CFP: Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought

7th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought

Keynote Speaker: Michael Puett, Harvard University

Friday, May 6 ~ Saturday. May 7, 2011
North Central College
Naperville, Illinois

The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese! thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. Submissions are invited for papers on any aspect of Chinese thought, as well as papers dealing with comparative thought that engage Chinese perspectives. Participants from any geographic area are welcome.

Please submit 1-2 page abstract by February 28, 2011 to Brian Hoffert:

bhoffert@noctrl.edu

For inquiries about the conference, please contact Brian Hoffert at bhoffert@noctrl.edu

Leiter Blog Central for APA Session Cancellations and Changes

Brian Leiter has set up some helpful centralized posts for folks to announce any changes or cancellations to sessions, meetings, and job interviews at the Boston APA meeting, slated to begin this evening. If anyone out there is chairing or has organized a session, meeting, or job interviews and would like to post an update for it based on the horrendous winter storm and associated travel problems, please do it over there.

Update on ISCP's APA panel

Please note some changes in the scheduling and organization of ISCP’s panel at the Eastern Division meeting in Boston. The panel, “New Topics: Chinese and Comparative Philosophy” will now take place on Tuesday, December 28 at 7:30-10:30 PM. Click on “Read more” to see the list of talks and speakers, slightly modified since the publication of the APA’s original bulletin.

Continue reading →

Confucians React to Planned Christian Church in Qufu

An open letter, signed by several prominent Chinese scholars and endorsed by numerous Confucian organizations, has been released criticizing the plans to build a large Christian church in Qufu, about 3 km from the Qufu Confucian Temple. The letter begins:

We have recently heard that a large, Gothic-style Christian church, more than 40 meters high and capable of holding more than 3000 people, is under construction in the vicinity of Qufu’s Confucian Temple. We Confucian scholars, organizations, and websites are deeply shocked and worried, and call upon all concerned parties to respect this sacred ground of Chinese culture and halt construction of this Christian church….

I paste the entire letter, including the list of signatories (many of whom have been prominently identified with “Confucian teaching” or “Confucian religion” [rujiao 儒教]), below.  Continue reading →

NEH Summer Seminar on Daoist Literature and History

Terry Kleeman and Steve Bokenkamp will be jointly offering an intensive, 3-week Summer Seminar this coming summer. They write:

This intensive reading seminar, introducing texts from the earliest Celestial Master petitions to manuscripts still in use among Daoist in Taiwan and China, will be held on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder from July 18 to August 5, 2011.  We are looking for scholars who want to learn how to read Daoist texts and would like to expand their research and teaching to incorporate Daoist individuals, texts, teachings, and practices. There will also be an opportunity to participate in an anthology of translations from Daoist sources.  The Seminar will be demanding but participants will be free to explore the mountains on weekends.  NEH provides a $2,700 stipend to defer travel and living expenses; we expect housing on campus to run roughly $1150 (shared) or $1800 (single) per person.

For more information, see their website.

Journals and Series friendly to Non-Western philosophy

I just happened to notice that the announcement of a new book series explicitly states, “Research book proposals exploring non-Western traditions are also welcome.” A moment’s investigation reveals that the journal affiliated with the series, the Journal of Moral Philosophy, makes a similar claim in its mission statement. Terrific! So far, though, the publishing evidence is a bit scanty. I looked through the JMP‘s eight years of publishing history, and found one essay that is obviously related to non-Western philosophy: Eric Hutton’s “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics,” from vol. 5 (2008). This leads me to wonder:

  • Does anyone have experience that speaks to the degree that this journal is in fact open to non-Western topics?
  • Any thoughts about experiences with other journals, book series, or philosophy lists at publishers?
  • Do any other journals (etc.) make similar statements to that of the JMP? (I can say right away that Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and the journal Philosophy Compass both consistently devote attention to non-Western topics. Others?)

I certainly applaud the openness announced by the JMP and the new series, and wonder what more we might learn on this general subject.

Lilla in TNR on Strauss and Schmitt in China

Shaojin Chai draws our attention to a recent and intriguing essay by Mark Lilla in The New Republic, entitled “Reading Strauss in Beijing: China’s Strange Taste in Western Philosophers.” Shaojin expresses some skepticism about a connection between the interest in Schmidt and “China’s imperialistic ambition or statist future”; but I found this bit of Lilla’s piece to ring true: Continue reading →