widerspruch – Münchner Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Nr. 56, 2013.) Please direct comments to Dr. Weber.

The Politics of ‘Confucian Political Philosophy’

Ralph Weber, University of Zurich

***

In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Confucius, the Master, is “standing tall” again, as a People’s Daily headline put it (13 January 2011), referring to a ten meter bronze statue which since January was standing right next to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, before it was dislocated to a less prominent spot in April 2011 for reasons as yet unknown.[1] Not to be mistaken, the statue was not the latest version of the Goddess of Democracy, which students had erected in June 1989 as a symbol of protest and reform. The Confucius statue was not erected against the Chinese government; it had been put there with official endorsement – something that only decades ago would have been unthinkable – and surely it was also dislocated again with official endorsement. The short but prominent appearance of the Confucius statue at one of the most symbolic places in all of China showcases the wavering attitude of the Chinese government on what to do with Confucianism and perhaps reveals once more how split the government is in terms of doctrine and ideology.

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Barnwell on Classical Daoism, part 4.2

Friend of the blog, Scott Barnwell, has posted part 4.2 of his work on whether there really was such a thing as classical Daoism, over on his Baopu blog. Here’s a snippet. Feel free to comment here or there.

In what follows I will often translate Tian as “the heavens” to specify the referent as the sky above, including the sun, moon, stars and planets and sometimes as “Nature” to widen the referent to include the earth and imply the natural, dynamic forces at work in the universe.

We may now ask, who (or what) was believed to have created the heavens and earth? An excavated text called the “Chu Silk Manuscript” (Chu Boshu 楚帛書) contains the earliest evidence of a myth involving Baoxi 雹戲 (a.k.a. Fuxi 伏羲) and Nüwa女媧, who, in a time described as “indistinct and dark”(夢夢墨墨), gave birth to four children, who helped separate above and below (上下), that is, the heavens and the earth. Eventually, after thousands of years had passed the sun and moon were somehow born. Later[9] myths tell of Nüwa creating living things (out of already existing materials); for example, the late-Han Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字 records that (Nü)Wa was an “ancient female deity that transformed (=made) the myriad things” (古之神聖女，化萬物者也).

Aside from this text, it would appear that some of the authors of the Laozi and Zhuangzi were the first to attempt a “non-mythological” answer…

Saltveit’s new project: Taoish.org

Friend of the blog, Mark Saltveit, writes:

Hello.  I have a new project that may be interesting to readers of WW&W: http://www.taoish.org, a place for irreverent spirituality.  My focus is on manifestations of contemplative religion/philosophy in the modern West, primarily Daoism of course but not limited to that.

My current post might be especially interesting to your followers: an analysis of one line of chapter 10 of the Daodejing by Steve Bokenkamp of Arizona State. http://www.realchange.org/taoish/mirror-mirrormirror/

(Earlier, I reposted his classic 1993 Daoism FAQ, which is pretty fun.  http://www.realchange.org/taoish/authoritative-answers-to-questions-about-taoism/ )

Review of Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy

NDRP has published a review by BAI Tongdong of Fudan University of my recent book, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Towards Progressive Confucianism (Polity, 2012). Many thanks to Tongdong for this generous review!

I’d like to take this opportunity to respond very briefly to a couple of the things that Tongdong says in his review. He feels that both Mou Zongsan and I, in our related but separate ways, have left largely unaddressed the question: “can Confucianism make any constructive and systematic contributions to fundamental issues in political philosophy other than being only a “cheerleader” (a sincere one, as Angle tries to show) of liberal democracy?” This is related to some of the other critical remarks he raises late in the review, including the suggestion that in my chapter on human rights, I rest content with the current “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and also Tongdong’s questions about how “Confucian” Progressive Confucianism is.

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Li, Qi, and Transcendence in Neo-Confucianism

This is a guest post by David Chai of the University of Toronto. Please address all questions or comments to him. 

