This is a call for applications to the Summer University course on “Religion & Realism in Political Thought”, which will take place at Central European University, Budapest in July 2013. The course targets doctoral students, post-docs, and junior faculty. Candidates with Comparative Political Theory research topics are strongly encouraged to apply. Information is available at http://www.summer.ceu.hu/religion-2013, including information on financial support. Application deadline: 15 February, 2013.
West-East Cooperation
This is related to Steve’s post about the recent APA panel on embodied cognition. But since my question strays a bit away from that, I thought I’d start a new thread.
First, thanks, Steve, for the great information, especially for the link to the participants of the summer institute! (And, Steve, do have an equivalent participants list from your Virtue Ethics summer institute?)
If anyone can help, I’m interested in knowing more about Western specialists who are dipping into non-Western philosophy, especially Chinese philosophy.
I know of Owen Flanagan and Michael Slote, of course. I also know that Karyn Lai and Stephen Hetherington are working together. Previously, there have been Hall & Ames (in Chinese and political philosophy) and Lloyd & Sivin (on the edge of philosophy). David Wong and Joel Kupperman each made names for themselves first on the Western side but have found inspiration from the Eastern side (as well have having done significant work on the Eastern side in the case of Wong).
What other kinds of openness to East-West cooperation is happening from the Western side?
Further, this blog has discussed the dearth of Ph.D. programs in Chinese philosophy, but what about other avenues for training/cooperation? The NEH summer institutes mentioned above are great examples. Are there others–for folks with a Ph.D. in a Western specialty but who want to know more about Asian philosophy? I know that for instruction, the Asian Studies Development Program has been holding summer institutes for college and university faculty who want to infuse Asian content into the undergraduate curriculum generally. There is also the Nishan Confucian Studies Summer Institute for teachers. What else is going on? Who is cooperating with whom? Which Western specialists are dipping into Asian philosophy? What avenues do they have for cooperation or training? Which Asian specialists are successfully reaching out to their Western colleagues?
Any information would be appreciated.
Promising Research Area: Asian Philosophy and Embodied Cognition
One key to successful comparative philosophical research is locating an area in where there is sufficient overlap between different traditions’ approaches that each can see the other as generating relevant challenges or questions, stimulating new ways of framing issues, and so on. I would argue that the “virtue ethics” paradigm has been successful in just this way, bringing together an increasing number of Anglophone and Sinophone philosophers and philosophical projects in fruitful fashion, as judged by the interesting, explicitly work that is being generated by Anglophone scholars (including those with little prior background in Chinese and Chinese philosophy) and some Sinophone thinkers (including those with little prior background in Western philosophy).
Another possible area of overlap and mutual stimulus — though it remains to be seen whether it will generate a similar level of fruitfulness — is virtue epistemology; Michael Chien-kuo Mi and colleagues at Soochow University in Taiwan have been collaborating with Ernie Sosa of Rutgers University and some other Western-trained philosophers in this endeavor.
What I mainly wanted to call attention to here, though, is a third area. The recent APA conference featured a panel (sponsored by the APA Committee on the Status of Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies) on “Asian/Comparative Views of the Embodied and Enactive Mind.” Drawing on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, as well as on various streams of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and phenomenology, the panelists (Bongrae Seok, Matthew MacKenzie, and Bradley Park) made it eminently clear that there is a major area of overlap and many opportunities for mutual stimulus and learning. I was also struck by the fact that a successful NEH Summer Institute was held last summer on this topic; looking at the range of participants and faculty, it is again clear that there is a lot of room for exciting growth in this area of comparative philosophy.
Missing Blog Posts
UPDATE: We were able to recover the two posts from yesterday. Any comments, including comments on the Question Board, will need to be reposted manually, though. Sorry about this!
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Sorry, folks, all of the blog activity from yesterday (Jan. 2), including two blog posts and their comments, seem to have disappeared mysteriously. This is under investigation.
Barnwell on Classical Daoism Part 4.1
Long-time friend of the blog, Scott Barnwell, has posted his fourth installment exploring the question of whether there really is such a thing as “classical Daoism,” over on his blog, Bao Pu. Here are a couple of paragraphs; go over and check it out. Discuss there or here, as you wish — if here, please address all comments to Scott.
