COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Invites you to attend an upcoming event at PRINCETON UNIVERSITY hosted by the PRINCETON BUDDHIST STUDIES WORKSHOP
Welcoming: GEORGES DREYFUS (Williams College)
Please join us at Princeton University’s 1879 Hall, Room 137, on Thursday, November 14th, for his lecture called: “Taking Meditation Seriously (But Not Too Much)”
ABSTRACT: Continue reading →
Greetings! Many of you will have received the latest ISCWP Newsletter. For those who are not on the ISCWP membership list, you can find out about the the society’s activities and events by following the link above and looking through recent newsletters, which are all available there.
If any readers are not members of the ISCWP and would like to join, please click here to be taken to the membership form online, where you can apply for membership.
The following article in this week’s New Yorker by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has been circulating in social networks:
The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy
Despite what many of us on this blog might initially wonder, the title of the paper does not refer to Mencius’s famous thought experiment. (Instead, it refers to the famous case of an actual child in a well that led to a worldwide media circus in the 1980s.) Nonetheless, the article may be of interest to those of us working in Confucian ethics and moral psychology.
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes JOERG TUSKE, Department of Philosophy, Salisbury University
With responses from David Nowakowski , Department of Philosophy, Princeton University
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on March 22, 2013 at 5:30pm for his lecture entitled
Free Will in Indian Philosophy
ABSTRACT: Recent discussions of free will in Indian Philosophy have mainly focused on the problem in the context of Buddhist Philosophy. Buddhist philosophers reject the existence of the self and the question is whether they also reject the existence of free will. The answers to this question vary from philosophers who claim that Buddhists have to be determinists to philosophers who argue for some form of compatibilism with regards to Buddhist Philosophy. In my talk I will focus on free will in at least one of the non-Buddhist schools of Indian philosophy, the Navya-Nyāya school. I will argue that while the philosophers of this school believed in the existence of a self, it would not be accurate to label them with one of the Western positions on free will. In fact the whole concept of free will is problematic in the context of Indian philosophy. This also has consequences for the Buddhist positions and how we classify them. Continue reading →
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes intrepid Warper & Wefter MANYUL IM, Department of Philosophy, Fairfield University
With responses from Michael Brownstein, Department of Philosophy, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on April 12, 2013 at 5:45pm for his lecture entitled
Spontaneity, Deliberation, and Valuing in Early China
ABSTRACT: Continue reading →
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes ANDREW LAMBERT, Department of Philosophy, Wester New England University
With responses from Warren Frisina, Dean of Honors College, Associate Professor of Religion, Hofstra University
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on March 22, 2013 at 5:30pm for his lecture entitled
A Confucian Account of Ethical Obligation?
ABSTRACT: The Confucian doctrine of the five cardinal relationships is often taken as a defining feature of the Confucian tradition, with its emphasis on family life and relationships. However, objections arising from more modern ethical ideals threaten to undermine the doctrine, or at least render it irrelevant to contemporary ethics. I present three such objections.
In seeking to deflect the objections, I suggest a different way of understanding the purpose and effects of the five relationships doctrine. Instead of seeing the doctrine as a constellation of concrete practical norms and duties pertaining to individuals occupying certain social roles and positions, I suggest we understand the five relationships doctrine as a kind of training device, which cultivates a certain kind of personal sensibility. This is a sense of obligation to engage with and find a basis for familiarity with those people encountered in the subject’s local social world.
I argue that when understood in this way, the discourse of the five cardinal relationships is not subject to the three common objections noted above, and presents a distinctive form of ethical obligation.
I finish by locating this account of ethical obligation within a larger moral vision, thereby suggesting this is a genuine form of ethical obligation rather than mere etiquette or psychological conditioning.
Time: 5:30-7:30 pm
Place: Rm. 101 in the Department of Religion 80 Claremont Avenue
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes SANDEEP SREEKUMAR (The City University of New York, Baruch College)
With responses from Gary Ostertag, Director of the Saul Kripke Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion today (March 1, 2013) at 5:30pm for his lecture entitled
The Elimination of Moral Agency: The Trajectory of Krishna’s Argument in the Gita Continue reading →
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes SANDEEP SREEKUMAR (The City University of New York, Baruch College)
With responses from Gary Ostertag, Director of the Saul Kripke Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on February 15, 2013 at 5:30 for his lecture entitled
The Elimination of Moral Agency: The Trajectory of Krishna’s Argument in the Gita
Time: 5:30-7:30 pm
Place: Rm. 101 in the Department of Religion 80 Claremont Avenue
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
Dear friends and colleagues,
Some time ago I began making a map of scholars working in Chinese philosophy in New England (i.e. Northeast US). I then started fanning out to other sections of the U.S., and quickly realized that it would be much better to make this a collaborative effort. So I would like to crowdsource this project, and have you all contribute to it! Note: You will need a Google ID / Gmail account to edit the map. Here is the link:
Chinese Philosophy – Map of the Profession
You can see the current list of scholars in the left hand pane.
We’d like to expand the map to include all academics (faculty and graduate students) as well as independent scholars, working anywhere on the planet. Here are some instructions on how to add yourself–or someone you know in the field–to the map. The process should take only a few minutes. Continue reading →
(Note: This talk was rescheduled owing to the blizzard last week.)
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes JONATHAN C. GOLD (Princeton University)
With responses from Robert Wright, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, and prize-winning author of such books as The Evolution of God, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information.
Please join us at Columbia University Department of Religion on February 15, 2013 at 5:30 for his lecture entitled,
Accepting the Conditions: The Ethical Implications of Vasubandhu’s Buddhist Causal Theory
ABSTRACT: Continue reading →