In thinking of a topic to share with all of you, I found myself repeatedly returning to the subject of a new course I am teaching this semester: Neo-Confucianism. While gathering materials for the course I came across an article by Donald Blakeley (“The Lure of the Transcendent in Zhu Xi” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21.3 (2004): 223-240). The paper discusses whether qi and li should be read as transcendent or immanent. After surveying a variety of contemporary theories, Blakeley argues that “a modified definition of transcendence” is needed such that “that there is independence and self-sufficiency in certain respects but not in others.” (232-233) His conclusion is that “li transcends qi in that any material formations depend upon li. Qi is in a dependent relation to li in this respect and li is independent from qi in this respect. Li, in being what it is as li, is independent from the ongoing affairs in the field of qi. But qi transcends li in that any material formations depend upon qi; li is in a dependent relation to qi in this respect and qi is independent from li in this respect.” (233)

For me, his argument is not convincing for several reasons. First is his need to modify the traditional meaning of transcendence. Second is his very use of transcendence to describe Zhu Xi’s li. From a Daoist perspective, li comes across as being very close to natural law. While Dao is transcendent, its fa, or li, is immanent. For li to possess the same transcendental qualities as Dao would be to deny Dao its own existential nature. So, my question is can li be understood as Blakeley so wishes without the need to modify what is meant by transcendent? If so, how would this play-out in terms of qi’s connection to Dao? On a more fundamental level, can we say Zhu Xi is espousing a cosmogonist doctrine involving qi and li or is he merely putting forth one that is pseudo-cosmological? If the former, then I’d have material with which to conduct a soteriological comparison with Zhuangzi; if the latter, then I am unclear as to the advantages his qi-li dyad holds over the wu-you pairing seen in the texts of Lao-Zhuang.

Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Spring Schedule

For the spring semester of 2013, the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy presents the following schedule:

February 8 – Jonathan Gold (Princeton)
March 1 – Sandeep Sreekumar (Baruch College, CUNY)
March 22 – Andrew Lambert (Western New England University)
April 12 – Manyul Im (Fairfield University)
April 26 – Joerg Tuske (Salisbury University)

All meetings held at the Columbia University Department of Religion
5:45-7:45 pm
Rm. 101 in the Department of Religion, 80 Claremont Avenue

Second Call for Papers: International Conference on the Philosophy of Criminal Punishment

Second Call for Papers
International Conference on the Philosophy of Criminal Punishment
June 18-20, 2013
Department of Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Keynote speakers:

Erin Kelly, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Tufts University; author of “Criminal Justice without Retribution,” The Journal of Philosophy (2009).

T. M. Scanlon, Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Harvard University; author of What We Owe to Each Other, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Tommie Shelby, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy, Harvard University; author of “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto,” Philosophy and Public Affairs (2007).

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Martin Kern at Oxford Workshop on Manuscript and Text Culture

We are pleased to announce the second meeting of the interdisciplinary Workshop on Manuscript and Text Culture (WMTC) at Queen’s, University of Oxford. The paper of the workshop will be given by Martin Kern (Princeton), Astor Visiting Fellow and Fellow Commoner of Queen’s, on Wednesday 30 January at 6 pm in The Queen’s College. The title of the talk is:

‘The “Jinteng” Chapter of the Shangshu and its Newly Discovered Manuscript Version from ca. 300 BCE: Comparison and Methodological Considerations’.

If you are interested in attending, please email: wmtc@queens.ox.ac.uk.

Further information about the workshop can be found here: <http://wmtc.queens.ox.ac.uk/> (The site is still under construction, so please don’t mind its current appearance..)

John Baines (Egyptology)
Charles Crowther (Ancient History/Epigraphy)
Dirk Meyer (Chinese)

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New Issue of Comparative Philosophy

Bou Mou, Editor of Comparative Philosophy, writes to report that the new special issue (volume 4, no.1 / January 2013) of Comparative Philosophy, celebrating the the tenth anniversary of the ISCWP, has been published at the journal website http://www.comparativephilosophy.org.

This special issue consists of five peer-reviewed articles by ISCWP members from different geographic areas in the world, Steve Angle (USA), Chung-I Lin (Taiwan/ROC), Stephen Palmquist (Hong Kong), Henrique Schneider (Austria) and Dean Walsh (USA), together with the “Introduction” by ISCWP President Sor-hoon Tan (Singapore).

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