An interesting one, sent via Jeeloo Liu (ACPA president). I’m not sure Tu reads this blog, but comments and discussion are welcome in any case.

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To:  Fellow Students of Chinese Philosophy

From:   Tu Weiming

Re:  The State of the Field

It gives me great pleasure to share my tentative thoughts on our field both as an intellectual pursuit and as an academic discipline.  Let me first give you some background.  Otherwise this might easily be construed as presumptuous and even self-serving.  As some of you know, I attended the last Congress in Seoul (June 2008) as the speaker (Maimonides Lecturer for one of the three endowed chair.  I was allotted a 90-minute plenary session to present my reflections on the Analects.  However, more pertinently, I was elected as a member of the Steering Committee of FISP (Federation of International Philosophical Societies) which, among other things, has the authority to oversee the organization of the Congress.  Since its inception in 1900, the Congress had never met in Asia.  The 2003 Congress was held in Istanbul, but ironically, even though Turkey is located in Asia broadly defined, its national aspiration is to join the European Union.  I was told that during all the plenary sessions there had only been an African voice, and no Asian voice. This reminds me that my Chinese colleagues told me that during the 1998 Congress in Boston, my presentation on the Confucian idea of the educated person was the sole Asian voice.

However, the Seoul Congress must be fully recognized as the single most significant event for Asian and comparative philosophy and with far-reaching implications for Chinese philosophy.  It recognized Buddhist philosophy, Daoist philosophy, and Confucian philosophy as integral parts of world philosophy, to be seriously considered as important as metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Continue reading →