THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes:
KARSTEN STRUHL (John Jay College) and GRAHAM PRIEST (CUNY Graduate Center)
Please join us at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11th at 5:30PM for their lecture entitled:
“Buddhism and Marxism: Points of Intersection”
Although Marxism and Buddhism might seem like unlikely bedfellows, they have a number of things in common. Continue reading →
The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 4th Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought has been extended to June 15, 2015. Interested scholars should send an abstract of no more than one single-spaced page, plus a current CV, to Tom Radice (radicet1@southernct.edu) and Xiaomei Yang (yangx1@southernct.edu). All files should either be in Word or .pdf format.
The conference will be held at Southern Connecticut State University on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 7-8, 2015.
Please refer to the original link for full details.
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: DAVID ELSTEIN (SUNY New Paltz)
With responses from: WARREN FRISINA (Hofstra University)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, MARCH 27 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“The Possibility of a Confucian Doctrine of Free Expression“
ABSTRACT: Most contemporary New Confucian advocates for democracy take a robust right of free expression for granted as a necessary condition for democratic practice. Yet whether or how Confucianism can justify such a right is often passed over without much analysis. On the face of it, the case does not look good. Classical Confucians of course do not mention any such right, and what they do say is generally neutral or outright hostile to free expression. Various limitations on free expression have also been endorsed by later Confucians, including some contemporary thinkers. The usual liberal justifications of free expression as protecting individual autonomy and preserving access to truth probably will not work for Confucians. For one thing, autonomy is not valued in the same way as in liberalism. Second, Confucians have generally been confident that truth and falsehood can be reliably distinguished by the more enlightened and there is not much to be gained by allowing the persistence of obviously false doctrines. The bigger concern is the harm false doctrines can cause. In this paper I will examine Confucian opposition to free expression, where Confucians will disagree with liberal views, and consider whether Confucianism can justify free expression along with how the Confucian right may differ in application. Continue reading →
This conference should be of interest to anyone working on issues in comparative thought and philosophy. A terrific lineup of speakers and panelists (if I do say so myself). -HS
Over the last decade, the newly emerging field of “experimental philosophy” has posed a challenge to the claim that professional philosophers’ judgments about philosophically important thought experiments are universal. Rather, in a growing number of studies, it has been shown that people in different cultural groups – Asians and Westerners, males and females, people of high and low socio-economic status, people with different personality types, people of different ages, people with different native languages, etc. – have different intuitions about cases designed to explore what people think about knowledge, morality, free will, consciousness and other important philosophical issues. However, the extent and sources of this variation remain by and large unknown. The goal of this conference is to bring together anthropologists, psychologists, comparative philosophers, and experimental philosophers in order to further our understanding of the similarities and differences in the lay understanding of, on the one hand, knowledge, and, on the other, agency and person across cultures. Furthermore, we hope to sketch new avenues of research for philosophically sophisticated cross-cultural studies of the concepts of knowledge, person, and agency.
Invited Speakers
Continue reading →
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: TIM CONNOLLY (East Stroudsburg University)
With responses from: SCOTT R. STROUD (University of Texas at Austin)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“Virtue Ethics, Role Ethics, and the Early Confucian Self”
ABSTRACT: Confucian Role Ethics takes its point of departure from “a specific vision of human beings as relational persons constituted by the roles they live rather than as individual selves” (Ames and Rosemont, “Were the Early Confucians Virtuous?”). It is this vision, its proponents maintain, that makes it distinct not only from Western ethical theories such as deontology and utilitarianism, but also from Aristotelian and other forms of virtue ethics. But does CRE mean by contrasting “relational persons” with “individual selves”? In this paper, I examine three different versions of the contrast defended by CRE: the metaphysical thesis that for Confucius there is no “substantial self” left over once we take away a person’s social relations; the psychological thesis that there is no steadfast distinction between “inner” and “outer” in theAnalects; and the moral developmental thesis that Confucian self-cultivation always takes place within the context of roles. I argue that in each of these areas CRE can gain from a greater engagement with Aristotelian virtue ethics.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5
5:30-7:30 pm
Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave, Columbia University
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: HAGOP SARKISSIAN (Baruch College)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“On Wielding Moral Sway: Influence and Manipulation in Social Networks”
