Here is a sharp analysis of the recent crisis in China which, I guess, will interest many of you. The author writes: “If anything, Wuhan bankrupted the meritocracy myth for many people who once believed that the country was largely run by no-nonsense, result-oriented technocrats.” One starts wondering when exactly those scholars who have been praising China’s so called “meritocracy” as superior to (Western) liberal democracies will start taking (social and political) reality into account. Does it make sense to say that this still is merely a bad reality contradicting a normative ideal?!
Author Archives: Kai Marchal
2019 SEA International Young Scholars Conference in Taipei
Dear colleagues,
The following announcement might be of interest to some readers of “Warp, Weft, and Way”. We encourage younger scholars in fields like sinology, religious studies, cultural studies and philosophy to apply. The conference will be an excellent opportunity to meet distinguished scholars from Taiwan, Hongkong and other Sinophone societies and to interact with young scholars from around the globe.
Kai
Conference in Taipei: “Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy” (March 18-20)
Dear colleagues,
this is to inform you about the international conference “Selfhood, Otherness, and Cultivation. Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy” (March 18-20, at National Chengchi University in Taipei). You can still register on our website which also contains many helpful information (list of speakers, abstracts, etc.). The conference is co-hosted by the philosophy department and the interdisciplinary “Research Center on Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in Taiwan” at National Chengchi University. Our guest of honor is Dan Zahavi (Kopenhagen/Oxford) who, besides participating in our conference, will also give a series of lectures next week (see here).
Cordially,
Kai Marchal
Post-doctoral Fellow Positions in Taiwan
Dear colleagues:
Hereby I’d like to draw your attention to the following announcement by the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity, National Chengchi University, Taipei (Taiwan). If you have any further question, you can write to cca@nccu.edu.tw (or just send me a message: I am one of the four co-directors of this center). Please also note the tight dead-line.
Ernst Tugendhat and Daoism: Workshop in Taipei
On May 7 and 9, the philosophy department of NCCU in Taipei organizes a workshop on the German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat’s book “Egocentricity and Mysticism” (Columbia UP, 2016). One of its translators, Mario Wenning, will discuss with us the philosophical relevance of Tugendhat’s ideas, esp. his interpretation of Daoist and Buddhist teachings. If you happen to be in Taipei and are interested in the topic, please feel free to join our discussion. For all other details see the abstract in Chinese (below).
Confucian Revival versus Feminist Awakening
I often have trouble understanding the ease with which some Western observers/scholars living outside of Chinese-speaking societies try to merge modern feminist ideas with traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucian discourses. From a more embedded perspective, these attempts often look oversimplifying, or simply unconvincing. Again and again, social reality in China follows its own laws, not those imagined by observers outside of China.
Workshop in Taipei this Saturday: 如何向他者學習？
This saturday (October 28, 9-12 a.m.), a couple of colleagues (among others, Leigh Jenco, Sébastien Billioud, 林遠澤, and Fabian Heubel) will meet for a workshop at National Chengchi University (Taipei) on the possibility, and the theoretical implications, of cross-cultural learning. If you happen to be around and want to join our discussion, you are welcome to do so! Just send me an e-mail.
Daniel A. Bell on CCTV, on the very first day of the 19th Party Congress
Daniel A. Bell speaks on the priority of harmony over freedom in a recent interview. Today, his interview appears just beneath CCTV’s extensive media coverage for Xi Jinping’s speech on the 19th Party Congress (see lower half of this page; in case you can’t find it there anymore, just use this link). Fama crescit eundo.
New Book: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World
This is to announce that the volume Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Political, edited by Carl K. Y. Shaw （蕭高彥）and me, has just been published by Lexington and is now available on the internet and elsewhere. Here is the link to the publisher’s website, here on Amazon. And here is the description on our cover:
“Reorienting the Political examines the reception of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-speaking world. The legacies of both Schmitt, the German legal theorist and thinker who joined the Nazi party, and Strauss, the German-Jewish classicist and political philosopher who became famous after his emigration to the United States, are highly controversial. Since the 1990s, however, these thinkers have had a powerful resonance for Chinese scholars.
Hans Feger in Taiwan
Dr. Hans Feger (Philosophy Department, Free University of Berlin) will be in Taipei for a series of lectures on European and Chinese philosophy early next month. The lectures are open to the general public, and you are invited to join us if you happen to be in Taipei!
