Author Archives: Manyul Im

University of Bridgeport

WuWei Revisited

Scott Barnwell revisits one of our favorite topics:

Off and on over the past 18 months I’ve been working on a new essay for my blog series “Classical Daoism – Is There Really Such a Thing?” The essay is on Wuwei 無為 and whether it could be considered a defining feature of a group or tradition we call (early) Daoism. I’ve got some thoughts I hope some may feel like addressing. As far as I can tell, wuwei does not have just one meaning or usage. I think there are a few different uses and would like to know if others would differentiate them as I do.

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New Email Subscription Option

For those of you who may have been unceremoniously dropped from your email subscriptions (to new post notifications) when our site underwent a “routine” update a couple of months ago, we have added a different — and more convenient, by Postmatic’s own advertising — subscription service from  on the far right menu.

One of the new features that I haven’t tested yet is the ability to comment directly from the email in which the post is sent. I guess we will find out soon enough.

Sign up if you like emailed updates!

Important Facebook Detail

IMPORTANT: If you rely on Facebook to notify you of posts on Warp Weft and Way and you have “liked” it already, because of the updated format of the page, you will need to go to the page and select “Get Notifications” where it indicates that you already have “Liked” the Facebook page (look on the big picture of the ox). Remarkably, for Facebook, liking the page does not automatically sign you up for receiving notifications from the page.

Facebook Page Update

Just a quick update about the Facebook page that is associated with the blog. The page has been converted (finally) to a public page rather than being a “personal” profile page. That increases its functionality for being linked automatically to the blog’s posts. Discussions can also be started on the Facebook page by anyone who wishes to post there. Posts are moderated — they have to be approved by an administrator before appearing.

Note: some of you who were following the Facebook page were dropped off the list in the transition. Please “like” the page again to resume following. Cheers.

Major Update to Chinese Text Project

News from Donald Sturgeon, who has used optical character recognition to provide extraordinary searchable access to pre-modern Chinese texts online:

Chinese Text Project: over ten million pages of pre-modern Chinese texts now searchable online

A major update to the site has been made by applying OCR to over ten million pages of transmitted texts stored in the Library, linking scanned texts where possible to digital editions that follow them. Over 3000 existing texts have been successfully linked, allowing side-by-side display and textual searching of scanned texts.

Additionally, around ten thousand new texts and editions have also been transcribed for the first time using OCR. While these transcriptions inevitably contain many errors, they make it possible for the first time to search the scanned texts and immediately locate information within them. All newly transcribed texts have been added to the Wiki – please help by correcting errors when using these resources.

For further details, please see the OCR instructions.

Naming, Identity, and Open Discussion

Actually, this post is less interesting philosophically than it sounds, though it concerns something that is important to Steve Angle and me in our roles serving as administrators of this blog. This post will remain on top for a bit, then its contents will be moved to the introductory side menu. PLEASE READ:

New Comments/Discussion Policy: We will be implementing, going forward, a policy that comment or discussion authors identify themselves by their actual full names (“last”/family name and given name), at least once in a post or discussion string, if their logged-in names do not already indicate them. It would also be good to have some small self-identifying epithet after a name — either an institutional affiliation, something like “no affiliation, (city name),” or anything else that helps to contextualize one’s identity. Any official contributors to the blog who are listed in the Contributors list can simply put “(see Contributors list)” after their names.

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Tenure Track Position in Asian Philosophy

From Matthew Pierlott at West Chester University:

West Chester University of Pennsylvania is seeking applicants for the position of Assistant Professor of Philosophy, tenure-track position, to begin August 2015. AOS: Asian Philosophy; AOC: Open. The Department awards both BA and MA degrees in Philosophy, BA degrees in Religious Studies, and Graduate Cer­tificate Programs in Applied Ethics. Normal teaching load 12 hrs/semester. Minimum Qualifications: Evidence of scholarly aptitude and earned Ph.D. in Philosophy or Religious Studies; com­pletion of the Ph.D. required by August 30, 2015.

To view full job ad and to apply, go to http://agency.governmentjobs.com/wcupa/default.cfm.

 

Hansen’s MOOC on edX

Chad Hansen has created a MOOC on edX called “Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought,” available here. Here is some copy from the course description:

Think along with Classical Chinese masters as they explore and debate how and where we can find ethical guidance in nature.

We make ethical or behaviour guiding right / wrong judgments all the time but have you ever wondered where Ethics comes from, what it is about and why it is important? This course provides an introduction to traditional Chinese ethical thought and focuses on the pervasive contrast in the way Chinese and Westerners think about ethical guidance or guidance concerning what is right and what is wrong, good or bad.  Traditional Western orthodoxy uses the metaphor of a law – in its most familiar popular form, the command of a supernatural being backed by a threat of eternal punishment or reward – to explain ethical guidance. The Classical Chinese philosophers by contrast were all naturalists. They talked about ethical guidance using a path metaphor – a natural dào…

Academic Book Costs

Given the energetic interest (e.g. here, recently) in academic book prices that are clearly pitched to institutional library collections and not for the average disposable income of individuals, I thought perhaps we could discuss this in a separate post and if we’re lucky, some of the blog readers who are in the publishing end could weigh in. At the very least, it might provide a forum in which to find out what goes into the decision to print a hardcover, library volume exclusively — I suppose something more illuminating than “there isn’t a market big enough for a softcover printing” would be nice. Comments from all sides are welcome.

Please keep comments civil — I know there is frustration out there but it may be constructive not to rage against the machine in this context.