SEOK, Bongrae, Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy
Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013, xvi + 197 pages

How can Confucian philosophy provide a useful path toward understanding the basic
processes of human moral psychology? This is the question that SEOK Bongrae’s new
book Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy strives to answer.
To the uninitiated, Confucian philosophy will be an unlikely resource, even an
anachronism with respect to current issues in philosophy, especially with regard to
issues in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. However, a revival of
Confucian ideas is taking place, with articles, conferences, monographs, and edited
volumes devoted to its relevance to a variety of areas of current philosophy, both
analytic and continental. Seok’s book is a fine example from this trend. Trained in the
philosophy of mind and cognitive science at the University of Arizona, Seok has turned
to the Confucian tradition for insights that can extend our understanding of how the
human mind makes moral decisions.

Seok divides his book into two parts. The first is a background on embodied
cognition and how Confucian philosophy is a natural candidate for explorations of
embodiment. The second explores and elucidates particular aspects of Confucian moral
psychology and then brings them into dialogue with current debates in moral psychology,
specifically, with regard to the character/situationist debate. In the five chapters of
these two sections, Seok makes a convincing case for the importance of what he calls
situated Confucian virtue. …

Full review can be found here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11712-014-9411-0?sa_campaign=email/event/articleAuthor/onlineFirst

The Institute of International Education, which administers the Fulbright Program,  just announced a new award for Ph.D. students wishing to do research in China, and philosophy is included as one of the disciplines.

The announcement is here: http://www.iie.org/Programs/Confucius-China-Studies-Program

This new program, called the Confucius China Studies Program, is funded by, you guessed it, the Confucius Institute.  This could be a great opportunity for anyone wishing to do Ph.D. research in China.

Inside Higher Ed just published an article on the censorship of the EACS program earlier this year–already mentioned on this site.

Some Zhuangzi in this quote and a bit of Zen at the end:

Bee-eating Wasps… feed their larvae on Hive-bees, whom they catch on the flowers while gathering pollen and honey.  If the Wasp who has made a capture feels that her Bee is swollen with honey, she never fails, before stinging her, to squeeze her crop, either on the way or at the entrance of the dwelling, so as to make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which she drinks by licking the tongue which her unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks out of her mouth at full length…. At the moment of some such horrible banquet, I have seen the Wasp, with her prey, seized by the Mantis: the bandit was rifled by another bandit.  And here is an awful detail: while the Mantis held her transfixed under the points of the double saw and was already munching her belly, the Wasp continued to lick the honey of her Bee.   (J. Henri Fabre, The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre, p. 57)

Whenever I read something from a scientist that so intriguingly echoes a passage from early China, it gets me wondering about the powers of observation in the early writers.  Did Zhuangzi spend extended periods of time just observing, as did Fabre?  Fabre was a self-taught entomologist in the nineteenth century famous for staking out insects and reporting on their behavior.  Although an acute observer, he is not averse to a bit of anthropomorphizing and even has a nice literary appeal (at least in the translation of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos).

Those interested in how traditional Chinese ethical theory may be relevant to contemporary issues of social justice will want to read this series of posts by Donald Munro: http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/07/human-values-corporate-social-impact-case-jpmorgan-chase/

See the attached announcement in the following link for an explanation of a number of new Fulbright opportunities in Taiwan: for recent graduates, M.A. students, K-12 teachers, post-docs, and seasoned scholars:  Fulbright Taiwan.

Ted Slingerland is out promoting his new book, Trying Not to Try and is on a radio talk show.  I ‘m listening to it right now on public radio’s On Point.  Here’s the website.  Mike Csikszentmihalyi is on, as well.