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

Teaching Chinese Thought: Observations on Pedagogy

Regular blog reader Joel Dietz offers his thoughts, in this guest post, on teaching Chinese thought—mainly as viewed from the “consumer” or student end of the interaction. In the comments, please respond to Joel.

Despite the recent interest in China from an economic perspective, relatively few colleges offer courses which attempt to offer an “Introduction to Chinese Thought” or, perhaps more ambitiously, an “Introduction to Chinese Philosophy.” Indeed, in a recent course providing an introduction to Chinese classical thought at the University of Pennsylvania, it was unclear what if any, Ivy League institutions, besides the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University offer such a course (presumably others do, and it would be delightful to know the details).  As an undergraduate at Brown studying with Henry Rosemont and Harold Roth, graduate student at Penn, and reviewer of other related syllabi, especially those for a comparative philosophy class offered by Chris Fraser at Hong Kong University, I make some preliminary pedagogical observations extrapolated from my experience, including related benefits and challenges. Continue reading →

Robins to HKU

Dan Robins, a frequent contributor to this blog, has accepted a job offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Congratulations, Dan! Dan joins several other colleagues at HKU working in Chinese philosophy: Chad Hansen, who has returned to teach common core curriculum courses on behalf of the Department of Philosophy; Tang Siufu, in the School of Chinese; Joseph Chan, in the Department of Politics and Public Administration; and myself, in the Department of Philosophy.

Classical Daoism – Is there really such a thing? Part II

(Scott Barnwell continues his guest-posting on this topic. Here is Part II of Scott’s thoughts. This post also appears on his own blog. Please address Scott directly in your comments.)

Laozi 老子

The first person to be investigated will be Laozi 老子, the “Old Master”; his supposed text being the Laozi or the Daodejing 道德經 (The Classic on the Way and Its Power). Although the Laozi has long been regarded to be the work of more than one author in both China and the West, Sima Qian 司馬遷, in his biography of Laozi, gives no indication that he thought the text was written by more than one person. Although he reports that there was uncertainty about the actual author, he seems to have felt the most plausible one was Lao Dan 老聃, “Old Long-ears” (a.k.a. Li Er 李耳[1]), the keeper of the Zhou archives from the southern state of Chu 楚 whom Confucius (551 – 479 B.C.E.) had gone to see.[2] The words exchanged at this famous meeting are always different in the various accounts we encounter.[3] The Lüshi Chunqiu, Zhuangzi, Liji, Hanshi Waizhuan, Xinxu, and Baihu Tong also all affirm that Lao Dan was a teacher of Confucius’; however, they do not suggest he was the author of the Laozi.[4]

Continue reading →

Classical Daoism – Is there really such a thing?

(Scott Barnwell, a long time friend of the blog, will be guest-posting on this topic. Here is Part I of Scott’s thoughts. This post also appears on his own blog. Please address Scott directly in your comments.)

Daojia and Huang-Lao

Classical Daoism, Philosophical Daoism, Early Daoism: these terms are increasingly being seen as obsolescent by scholars in the last couple of decades. The general public – those who have heard of Daoism or have read a little bit of it – are largely unaware, despite the fact that for quite awhile writers have admitted that there were no “Daoists” in pre-Han China and that the two most famous “Daoists,” Laozi and Zhuangzi, surely never thought of themselves as Daoists. The more recent interest in what was once called “religious Daoism (Daojiao 道教),” as opposed to “philosophical Daoism (Daojia 道家),” has seen a shift towards using “Daoism” to refer only to the former.

In this series of blog posts I am going to explore this matter. First, I will look at the oldest evidence for a “Daoist school” in the Historical Records (Shiji 史記) and the Han Documents (Hanshu 漢書). Next I will look into both the text and the legendary man Laozi 老子, followed by Zhuangzi 莊子. Texts that will be mentioned along the way will include: the Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi 莊子, Hanfeizi 韓非子 (esp. Jie Lao 解老, Yu Lao 喻老), Lüshi Chunqiu 春秋左傳, Mengzi 孟子, Xunzi 荀子, Guanzi 管子 (esp. Neiye 內業), Huainanzi 淮南子, Heguanzi 鶡冠子, and the Huangdi Sijing 黃帝四經. I will also survey various scholars’ views on early Chinese “schools of thought.”

Continue reading →

Is "Besire" Really Bizarre?

