Bin Song’s article “A Study of Cheng Yi’s Quiet-Sitting Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in the Confucian Context” has been published by the Journal of Contemplative Studies. The journal has a very nice website, where readers can view and download the article in multiple formats: https://contemplativejournal.org/#/texts/67516.
Call for submissions: Reading Primary Sources in Asian Philosophies
From Malcolm Keating:
Do you have a favorite Asian philosophical text to teach, one that you’re excited about and want to see taught in other classrooms? Bloomsbury Academic is soliciting contributions to a collection of entries for an electronic resource, Reading Primary Sources in Asian Philosophies. Each entry will be a succinct, lively introduction and guide to an important Asian philosophical text. The collection will include Asian texts from any time period or geographical region: for instance, China, India, Japan, Korea, or Southeast Asia, texts which may be ancient, classical, or modern (colonial, post-colonial, etc.). Entries may be relevant to any philosophical subdiscipline, so long as they are grounded in a specific text.
Michael Nylan and Daniel Bell at Rutgers
Two upcoming talks at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, by Michael Nylan and Daniel Bell, might be of interest to the readers of this blog. Both talks are in person, with live-streaming through Zoom. If you are coming in person, please drop me a quick note so that I can include you in the dinner reservation.
1. Thursday, 9/28, 4:30-6pm, “Why Re-translate a Classic?” (Michael Nylan, University of California Berkeley). Click here for details.
2. Monday, 10/2, 4:30-6pm, “The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University” (Daniel A. Bell, University of Hong Kong). Click here for details.
Online Lecture: Selfishness & Self-Centeredness
Saint Louis University’s Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) Center and Department of Philosophy are happy to announce that they will be hosting a Zoom lecture next Tuesday, September 19th. This lecture is “Selfishness & Self-Centeredness” by Philip J. Ivanhoe from Georgetown University. The aims of this talk are to describe and make clear the philosophically related but distinct notions of selfishness and self-centeredness and show how the latter in particular relates to concerns about oneness, the self, and happiness. Please click here for the flyer or information on registration.
New Book: Vermander, The Encounter of Chinese and Western Philosophies
Benoît Vermander, The Encounter of Chinese and Western Philosophies: A Critique (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023).
(Open Access – can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110799118 )
ToC: Asian Studies 11:3
The University of Ljubljana Press has recently released a new issue of Asian Studies 11:3. This issue which includes 14 different articles ranging over a variety of topics is a special issue titled “Humanism, Post-Humanism and Transhumanism in Transcultural Perspective: Asian and European Paradigms”. Please read below for a table of contents.
Sept 15–Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy: Jing Hu (Concordia University) “War and Shame—Debate on the Appropriate Response to Insults between the Confucians and their Interlocutors”
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes you to an IN-PERSON meeting:
Jing Hu (Concordia University): « War and Shame –A Debate on the Appropriate Response to Insults between the Confucians and their Interlocutors »
With responses from Nalei Chen (New York University)
ABSTRACT: What is an appropriate response to humiliating treatments such as insults? This question is not only relevant to today’s discourse but has also piqued the curiosity of thinkers in classical Chinese philosophy. The Warring States period debate regarding whether one’s inner sense of shame can shield one from insulting situations and from experiencing shame is frequently presented as a one-sided narrative that focuses on the Confucian texts. Meanwhile, the views of their rival thinkers, such as the Daoist, legalist, or much-neglected Songzi (3rd century BCE), are rarely the focus of attention. This paper brings Songzi, a key player in the debate of emotions as responses to external triggers, into the picture and restores the historical intellectual discourse over the topic of what constitutes an appropriate response to humiliating situations such as insults. More importantly, I point out the philosophical significance of this debate, namely how Songzi prompts Xunzi to respond to an ambiguity within the Confucian doctrine: The early Confucians appear to think that an individual’s internal virtues can isolate and shield one from hostile external stimuli while also maintaining that the external environment impacts one’s moral cultivation and moral life in significant ways. Xunzi’s strategic move, I argue, is to give credit to both an inner sense of shame and the function of external stimuli in inducing negative emotions, thus making an important philosophical concession compared to Confucius and Mencius.
DATE: September 15, 2023
TIME: 5:30 pm EST
LOCATION: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University, 1150 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027
Note Regarding Donations: Due to COVID-19, donations are only accepted through Columbia University’s secure online giving form, Giving to Columbia.
Accessibility Statement: Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. The University Seminars participants with dis- abilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or disability@columbia.edu. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. On campus, seminar participants with disabilities should alert a Public Safety Officer if they need assistance accessing campus.
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/comparative-philosophy/
Warp, Weft, and Way and social media
Greetings blog readership! I have a question on which I’d love your feedback. As many of you know, the blog has a software that autoposts blog content to Facebook and used to do so to Twitter. The autoposter has some limitations, especially that it can only be configured for two accounts — so only Aris Dashiell’s (my RA) and me posts actually get sent on to FB automatically; posts by others require Aris or me to manually intercede for them to got to FB. So far we haven’t found a better solution for that.
But what I am writing about today is actually not FB. The change of Twitter to X broke the autoposter’s connection. We can seek to restore that, but it didn’t seem that even the Twitter feed was getting much attention. So, a two-part question: (1) would you value a restored WW&W feed on X? (2) are there other social media platforms that we should attach to? Please share your views, either as comments or email me directly. Thanks!
CFP: ISCP at APA-Pacific
The International Society for Chinese Philosophy is happy to invite submissions to be considered for inclusion in panels at the upcoming APA Pacific Divison Meeting occurring on March 20-23, 2024 in Portland, OR. Submissions focusing on any area of Chinese philosophy will be considered and they welcome both individual papers as well as completed panel proposals. Please read below for details on submissions.
Submission Deadline: September 10, 2023
Nylan Reviews Hunter, The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought
From H-Net Reviews, Michael Nylan reviews Michael Hunter, The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
