CFP: 16th Southeast Early China Roundtable

A message from Jeff Richey:

I am pleased to announce that Berea College will host the 16th annual Southeast Early China Roundtable (SEECR) on November 2-4, 2012.  In accordance with SEECR tradition, lodging and meals will be provided to presenters.  Those who participated in the 7th annual SEECR back in 2003 may remember the experience of staying at Berea’s historic Boone Tavern and meeting at its scenic retreat facility, Windswept.

Dr. Guolong Lai of the University of Florida will deliver the keynote address for the conference. Continue reading →

CFP: The Art of Morality: Developing Moral Sensitivity Across the Curriculum

The Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum announces its 14th International Conference (Revised)

Oct. 4-6, 2012, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Keynote Speaker: Michael Slote, University of Miami

This year’s theme is chosen in part because the dates of the conference correspond to the ARTPRIZE event in Grand Rapids which is an international art competition that brings 1200+ pieces of art to our city. Continue reading →

Utah Workshop on Xunzi and Hume

Comparing Two Masters: Xunzi and Hume

July 6-9, 2012

Philosophy Department, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Among comparisons that are drawn between Chinese and Western thinkers, David Hume is often compared with Mengzi, an early Confucian, while another early Confucian, Xunzi, is often compared with Thomas Hobbes. Through a series of seminar-style sessions over a period of four days, this workshop aims to investigate an alternative pairing, namely of Xunzi and Hume, which has not been much explored in existing scholarship. Workshop sessions will be led by:

  • Eric Hutton (University of Utah)
  • Philip J. Ivanhoe (City University of Hong Kong)
  • Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
  • Al Martinich (University of Texas at Austin)
  • Elizabeth Radcliffe (College of William and Mary)
  • Lisa Shapiro (Simon Fraser University)
  • Michael Slote (University of Miami)
  • Ling-kang Wang (Tamkang University)

This workshop is made possible by a generous grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Workshop sessions are open to the public.

For more information about the workshop, please email <eric.hutton@utah.edu> or call 801-581-7320.

CFP: Graduate Student Papers on "De-Parochializing Political Theory"

[Note from Steve: This is very last minute, but I just heard about it; if you need a few extra days, that might be possible to arrange.]

Graduate students are invited to submit papers for the upcoming conference “De-Parochializing Political Theory,” August 2-4, 2012 at the University of Victoria. A workshop dedicated to scholarship by postdoctoral, doctoral andM.A. candidates will be held on the last day of the conference. To apply, send a paper title, abstract of no more than 300 words, and a current curriculum vitae to demcon@uvic.ca no later than 15 June 2012. Successful candidates will be notified by email within two weeks of that date. Continue reading →

N.Y. Times Blog Post on Western Bias in Philosophy

HERE. Posted by Justin Smith of Concordia University, Montreal. (Hat-tip to Sam Crane, who has his own discussion of the piece going, over on his blog, The Useless Tree.) Much of Smith’s piece is probably “preaching to the choir” for our readers, but it’s good to see these points made in the mainstream. Here is an excerpt:

Western philosophy is always the unmarked category, the standard in relation to which non-Western philosophy provides a useful contrast. Non-Western philosophy is not approached on its own terms, and thus philosophy remains, implicitly and by default, Western. Second, non-Western philosophy, when it does appear in curricula, is treated in a methodologically and philosophically unsound way: it is crudely supposed to be wholly indigenous to the cultures that produce it and to be fundamentally different than Western philosophy in areas like its valuation of reason or its dependence on myth and religion.  In this way, non-Western philosophy remains fundamentally “other.” Continue reading →

Review of Roger Ames, Confucian Role Ethics

Ryan Nichols and Craig Ihara have jointly written an extensive review of Roger Ames’s Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Here is an excerpt from that review, posted here with permission. Please address any comments to Ryan and Craig.

This is a selection from our draft review, the final version of which will be published soon in Dao, of Roger Ames’ newest book Confucian Role Ethics. We post it here in order to continue conversation about this important theory. -Nichols & Ihara

There are many subjects to discuss in Confucian Role Ethics. The following discussion addresses several of the most salient issues.

Methodological problems arise in Ames’ discussion on pp. 20-35 in regard to the need to make generalizations about China, in opposition to others who say this is inadvisable. Ames’ arguments on behalf of making generalizations are somewhat weak, including assertions such as: “the only thing more dangerous than striving to make responsible cultural generalizations is failing to make them” (23). Generalizations about certain philosophical continuities between thinkers in Han and in Warring States China are appropriate and permissible so long as they are justified by textual and historical evidence. While Ames may be correct that generalizations are important for understanding Confucianism, the unaddressed but more important question is: under what evidential conditions are such generalizations justified?

Continue reading →

Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy conference: call for papers and conference registration

ASACP Conference 2012

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

9-11 July 2012

Conference Theme: Relationships in Asian and Comparative Philosophy

 Keynote Speaker: Professor Roger Ames, University of Hawai’i

During his visit, Professor Ames will speak at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the topic of “Landscape and Traveling in the Confucian Dynamics of Intergenerational Transmission” on Saturday 7th July (time to be confirmed) and will present a UNSW Confucius Institute Public Lecture on “Confucian Role Ethics: A Challenge to the Ideology of Individualism” on Tuesday 10th July (http://www.confuciusinstitute.unsw.edu.au/china-talks/2012/china-talks-distinguished-speaker-roger-ames).

The conference committee invites submissions of proposals for papers in all areas of Asian and Comparative Philosophy and associated disciplines, especially on the topic of relationships. At this conference, there will also be a focus on the following streams:

Continue reading →