A few weeks ago, I posted “Is There Something More than Knowing-How and Knowing-that?,” where I promised a follow-up, and here it is.

In the previous post, I argue that Confucian moral knowledge has something more than knowing-how and knowing-that, and the extra thing is its ability to incline the knower to act according to the knowledge. From the Humean point of view, Confucians must be either confused or confusing (or both) in holding such a view of moral knowledge, since this inclination or motivation is not knowledge and does not belong to knowledge, whether it is knowledge-that or knowledge-how, but something other than knowledge: desire. According to Humeans, in order for an action to take place, both belief and desires are needed: belief tells one what to do, and desire motivates one to do it. Without desire, one’s belief will not incline a person to act; without belief, one’s desire will not tell one what action to take and how to take the action.

Although there are some contemporary philosophers of action who are not Humeans and even are claimed (either by themselves or by others) to be anti-Humeans, most of them still agree that belief and desire are separate mental states. They are anti-Humeans only in the sense that they try to provide different explanations of action than the Humean one. On the one hand, we have those anti-Humeans who, as cognitivists or rationalists, claim that knowledge or belief alone can motivate a person to act and there is no need for desire in our explanation of action (Scanlon). On the other hand, we have those anti-Humeans who, as noncognitivists or emotivists, claim that all that is involved in our action is desire or emotion (Ayer). Continue reading →

Taijiquan, Daoist Metaphysics, and Practice

I often wonder about the connections—or lack thereof—between some interesting and potentially mind-blowing metaphysical claim and what might be called (although I don’t like the phrase) “real life.”  Lately, that wonder has been directed toward ways in which training in a practice such as taijiquan that at least purports to be meaningfully Daoist might inform and be informed by academic study of Daoist metaphysics.

I’ve had a bunch of different taijiquan teachers over the years.  Some of them were widely read about Chinese culture and history.  Others, not so much.  For whatever it’s worth, only one them—my first taijiquan teacher, who taught Yang family style in Chapel Hill back in the late 90’s—was Chinese, and though I never found out how well-read he was, I have come to appreciate how deeply knowledgeable that old man was about both taijiquan and Chinese traditions.  I feel like I learned a great deal from some of my teachers and that I managed to learn a bit less from others, but I’m grateful to all of them for offering me something important, and I suspect that I could have learned more from each and every one of them than I did, had I understood how to be a better student.  In each case, the teacher taught with sincerity.

As I’ve tried to learn taijiquan, I’ve had various moments when I’ve had the opportunity to think about the connections between the practice I was learning and the Chinese philosophy I work on academically.  Let me share two such incidents. Continue reading →

Transmitting 述, Innovating作, and Philosophizing in Confucius

Everyone knows the Master’s saying that he “transmits, but does not innovate” (“述而不作”, Analects 7:1), and usually it is taken to mean
that Confucius is not a creative or original thinker, but only hands down the ancient wisdom. Yet this reading must be shallow, given Confucius’s founding
role in Chinese philosophy. I would like to make a few observations about this saying and wonder whether it makes sense to you.

(a)
While the Analects 7:1 seems to establish the “transmitting/innovating” dichotomy, at 7: 28  the Master said, “No doubt there are those who try to innovate [zuo] without acquiring knowledge, but this is a fault that I do not posses.” “盖有不知而作者，我无是也.” Accordingly, it is not simply that Confucius does not “innovate” or “create;” rather, he does not do this out of ignorance.

(b) The term ‘transmitting’ (shu) also appears in the Doctrines of the Mean to define the virtue of piety. Confucius says there that what makes a son a filial
son is his ability “to continue (ji) the will (zhih) and to transmit (shu) the work of his father.” (夫孝者，善继人之志，善述人之事者也. Ch. 19). If we put this definition of filial piety (xiao孝) together with Confucius’s self-description as a transmitter, it appears that Confucius likens himself to what a filial son does to his father’s work.  A filial son “transmits” his father’s aspirations, causes, and ideals, and seeks to develop and actualize them. Similarly, what Confucius transmits is the spirit, value, and ideals of the tradition. Confucius’s philosophical activity of transmitting traditional values could be regarded as an expression of his piety with regards to the authentic tradition in which Confucius believes the dao of Heaven is embedded.

