Translate This!

I’m sure many of us have this practice: You see a new translation of a text that is near and dear to you, and the first thing you do is pick it up and flip to those handful of passages that you think are crucial in understanding the text to see how the translator has parsed them.  (I can’t be the only one, right?)

One such passage (for me, anyway) is 1.12 in the Analects.  Here it is:

有子曰：「禮之用，和為貴。先王之道，斯為美；小大由之。有所不行，知和而和，不以禮節之，亦不可行也。」

Here are two ways of understanding the first part of this passage. Continue reading →

Empirical Perspective on Mencius-Xunzi Debate

Eric Schwitzgebel, one of our contributors, is having problems registering for a WordPress ID, so he has asked me to post this podcast of a lecture that he presented on the Mencius-Xunzi human nature debate. It is also cross-posted over at his blog The Splintered Mind:

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Podcast of “An Empirical Perspective on the Mencius-Xunzi Debate about Human Nature”

… given to the Confucius Institute of Scotland on Jan. 19, available for listening or download here.

Continue reading →

Cult of Ancestry

I get nearly the same question about the cult of ancestry every time I teach the Analects, but I’ve never been able to answer it to my own satisfaction, much less to my students’. The question is bascially, what background assumptions and beliefs about the dead are in play for Confucius and his followers when they place such heavy emphasis on the continuance of filial piety for their parents and prior ancestors, post mortem? Of course, there’s this famous exchange with Confucius in 11.12, in which he seems to say that one should remain agnostic about death:

Ji Lu asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The Master said, “While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their spirits?” Ji Lu added, “I venture to ask about death?” He was answered, “While you do not know life, how can you know about death?” (Legge translation)

季路問事鬼神。子曰：“未能事人，焉能事鬼？”敢問死。曰：“未知生，焉知死？”

We could take some agnosticism about death seriously here, or we could imagine that Confucius is simply deflecting for the sake of getting Ji Lu to think more about the problems of the living. Continue reading →

Hong Kong U Fellowship in Philosophy

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong is inviting applications for a special postdoctoral fellowship in HKU’s “Society of Scholars,” a programme that began last year. The fellowship is intended for recent PhD graduates (degree received within the last two years) or those about to receive the PhD. Information on the Society is available here. Application information is available here.

Isabel Archer, American Sinology, and a certain Confucian Vagueness

During the last weeks, I have been thinking about how to write my first entry in this blog. Too much work and some kind of reticence held me back for many days. However, after having discovered Alexus McLeod’s thoughts on Proust and Confucius (on his Unpolished Jade Blog), I finally sat down and decided that it would be most appropriate to begin my first entry with a deep (ironical) bow to Henry James’ Isabel Archer…

Why Isabel Archer? Because she gives a wonderful example of the moral and cultural sensitivity we all need of when writing about Chinese philosophy. Also, because her case stands for a certain paradigm of (American/Western) modernity which still influences our thoughts and which, I guess, also motivates us to search for a constructive dialogue with the “Chinese mind”. And, finally, there is Isabel’s intriguing “fear”: her being frightened by Warburton’s offer, of Caspar Goodwood’s persistence, of Gilbert Osmond’s anger, her fear of cultural alienation, her fear of herself – somehow, I believe, this fear inhabits us all, being embedded in a Western cultural/philosophical framework, but being convinced at the same time of the necessity of “opening up”, engaging “the other”. In one word, Isabel Archer could remind us of the deeper tensions and darker forces which are at work today between the different cultural worlds. Certainly, she wouldn’t want us to buy too easily into a narrative of global harmony… Continue reading →

Confucius: the Action Movie

Happy (Gregorian) New Year, all. I don’t suppose they’ll consider remaking “Alexander,” only with Liam Neeson playing Aristotle and making the whole plot revolve around him. But that’s what someone’s done in China with Confucius, starring Chow Yun Fat as Confucius:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVUDzsi4t6Y&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

(Thanks to my cinephile friend, Lee, for the notice. ) Comments welcome, of course…

New Comparative Philosophy Journal

Bo Mou (San Jose State University, USA) has recently founded a new journal called Comparative Philosophy, described as “an international journal of constructive engagement of distinct approaches toward world philosophy.” The new journal’s website is here. The table of contents of volume 1, no. 1, scheduled to appear in January 2010, follows. Continue reading →

CFP: Main Program of Eastern APA

JeeLoo Liu, in her capacity as president of the ACPA, recently had an email exchange with Richard Bett of the APA’s Eastern Division, commenting on the fact that although there were many panels on Chinese and comparative philosophy at the recently-concluded conference, none were on the main program (all were sponsored by affiliated groups). Bett replied:

…the Eastern Division Executive Committee (at its annual meeting on December 27) actually discussed the fact that some areas of philosophy tended to be confined to the group program.  They would like this to be different.  And they suggested that I recommend to anyone in charge of affiliated groups that they encourage people to submit papers in areas such as Chinese philosophy not only to groups in those areas, but also to the main program.  Right now we get very few submissions on non-Western topics; but if we started getting significant numbers of such submissions, some of those papers would start appearing on the main program, not just on the group program.  For the next meeting the deadline for submitted papers is February 15.

This sounds to me like good advice, even if it’s not the whole answer (since not all main program panels are generated from submitted papets). The 2010 Eastern APA will be in Boston. For what it’s worth, the 2011 Central division’s deadline is June 1, 2010; the 2011 Pacific APA will be held in San Diego, and the deadline for submissions to its main program is Sept. 1, 2010.