12th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought

The University of Chicago

March 11-12, 2016

Third-floor lecture hall, Swift Hall (the Divinity School)

Friday, March 11

2:00-3:30 Personal and Social Cultivation in Early Confucianism

• Jonathan Kwan (Graduate Center, CUNY): “Ethical and Aesthetic Judgment in the Analects”
• Dobin Choi (Towson University): “Moral Artisanship: Mengzi 6A7 Revisited”
• Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University, Bloomington): “An Early Confucian Theory of Shared Practice”

3:45-4:45 Commitment and Freedom in the Zhuangzi 

• Joseph Sta. Maria (Ateneo de Manila University): “Purposeful desirelessness: An attempted solution to the Daoist paradox of desiring-non-desiring”
• Sonya Ozbey (University of Michigan): “Rethinking Apathy and Radicalism Through the Zhuangzi”

5:00-6:30 Keynote Address
Chad Hansen, University of Hong Kong: “Dào Exists∴Dào≠God”

Saturday, March 12

9:00-10:30 Knowledge and Action in the Zhuangzi

• John R. Williams (National University of Singapore): “The Radical Zhuangzi: Zhuangzi and Contemporary Skepticism”
• Julianne Chung (University of Louisville): “Is Zhuangzi a Fictionalist?”
• Asia Guzowska (University of Warsaw): “Responsive Action and the Cosmic Way: The Notion of Dao in Zhuangzi 22”

10:45-12:15 Language, Reality, and Truth

• Susan Blake (Indiana University, Bloomington): “Names and Standards in Early Chinese Philosophy”
• Stephen C. Walker (University of Chicago): “‘Dao cannot be regarded as something—nor as nothing.’”
• Alexus McLeod (Colorado State University): “Zhen as a Truth Concept: the Chuzhen Chapter of Huainanzi”

2:00-3:00 “I Am One Condemned by Heaven.”

• Michael Ing (University of Indiana, Bloomington): “Encircled by Hardships and Difficulties: Regret and Lament in Early Confucian Thought”
• Hagop Sarkissian (Baruch College): “Can Contempt Be a Virtue? A Case Study from the Analects”

3:15-4:15 Confucian Role Ethics

• Cheryl Cottine (Oberlin College): “Reconsidering Friendship in Early Confucianism”
• John Ramsey (Denison University): “Confucian Social Roles: The Early Confucian Contribution to the Contemporary Social Role Literature”

4:30-5:30 Neo-Confucianism

• Judson Murray (Wright State University): “Debating the Value and Purpose of Quietist Contemplation in Chinese and Japanese Neo-Confucian Programs of Moral Cultivation”
• Jean Tsui (College of Staten Island): “An Onto-Hermeneutic Turn in China’s Political Modernization: From New Knowledge to Crisis of Meaning”

More details (including paper abstracts) available here.