Slingerland Wins Dao 2011 Annual Best Essay Award

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy has an annual best essay award. The award comes with a check of $1,000 and a certificate; the award winning essay will be set for free access; and a special panel will be arranged at APA Eastern Annual Meeting, whether the the check and the certificate will be awarded, together with a critical discussion of the award-winning essay.

At the beginning of each year, a selection committee of three editorial board members of the journal is formed to select three best essays published in the journal in the past year. These three essays are then sent to the whole editorial board for evaluation. The final selection of the best essay is made by a vote of the whole editorial board.

We have just finished this process of selecting the best essay published in our journal in 2011, and Edward Slingerland’s essay, “Metaphor and Meaning in Early China,” published in Dao (2011) 10:1–30, wins the award. The article is for free access at:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/tn037270p11644vj/fulltext.pdf

Here is the official citation:

This is a ground-breaking essay. Slingerland debunks a fairly common assumption that Chinese way of thinking is metaphoric, while the Western way of thinking is logical, an assumption shared by both earlier Orientalists, who claimed the superiority of the Occidental, and more recent “reverse Orientialists,” who claim the superiority of the Oriental. In contrast, using his expertise in contemporary cognitive sciences, Slingerland argues convincingly that metaphor is a universal and fundamental feature of human cognition. What makes the Chinese way of thinking unique is thus not that it is metaphoric but that early Chinese thinkers were more self-aware of the metaphoric nature of language, while modern Western thinkers are more self-deluded about what they are doing. The essay as a whole is thus original in its interdisciplinary, comparative, and philosophical natures. It is the type of work that Dao aims to promote.

Beyond Political Theology: “Mysteries” of the Way and Its Power

A few weeks back, Joel Dietz had a guest post on mysticism. Here is another posting from Joel; as before, please address your comments and questions to Joel!

The Dao De Jing has been used to justify political regimes at many points in history and there are fairly obvious reasons for this, concomitant with the idea of philosophy more generally. The idea that there are gradations to knowledge implies that there are those who know more. The idea that there are those who know more implies that probably those who possess “true” knowledge should rule over those who do not. The apparent problems growing from this are aggravated when the process of “true” knowledge is attributed to those who possess and/or practice certain secrets that are not equally distributed — as is the case in here, in the Bhagavad Gita, and in texts part of the Platonic lineage.

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Successful 8th MCCT

Bloomington, Indiana was the site of the 8th Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought, which took place last Friday to Sunday. Our hosts at the University of Indiana (primarily Aaron Stalnaker, Maichel Ing, and Cheryl Cottine of the Religious Studies Department) organized things very well. The group was small enough that everyone was able to participate, but large enough that there was a critical mass to discuss a wide range of topics intelligently. As compared with the more narrowly philosophical conferences that I have mostly been attending, there was a refreshing dose of sinology (details of texts, less-well-known authors, etc.); too bad that the AAS doesn’t seem to be more open to broad discussions of Chinese thought, because it might then be more of a forum for conversations like this one. Two of my personal highlights were Esther Klein’s paper “Sima Qian’s Confucius and the Western Han Lunyu,” which both reviewed recent research on the possible Western Han composition of the Lunyu and presented her own research into citations of the Lunyu in Shiji; and Frank Perkins’s “The Mohist Daodejing,” which explored parallels between the last 16 chapters of the Daodejing (which are unattested in the Guodian texts) and Mohism. Both papers hint at further ways in which our understanding of early Chinese thought may continue to change in dramatic ways in years ahead!

Ames on "Kongjiao 孔教" in Boston, April 25

I was intrigued by this announcement:

Wednesday, April 25, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Confucian China in a Changing World Order
孔教在當代
Dr. Roger T. Ames, University of Hawai’i
1st Floor Function Room, Suffolk Law School, 120 Tremont St, Boston
http://www.suffolk.edu/college/52190.html. 

What struck me was the use of “Kongjiao 孔教” to describe the view that Roger is discussing. (I am assuming that he added the Chinese title.) I guess that since “a-theistic religiosity” has long been an important part of his account of Confucianism, perhaps it should be less surprising. But “Kongjiao” resonates historically with efforts to institutionalize Confucian teachings in ways that I am not sure Roger would support. Any thoughts?

Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Conference, July 9-11 2012, Sydney, Australia.

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

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

Ethics, Personhood and Relationships
Ethics, Environment and Development
Knowledge, Action and Fallibility
Methodology in Comparative Philosophy
Comparative East Asian and South Asian Philosophies

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Huainanzi – shorter edition

Huainanzi update: A couple of years ago — has it really been that long? — WW&W posted an announcement and hosted some discussion that included the authors of the unabridged Huainanzi translation published by Columbia University Press. FYI, I just received in the mail an abridged version of the translation (272 pages instead of 1016), which is now available: The Essential Huainanzi.

Unrelated book note: The WAC (“Writing-across-the-Curriculum”) Clearinghouse at Colorado State University is offering, free of charge, electronic access to Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers by Kirkpatrick and Xu.

Enjoy.

CFP: SEAC 14th International Conference

I pass this on, since I know that the organizers are very open to papers and themes drawing on Chinese/comparative philosophy…

Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC) 14th International Conference (October 4 – October 6, 2012; Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI)

THEME: “The Art of Morality: Developing Moral Sensitivity Across the Curriculum”

Keynote Speaker: Patricia Churchland

Directors: Peggy Vandenberg (Grand Valley State University) & Deborah Mower (Youngstown State University)

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