Online Workshop: Generalisation and De-reification: Cross-Cultural History of Philosophy in East Asia and Beyond
The British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP) will hold an online workshop, “Generalisation and De-reification: Cross-Cultural History of Philosophy in East Asia and Beyond,” on 20 November 2026, 09:00 UK (GMT) / 17:00 China (CST) / 20:00 Sydney (AEDT).
Historians of philosophy face a methodological tension: they must generalise across historical materials in order to make a tradition intelligible, while resisting the reification of those generalisations into closed and static systems. This workshop brings together researchers working across Buddhist philosophy, Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and contemporary applications to explore how cross-cultural history of philosophy can remain attentive to this tension.
Programme
Session 1
- Kevin Berryman (Monash University), “Selfless Responsibility: Not-self and Moral Agency in Buddhism”
- Fang Xin (Peking University), “From Doctrines to Problems: Contemporary Metaphysics and the Interpretation of Buddhist Philosophy”
- Commentator: Timothy O’Leary (UNSW Sydney)
Session 2
- Monica Zixuan Ding (University of Toronto), “Can ‘Correcting the Names’ Help LLMs Become Morally Diverse?”
- Julius Geissler (University of Oxford), “What Makes Reified Categories a Distinctive Problem for Comparative Philosophy?”
- Commentator: Philippe Major (Lancaster University)
Chair and principal organiser: Xingding Liu (UNSW Sydney; BSHP Ambassador)
Registration: https://forms.gle/PxJPveSRJJoghfRXA
Zoom details will be sent to registered participants before the event. The workshop is convened under the auspices of the British Society for the History of Philosophy. Attendees are warmly encouraged to join the BSHP as members (https://bshp.org.uk/members/).
