Last I checked, this has not been posted at Jobs for Philosophers, even though one of the two areas mentioned explicitly is philosophy. Maybe the Chinese studies folks at Sydney don’t know about JFP? Anyway, here’s the announcement: Continue reading →
Conference on Multiculturalism and Comparative Philosophy
Bay Area folks might be interested in attending the following conference at the University of California Santa Cruz, where Bo MOU and I will represent Chinese and comparative philosophy (for better or worse!). The conference is free and open to the public.
“Free to Universalize or Bound by Culture? Philosophy in a Multicultural Context” Conference
University of California Santa Cruz
Saturday, October 20, 2012, Humanities 1, Room 210
This public conference investigates the relation between philosophy and its multicultural context. Are there immutable questions and universal answers regarding knowledge, values, and reality, or is philosophical inquiry bound by history, geography, and culture? Should the philosopher be responsible to the public?
10:00-10:15 Welcome Remarks: UCSC Humanities Dean William A. Ladusaw
10:15-10:45 Keynote: Helen Longino (Stanford)
Recent Dissertation on Bio-spiritual Practices and Ritual Theories
With his permission, I post here the abstract of Ori Trevor’s recent UPenn dissertation. I believe that Ori will keep on eye on this post, so please feel free to comment or raise questions.
Embodying the Way: Bio-spiritual Practices and Ritual Theories in Early and Medieval China
Ori Tavor, University of Pennsylvania, East Asian Languages and Civilization
Supervisor: Paul R. Goldin Continue reading →
Philosophy Now Questionnaire
Karyn Lai brought to my attention that the magazine Philosophy Now is conducting a questionnaire about philosophical interests. If some of us are willing to fill it out, it might contribute to a more balanced perception of the field. Please respond directly to Rick Lewis (his email is below).
New Book on the “Invention of Religion in Japan”
A fascinating-looking new book is relevant to some discussions we’ve had here in the past about Confucianism and other Chinese traditions and, or as, “religion”: JASON JOSEPHSON, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago, 2012). Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom of religion to Christian missionaries. The challenge this request posed was based on the fact that prior to the nineteenth century Japanese language had no parallel terminology for the category of religion. In The Invention of Religion in Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Jason Ānanda Josephson, Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College, delineates a genealogy of the Japanese construction of the category of religion, which was catalyzed by this political encounter between East and West. Josephson argues that opposed to the common notion that religion is an ethnographic or academic creation that we can place religion through diplomatic and legal discourses that invent or manufacture an identifiable, yet elastic, category. Prior to this political demand, contact between different Japanese and western social groups were discussed in bilateral descriptions of orthodoxy and heresy, either from a Christian or Buddhist perspective. Added to this developing understanding of terminology were the influences of western science, the negotiation of local practices, and the rise of nationalism. The Japanese depiction of Shinto poses the greatest challenge to customary notions of religion because it is described as a national or political science that is markedly nonreligious. Overall, Josephson demonstrates that in the defining of legal and social categories there was a trinary creation of religion, superstition, and the secular. In our conversation we discuss theocentric and heirocentric definitions of “religion,” the role of the demonic, heresy, varieties of Shinto, theories of secularization, superstition, civilizing projects, personal interior belief versus external behavior, and the institutional confirmation of these beliefs in legal contexts.
For the Table of Contents, see the book on Amazon. Looks good!
New Book on the "Invention of Religion in Japan"
A fascinating-looking new book is relevant to some discussions we’ve had here in the past about Confucianism and other Chinese traditions and, or as, “religion”: JASON JOSEPHSON, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago, 2012). Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom of religion to Christian missionaries. The challenge this request posed was based on the fact that prior to the nineteenth century Japanese language had no parallel terminology for the category of religion. In The Invention of Religion in Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Jason Ānanda Josephson, Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College, delineates a genealogy of the Japanese construction of the category of religion, which was catalyzed by this political encounter between East and West. Josephson argues that opposed to the common notion that religion is an ethnographic or academic creation that we can place religion through diplomatic and legal discourses that invent or manufacture an identifiable, yet elastic, category. Prior to this political demand, contact between different Japanese and western social groups were discussed in bilateral descriptions of orthodoxy and heresy, either from a Christian or Buddhist perspective. Added to this developing understanding of terminology were the influences of western science, the negotiation of local practices, and the rise of nationalism. The Japanese depiction of Shinto poses the greatest challenge to customary notions of religion because it is described as a national or political science that is markedly nonreligious. Overall, Josephson demonstrates that in the defining of legal and social categories there was a trinary creation of religion, superstition, and the secular. In our conversation we discuss theocentric and heirocentric definitions of “religion,” the role of the demonic, heresy, varieties of Shinto, theories of secularization, superstition, civilizing projects, personal interior belief versus external behavior, and the institutional confirmation of these beliefs in legal contexts.
For the Table of Contents, see the book on Amazon. Looks good!
The Daoist Nazi Problem
I am pleased to present a guest-post from Donald Sturgeon. Donald is a PhD candidate in philosophy at HKU and founder, editor, programmer, and general man-behind-the-curtain of the Chinese Text Project (ctext.org), an extremely useful online etext database with which many blog readers are familiar, I’m sure. Donald reports that according to Google Analytics, over the last 30 days the site has exceeded 1 million page views and 100,000 unique visitors! Please address all comments to Donald.
The Daoist Nazi Problem
Donald Sturgeon
Suppose there is a person, or a group of people, committed to practicing what we can for convenience call a “Nazi Dao”: a Dao that, though practically successful from the perspective of its followers, involves commitment to some abhorrent practices that all “right-minded people” would condemn as exemplary immoral acts that should be universally condemned – “killing innocent babies for fun”, for example.
What can a Zhuangist – someone committed to a relativist position about differing practices and the nature of their justification, questioning of conventionally accepted values, and skeptical about certain kinds of knowledge – say about such a Dao? Can he condemn it? Is it a “bad” Dao, and if so in what sense? Or is it just as good a Dao as any other? Continue reading →
Nanjing Decade Returns to Life at China Heritage Quarterly
The China Heritage Quarterly, a terrific electronic journal cum research project, has published its August-September issue with a special focus on an early-twentieth century English-language journal called the China Critic. The editor writes:
The China Critic was a product of a cosmopolitan demeanour, a fluency in English-language expression and ideas and an informed concern for contemporary China, its achievements and its limitations. The era of The Critic was also one of mounting international conflict and patriotic fervour. It is timely to reconsider The Critic and also to make available some of the insightful and controversial writing that appeared in its pages over a fourteen-year period.
There’s a tremendous amount of material available at the site: scores of original articles available as pdfs (much of it available via this annotated chronology), insightful commentary, articles about related figures, and so on. One thing that caught my eye was the journal’s endorsement of Chiang Kai-shek’s “New Life Movement.” Certainly there is much about the Nanjing Decade (1927-37) that resonates with contemporary China!
CFP: 2013 Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle
The Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle has announced its 2013 annual meeting, to be held at Fudan University in Shanghai on March 22-24. For more information, please see the CCP website.
New website for the ISCWP
Hi everyone,
On behalf of the Board of Directors, I wanted to announce a new website for the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy:
Check it out. If you’re not yet a member, click her to find out more on how to join the society, or click here to read more about our recent conferences and activities.
Oh–and if you already have a link to the our old website on another site or blog, we’d appreciate it if you could update your links.
Hagop