(c ) More importantly, even the dichotomy of transmission/creation appears in the Doctrine of the Mean. Confucius says: “It is only King Wen of whom it can
be said that he had no cause for grief. His father was King Ji, and his son was King Wu. His father innovated (zuo) it, and his son transmitted (shu)
it.” (子曰：无忧者其唯文王乎。以王季为父，以武王为子，父作之，子述之. Ch.18) . The saying supplements the previous saying about piety in the sense that the son “shu” because his father has already authored or “created”. The father “innovates “(作zuo) and the son “transmits” (述shu), and the sons’ job is to continue pursuing and developing what the father has done.  To apply this to Confucius’ case, he transmits but does not innovate because classical texts have been authored and his work is to pursue that wisdom, to master it, bring it, and develop it.

At this juncture, I would like to recall the original Greek meaning of philosophy. Philosophy by name is the “love of wisdom,” not the possession of wisdom itself. Plato interprets that it is because God has the wisdom, and hence it is more proper to say that we human beings are pursuing it (Plato, Phaedrus, 278d ). This “God possesses wisdom”/ “humans love wisdom” contrast sounds very similar to “father innovates /son transmits” relation in the Doctrine of the Mean. Following this, Confucius’s “transmitting/innovating” contrast could be taken to mean that the real creator is tradition, and what an individual can do is to
transmit, that is, to continue, to extend, to accomplish the ideals in the tradition.

In this way, “shu” in Confucius is strikingly similar to what ‘philosophy’ originally means in the West.

Call for paper: Special issue on Sino-Japanese philosophy (Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy)

As is well known, the term “philosophy” was translated with two ideographs 哲学 (Jap: tetsugaku) by Nishi Amane in 1874 and has been widely used not only in Japan but also in Chinese-speaking regions (Chi: zhexue). Since then, philosophy has extensively been flourishing in these two countries, including, though definitely not limited to, the two profound philosophical “schools”, namely, the Kyoto School and New Confucianism. These sophisticated philosophical movements in Japan and China, however, somewhat have not undergone an extensive and in-depth dialogue till recent years. This special issue, therefore, is intended to fill this gap up by demonstrating how “philosophy” is received, confronted and made in the context of Sino-Japanese philosophical interchange. Rigorous academic papers on all time periods and all areas of Sino-Japanese philosophy, classical to contemporary, from a variety of perspectives are welcomed.

All papers will be undergone a peer-reviewed process, which takes approximately two months. If we have more papers accepted than can be put into a single special issue, they can be published in the regular issues of the journal.

We very much look forward to hearing your favorable reply. The submission deadline of full paper is June 30, 2012. For details of the journal, please kindly refer to http://www.kutztown.edu/academics/liberal_arts/philosophy/dao.htm.

Guest editors of the special issue
LAM Wing-keung (Hong Kong Institute of Education; lamwk@ied.edu.hk)
CHEUNG Ching-yuen (Chinese University of Hong Kong; cchingyuen@hotmail.com)

2013 Buffalo International Conference on Chinese Philosophy

The 17th ISCP International Conference on Chinese Philosophy was successfully held in Paris, France, participated by about 200 Chinese philosophy scholars around the world. The conference was organized by Professor Yolaine Escande, of French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) and Graduate School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences(EHESS), July 3-8, 2011. The subject of the conference was “ Interculturality and Philosophic Discourse—Retrospect and Prospect,” and it was organized around the following seven themes: (1) Comparative philosophy: intertraductibility East-West; (2) Cultural philosophy; (3) Philosophy, art and ethics; (4) Value and art and aesthetic appreciation; (5) The new philosophical discourses coming from interculturality; (6) Openness, self-enclosure, and dialogue with others in Chinese philosophy; (7) Theories of knowledge, argumentation, and consensus in Chinese philosophy.   

Since 1976, the International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP) has been holding bi-annual international conference in different regions of the world.  The conference usually draws large audience and has significantly promoted the interest and development of the study of Chinese Philosophy in the world. 

The 18th International Conference on Chinese Philosophy will take place in summer 2013. My home institution, State University of New York at Buffalo, is honored to be chosen to host this great conference, and I am honored to serve as its organizer. I look forward to welcoming colleagues in Chinese philosophy around the world to the beautiful Buffalo-Niagara region (especially in the summer).  The conference is at its initial stage of planning. With this chance I would like to solicit your suggestions and support.  As a tradition, the subject of the conference is broadly conceived, focusing on the contemporary significance of Chinese philosophy and Eastern-Western dialogues.   You are cordially invited to organize a panel or contribute a paper. Any idea regarding how the conference could be better organized will be deeply appreciated.