Category Archives: Chinese philosophy – 中國哲學 – 中国哲学

Chinese Philosophy Arcs

[Guest contributor, Eric Schwitzgebel, takes a quantitative look at Anglophonic discussions of Chinese philosophy and offers a conjecture. Please address all comments directly to him.]

Different classical Chinese philosophers have drawn different amounts of discussion in the Anglophone world over the past seventy years.  I want to look at this phenomenon quantitatively and then suggest a general conjecture about the history of philosophy.

The six target philosophers include two who are well-known in the Western world outside scholarly circles, Confucius and Laozi (aka Lao Tzu), and four who are much less well known, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Mozi (aka Mengzi, Chuang Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Mo Tzu).  Below is a graph of their “discussion arcs” — that is, the rates, times 1000, at which their names appear in keyword (including abstract and title) searches in Philosopher’s Index, divided by a representative universe of articles. Click the image for a clearer view.

Continue reading →

Practicising to know: Practicalism and Confucian philosophy

This article “Practicising to know: Practicalism and Confucian philosophy” is co-authored by me and one of my colleagues, Stephen Hetherington, an advocate of a version of knowing-how (a version he names ‘Practicalism’). In this paper, we explore how Confucian philosophy lends support to Practicalism.

Practising to Know: Practicalism and Confucian Philosophy. Co-authored with Stephen Hetherington. Published in Philosophy, July 2012, 87 : pp 375-393. Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2012. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031819112000289.

Abstract:

For a while now, there has been much conceptual discussion about the respective natures of knowledge-that and knowledge-how, along with the intellectualist idea that knowledge-how is really a kind of knowledge-that. Gilbert Ryle put in place most of the terms that have so far been distinctive of that debate, when he argued for knowledge-how’s conceptual distinctness from knowledge-that. But maybe those terms should be supplemented, expanding the debate. In that spirit, the conceptual option of practicalism has recently entered the fray. Practicalism conceives anew the nature of knowledge-that, as being a kind of knowledge-how. In this paper we enlarge upon this conceptual suggestion. We draw from an ancient Chinese text, the Analects of Confucius, explaining how it lends some support to practicalism.

 

On Research: How Chinese Should Chinese Philosophy Be?

I’d like to do a little informal poll on two questions relating to research and publication on Chinese philosophy. I welcome your responses.

First, what do you think of scholars who can’t read primary sources publishing on Chinese philosophy? Is being able to read original sources important? I should perhaps clarify that what I mean are not the “translations” one sometimes finds (e.g., of the Laozi) by people who don’t read classical Chinese, but scholarly articles or books.

The second question concerns use of secondary literature. My own observation is that Western scholars, even those who read Chinese, often don’t refer to Chinese secondary literature. By “secondary literature” I mean specifically 20th and 21st century academic work, not traditional commentaries. I’m curious why this is and what other people in the field think about it. Is it a problem? Or is it instead a sign of the development of the field, that we have our own English-language debates just as specialists in ethics might have debates about Kant that don’t refer to the German literature at all?

Philosophy Encyclopedias and Chinese Philosophy

One of the things I subscribe to in Google Reader, but almost never look at, is a feed from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing new or updated articles. Why am I subscribed to this? I have no idea. But yesterday I clicked on it, and started to scroll back through the new stuff posted there over the last months. Increasingly, I found myself wondering: how come none of these concern Chinese philosophy? A fair number dealt with figures or concepts from Indian or Tibetan philosophy, but not until I got all the way back to Dec 6, 2010 did I find a mention of China. That’s when Kwong-loi Shun updated his article on Mencius. You want the most recent new article on Chinese philosophy? That would be October 1, 2009, when Alan Chan posted one on Neo-Taoism. Continue reading →

Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy conference: call for papers and conference registration

ASACP Conference 2012

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

9-11 July 2012

Conference Theme: Relationships in Asian and Comparative Philosophy

 Keynote Speaker: Professor Roger Ames, University of Hawai’i

During his visit, Professor Ames will speak at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the topic of “Landscape and Traveling in the Confucian Dynamics of Intergenerational Transmission” on Saturday 7th July (time to be confirmed) and will present a UNSW Confucius Institute Public Lecture on “Confucian Role Ethics: A Challenge to the Ideology of Individualism” on Tuesday 10th July (http://www.confuciusinstitute.unsw.edu.au/china-talks/2012/china-talks-distinguished-speaker-roger-ames).

The conference committee invites submissions of proposals for papers in all areas of Asian and Comparative Philosophy and associated disciplines, especially on the topic of relationships. At this conference, there will also be a focus on the following streams:

Continue reading →

The Shortcomings of the Sages

I’d like to use this as an opportunity to think about depictions of sages in early Confucian texts (Mengzi in particular). I’ve thought, for better or worse, that the authors of these texts used the figures of the sages as representations of fully cultivated people. Yet I’ve noticed that these sages are sometimes described as falling short of perfection, and this gives rise to a question–in what ways can one be deficient, and yet still be considered a sage? Continue reading →

Eichmann, Arendt, Milgram and Mencius

A cross-posting of Eric Schwitzgebel’s post on his Splintered Mind blog. Please address all comments directly to Eric; he’ll be checking in here periodically to reply.

********************************************************

Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt, Stanley Milgram, and King Xuan of Qi

Perhaps my favorite Mencius passage is 1A7.  At its core is a story of a king’s mercy on an ox.

While the king was sitting up in his hall, an ox was led past below. The king saw it and said, “Where is the ox going?” Hu He replied, “We are about to ritually anoint a bell with its blood.” The king said, “Spare it. I cannot bear its frightened appearance, like an innocent going to the execution ground.” Hu He replied, “So should we dispense with the anointing of the bell?” The king said, “How can that be dispensed with? Exchange it for a sheep.” (Van Norden, trans.)

Mencius asks the king (King Xuan of Qi):

If Your Majesty was pained at its being innocent and going to the execution ground, then was is there to choose between an ox and a sheep?… You saw the ox but had not seen the sheep.  Gentlemen cannot bear to see animals die if they have seen them living. If they hear the cries of their suffering, they cannot bear to eat their flesh. Hence, gentlemen keep their distance from the kitchen.

(Note that Mencius does not conclude that gentlemen should become vegetarians.  Interesting possibilities for reflection arise regarding butchers, executioners, soldiers, etc., but let’s not dally.) Continue reading →