The book Intelligence and Wisdom: Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers has been published by Springer. The full book is available for free download here; a listing of the table of contents follows below.
AAR Confucian Traditions Panels
The AAR Conference is about to take place; here is information about the Confucian Traditions Group’s panels. Please note that you need to be registered for the conference in order to access the virtual panels.
Even if you are not going physically to San Antonio, you will be able to participate in this year’s Confucian Traditions Unit activities. We are hosting three panels, and we encourage you to attend all three! The information is down below. The first session is in person, and the latter two are virtual. We hope to see you there, at least on our computer screens.
In-person sessions begin with an A-prefix (i.e., A20-109), whereas Virtual sessions begin with an AV-prefix (i.e., AV21-115)
All Times are Listed in Central Standard Time (CST)
New Book: The Daodejing Commentary of Cheng Xuanying
This is now the third translation in the Oxford Chinese Thought book series, which is devoted to providing high-quality translations of important philosophical and religious texts, for scholars and for classroom use. A short description follows below the fold.
Online Lecture: Sun, Reviving Family Ritual
This coming Monday, Nov. 8, Anna Sun will be speaking on “Reviving Family Ritual: The Logic of Contemporary Confucian Rites in Urban China” at 10am CST. Details are here. Enjoy!
2022-23 Berggruen USC Fellowship
The AY 2022-23 Berggruen USC Fellowship is open for applications until January 10th, 2022. We welcome thinkers from across cultures and disciplines to apply, and there is a special interest in projects related to China. Berggruen Fellows can be either academics or unattached intellectuals (for whom the Berggruen Fellowship may serve as a retreat from work in industry, government, or the arts) but above all must be committed to intellectual work of the highest quality. Fellows will work from the our Institute’s office in Downtown Los Angeles and will have access to the scholarly resources of the University of Southern California.
For more information on application timeline and requirements, please check here: https://dornsife.usc.edu/stpl/usc-beggruen-fellowship-application/
Book Talk: Peter Zarrow, Abolishing Boundaries
Focusing on four key Chinese intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century, Abolishing Boundaries offers new perspectives on modern Chinese political thought. These four intellectuals—Kang Youwei, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Duxiu, and Hu Shi—were deeply familiar with the Confucian and Buddhist classical texts, while also interested in the West’s utopian literature of the late nineteenth century as well as Kant and the neo-Kantians, Marxists, and John Dewey and new liberalism, respectively. Although none of these four intellectuals can simply be labeled utopian thinkers, this book highlights how their thinking was intertwined with utopian ideals to produce theories of secular transcendence, liberalism, and communism, and how, in explicit and implicit ways, their ideas required some utopian impulse in order to escape the boundaries they identified as imprisoning the Chinese people and all humanity. To abolish these boundaries was to imagine alternatives to the unbearable present. This was not a matter of armchair philosophizing but of thinking through new ways to commit to action. These men did not hold a totalistic picture of some perfect society, but in distinctly different ways they all displayed a utopian impulse that fueled radical visions of change. Their work reveals much about the underlying forces shaping modern thought in China—and the world. Reacting to China’s problems, they sought a better future for all humanity.
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-70
Peter Zarrow is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. His previous books include Educating China: Knowledge, Society, and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902–1937 and After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924.
Wednesday Workshop Series, Department of History, University of Connecticut
November 10, 12:15 – 13:15 pm Eastern Time (US/Canada)
Join Zoom meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/838
Meeting ID: 838 4823 1520
Li Zehou (1930-2021)
I am sorry to pass on the news that influential philosopher Li Zehou passed away yesterday. One news report is here; please share any other remembrances.
New Book: Lewis, Confucian Ritual and Moral Education
Confucian Ritual and Moral Education
By Colin J. Lewis
Summary:
It is widely accepted that moral education is quintessential to facilitating and maintaining prosocial attitudes. What moral education should entail and how it can be effectively pursued remain hotly disputed questions. In Confucian Ritual and Moral Education, Colin J. Lewis examines these issues by appealing to two traditions that have until now escaped comparison: Vygotsky’s theory of learning and psychosocial development and ancient Confucianism’s ritualized approach to moral education. Lewis argues first, that Vygotsky and the Confucians complement one another in a manner that enables a nuanced, empirically sound understanding of how the Confucian ritual education model should be construed and how it could be deployed; and second, just as ritual education in the Confucian tradition can be explicated in terms of modern developmental theory, this ancient notion of ritual can also serve as a viable resource for moral education in a contemporary, diverse world.
POSTPONED: Li Zehou on the ‘Deep Structures of Confucianism’ (Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy)
UPDATE: The Student Workers of Columbia University (SWC) went on strike as of November 3, 2021. The Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy respects the SWC’s decision to strike, and hopes that an agreement is reached quickly.
Until then, we have chosen to suspend our seminar meetings, including the previously scheduled meeting for Friday, November 12, in solidarity with the striking students. A revised schedule of meetings will be announced at the appropriate time. Original announcement (now edited), below. – HS
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THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Presents: Li Zehou on the ‘Deep Structures of Confucianism’
Lead Presenter: Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
Discussants: Robert A. Carleo III (East China Normal University), Ryan Nichols (California State University, Fullerton), Emma Buchtel (Hong Kong Education University)
ABSTRACT: Contemporary Chinese intellectual Li Zehou’s cross-cultural methodology blends traditional Confucian thought with thinkers such as Kant and Marx. This seminar addresses the question of culture and its role in Li’s thought. Li has made several claims about how a settled cultural tradition influences the subjects within it. One such claim concerns the existence of ‘deep structures’ of Confucianism, as outlined in this preparatory reading. The idea is that culture, history, and social practice (collectively, a tradition) shape human psychology (including the formation of concepts, emotions, and values) in ways not always apparent to the subject. Within the Chinese tradition, Confucianism constitutes such a deep structure, and its effects cannot be captured by textual studies alone, nor studies of material culture. Rather, the deep structure is articulated in terms of an emergent shared subjectivity. Such traditions can evolve and ultimately dissolve; nevertheless, their effects are deep-rooted. This seminar meeting will aim to identify the parameters of Li’s ambitious theoretical framework and its plausibility, and to explore connections with current work in related fields, such as cultural and empirical psychology.
DATE: TBA
TIME: TBA
This seminar will take place via Zoom (please scroll down for the full invitation). Below you will find the link to join the meeting. Continue reading →
New book: Patt-Shamir, Three Neo-Confucian Perspectives on Transcending Self-Boundaries
Three Neo-Confucian Perspectives on Transcending Self-Boundaries
By Galia Patt-Shamir
Summary:
Persons Emerging explores the renewed idea of the Confucian person in the eleventh-century philosophies of Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong, and Zhang Zai. Galia Patt-Shamir discusses their responses to the Confucian challenge that the Way, as perfection, can be broadened by the person who travels it. Suggesting that the three neo-Confucian philosophers undertake the classical Confucian task of “broadening the way,” each proposes to deal with it from a different angle: Zhou Dunyi offers a metaphysical emerging out of the infinitude-finitude boundary, Shao Yong emerges out of the epistemological boundary between in and out, and Zhang Zai offers a pragmatic emerging out of the boundary between life and death.
Through the lens of these three Song-period China philosophers, the idea of “transcending self-boundaries” places neo-Confucian philosophies within the global philosophical context. Patt-Shamir questions the Confucian notions of person, Way, and how they relate to human flourishing to highlight how the emergence of personhood demands transcending metaphysical, epistemological, and moral self-boundaries.