The purpose of this 4th essay is to explore these two texts to see what similarities and differences exist. If we understand a “school of thought” (modern Chinese: Xuepai ??) to refer to a system or complex of beliefs, ideas, values and methods, would the various authors of the Laozi and Zhuangzi constitute such a school, as is commonly believed? Or were they two different schools of thought with only slight overlap, perhaps a Laoist school and a Zhuangist school? Is there a “family resemblance” that exists between these two texts that does not between them and others, such as the Mengzi, Mozi, Hanfeizi or Yijing? Jia ?, which commonly meant “house” or “family,” has suggested to Harold Roth that Sima Tan’s use of it “implies that he thought of his six groups as having an important lineage dimension in which masters and disciples functioned according to a family model.”[7] By positing a lineage of masters and disciples (= teachers and students) we come close to the idea of a school (of thought) as well, although whether the contributors to the Laozi and Zhuangzi were two branches of one lineage remains to be seen.
We’ve already explored the nature of ancient Chinese texts and some possible scenarios of how the texts came to be in the earlier essays, especially the 3rd one on Zhuangzi. We have hypothesized that the existence of the Laozi and Zhuangzi required some sort of lineage or group that had compiled and preserved (and added to) these texts, at least until the Han dynasty period where texts were sought out by regional rulers and the imperial government in order to preserve the classical legacy in various libraries. These groups need not have been large, and, further, we do not know if this lineage was unbroken, or whether decades went by where the texts sat neglected in boxes in people’s homes.
Interview with Jay Garfield
Richard Marshall of the on-line magazine 3AM interviews Jay Garfield
, one of the leading U.S. scholars of Buddhist and comparative philosophy. Garfield tells entertaining stories about his developing interests in philosophy and makes insightful comments about the past, present, and future of comparative / world philosophy. He says: “…there has been a lot of progress. But there is also a long way to go. People in our profession are still happy to treat Western philosophy as the “core” of the discipline, and as the umarked case. So, for instance, a course that addresses only classical Greek philosophy can be comfortably titled “Ancient Philosophy,” not “Ancient Western Philosophy,” and a course in metaphysics can be counted on to ignore all non-Western metaphysics. A course in Indian philosophy is not another course in the history of PHILOSOPHY, but is part of the non-Western curriculum. And many of the major journals in our field will not even seriously consider submissions that address non-Western literature. Until the literature, curriculum, professional meetings and mode of engagement with the literature is as diverse as the world of philosophy itself, there is a lot of work to do. And that work is a matter of both intellectual and moral imperative. It is simply irrational to ignore most of world philosophy in the pursuit of truth, and immoral to relegate any literature not written by Europeans as somehow beneath our dignity to read….”
Angle’s Review of Fred Dallmayr and ZHAO Tingyang, eds. Contemporary Chinese Political Thought
A month ago I noted that Sungmoon Kim’s review of Fred Dallmayr and ZHAO Tingyang, eds. Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives had been published at NDPR. My own review for Dao of the same book has now been published on-line first, and should be accessible to those with institutional access to Dao. I’ll paste the first couple paragraphs, as well as the penultimate paragraph (which makes a fairly self-standing point), below.
Conference, Organization, and Journal: Comparing China and the West
COMPARING CHINA AND THE WEST:
Bringing the Disciplines Together
The International Association for Comparative Study of China and the West (IACSCW) invites proposals for presentations at its conference to be held in Beijing at Peking University from 12 to 14 July 2013. Its primary purpose is to bring together from all over the world individuals and organizations with an ongoing interest in comparing China and the West.
New Journal: The Journal of Japanese Philosophy
The Journal of Japanese Philosophy aims to publish its first issue in the Spring of 2013. Here is a description from its website:
The Journal of Japanese Philosophy (JJP, hereinafter) is the first and only international peer-reviewed journal on Japanese philosophy, an academic area that has been receiving increasing global attention for some time now. By enhancing the quality of research through a worldwide, recognized consortium of scholars, this journal intends to provide an international platform for Japanese philosophy, and to further establish an academic status that other philosophical traditions such as Chinese and Indian philosophies already enjoy.
CFP and Grad Student Essay Prizes for Conference on “Conflict and Harmony”
Conflict and Harmony: From Embodied Emotions to Global Realms
2013 Joint Meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) and the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (ASACP
The Joint Meeting of the SACP and the ASACP in 2013 will be held at the National University of Singapore. The conference theme, “Conflict and Harmony: From Embodied Emotions to Global Realms,” is designed to invite scholars representing Asian traditions of thought to present their research on the many ways in which philosophers of these heritages thematize the dynamics of conflict and harmony.