ABSTRACT: Many of us value our independence, yet none of us is an independent actor in any profound sense. Rather, we are deeply affected by others in our local and extended networks in subtle yet significant ways. What’s more, we return the favor–influencing the trajectory of others’ lives (whether we intend to or not). These facts, recently articulated in the behavioral and health sciences, raise certain questions. Do we have (previously unacknowledged) responsibilities to others if we do, in fact, continually exercise such influence on them—even if at a distance? Should we shape and mind our influence? If so, do we risk being paternalistic, even manipulative? From our perspective today, rooting out patterns of influence and then wielding them toward specific goals might seem unsavory. Nevertheless, I will argue that such strategies may make perfect sense once we become a) vividly aware of the predictable patterns of such resonant influence, and b) convinced that escaping such influence is a foolish enterprise. And whereas we are only recently coming to grips with this phenomenon, several early Confucian texts seem to take it as a fundamental orientation, which motivated an ethics centered on the notions of self-regulation, sway, and harmony. Indeed, wielding moral sway is, from this perspective, a hallmark of the virtuous person. I argue that classical Confucianism, while a tradition of thought quite distant from us, nonetheless contains important resources for understanding how we can better resonate with others and, in turn, how we can turn such resonance into human harmony.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14
5:30-7:30 pm
Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave, Columbia University
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH
UPCOMING COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY EVENTS:
Friday, December 5 – Timothy Connolly (East Stroudsburg University)
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes: JAKE DAVIS (CUNY Graduate Center)
With responses from: CHARLES GOODMAN (SUNY Binghamton)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“‘The scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons“
ABSTRACT: The idea that meditation leads to the realization that there is no self, and that this realization motivates selfless action for the welfare of all beings, is widely understood to be a central feature of Buddhist doctrine. Continue reading →
I thought this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education may be of interest to readers of the blog (even while I am in no position to evaluate the historical claims made). Some highlights:
A particular weakness of many humanities canons remains their scant or nonexistent attention to material outside of Europe and North America, their historical dismissal of South Asian, East Asian, and African achievement due to ignorance and condescending Orientalism. Although philosophy is probably the worst among humanities disciplines in this respect, it’s hardly alone..
Congratulations to Prof. de Bary for this honor.
WASHINGTON (July 22, 2014) — President Barack Obama today announced the ten winners of the 2013 National Humanities Medals, awarded for outstanding achievements in history, cultural studies, filmmaking, cultural commentary, and historic preservation.
The medalists are: literary critic M.H. Abrams; historiansDavid Brion Davis, Darlene Clark Hine, and Anne Firor Scott; East Asian scholar William Theodore de Bary; architect Johnpaul Jones; filmmaker Stanley Nelson; radio hosts Diane Rehm and Krista Tippett; and the historical organization the American Antiquarian Society. The National Humanities Medals will be presented in conjunction with the National Medals of Arts at a White House ceremony on Monday, July 28, 2014.
The National Humanities Medal honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities.
More info here.
The International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) plans to sponsor one or two panels at next year’s Pacific Division Meeting of APA (American Philosophical Association), which will take place at Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver from April 1 to April 5, 2015. We hereby invite submissions.
Our Goal: We would like to encourage submissions of proposals of individual papers and panels. We encourage papers or panels that promote in-depth engagement between Chinese and Western philosophy. The submissions will be reviewed by all the three members of the board.When we select papers, we normally try to find papers that have common theme to form a panel. You may have a better chance to be accepted if you submit a panel proposal which already has a common theme.
Eligibility: We continue to welcome non-ISCWP members to propose papers to be included on an ISCWP-sponsored panel, or even propose a panel that is related to the ISCWP’s aims, so please feel free to send this notice to philosophers who might be interested even if they are not ISCWP members yet.
Please send all submissions by September 14, 2014.
1. To submit a paper proposal, please provide a 250-300 word abstract. The abstract needs to include the presenter’s name, institutional affiliation, paper title, and email address.
2. To submit a panel proposal, please provide an overall abstract of the panel topic of 250-300 words, including due justification. It must include the following for each chair, speaker, and commentator on your panel:
3. You may submit a partial panel proposal – the earlier the better – and ask for help in filling it out. We may help you build panels based on partial panel proposals received early in the process.
4. The board will review the submissions and announce the result by October 14, 2014. The new board members:
http://www.iscwp.org/boards.html
5. Address all submissions and inquires to:
Prof. Guoxiang Peng, Vice-President of ISCWP
peng_gx@126.com (There is an underscore between “peng” and “gx”)
