Are intense emotions a necessary part of a good life? This seems a partly normative, partly psychological question. I’m interested in hearing what others think about it.
In a recent article in Asian Philosophy I take some preliminary steps toward understanding and partly defending a Zhuangist stance on emotion, which I dub the “Virtuoso View.” (A precis of the article can be found here.) I characterize this view roughly as follows: Continue reading →
This is my first post here so I will begin by thanking the Steve and Manyul for first inviting me (and gently reminding me to post), and begging everyone’s indulgence since I wanted to post something less weighty.
So I was reading Ian Johnston’s new complete translation of the Mozi to write a review (out next year in PEW) when I came across this passage in the introduction:
Mo Zi’s argument against Fatalism is very simple. To a significant extent, the simplicity is a result of Mo Zi’s failure to provide, in any of the [“Feiming”] essays, a clear exposition of what Fate actually is or might be. The discussion is really only in terms of what a belief in Fate is presumed to entail. There is no semblance of any argument about determinism and free-will more generally, although the existence of the latter is certainly implied in Mo Zi’s social prescription. (lxv)
It’s a small point in a compact overview of Mohism so I didn’t think it’s necessary to make too much of it (no, what follows is not in my review). But I can’t help but think that Johnston had committed the common error of conflating fatalism with determinism. But that’s not really my point in this post (having just concluded a semester’s teaching on free will and determinism, I think I’ll take a rest from that mess.) Rather, it’s the point that the Mozi text lacks a clear exposition of what Fate is that bugged me. What follows are some relatively unpolished thoughts I had when thinking about Mozi, “Feiming” and Johnston’s complaint. Continue reading →
While there is a lull here, check out Sam Crane’s post on The Useless Tree about a plan in Taiwan to use the Four Books to help address problems in its high schools.
We’ve set up a Facebook account for the blog, here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002285389132. If you “friend” us there, you’ll receive a Facebook update on your own Facebook page whenever there is a new post here on the blog. A permanent link to the blog’s Facebook page has also been added to the right hand column.
Please continue to use the blog site for contributing comments in response to postings, rather than the Facebook page.
Here is the rundown of Chinese philosophy-related panels at this week’s upcoming Central APA Meeting (I look forward to seeing lots of blog friends at the conference!): Continue reading →
Section 5B/4 of the Mencius is a very interesting text. It’s one of the points at which the Mencius gets defensive about Mencius’s personal virtue. The issue here is Mencius’s willingness to accept gifts from rulers who acquired them by taking from their people. Why accept those gifts, given that you wouldn’t accept gifts from a more everyday sort of bandit?
This passage interests me in part because I’m interested in Mencian defensiveness (on which see also the earlier thread about Shun and his awful family). But that’s not the issue I want to take up here. What I’m wondering about is how (if at all) Mencius’s argument is supposed to work. Continue reading →
I’d like to welcome David Elstein to the Warp, Weft, and Way cast of contributors. David is assistant professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, New Paltz. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Though his initial training and research was in pre-Qin thought, recently he has become interested in contemporary Chinese philosophy, particularly Confucian political thought. He has published articles in Philosophy East and West and Dao, and is working on a book examining contemporary Chinese views on Confucianism and democracy.
As a forum for comparative studies between Chinese philosophy and other philosophical traditions in the world, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy is soliciting contributions that make creative and fruitful use of the vast conceptual resources in the Chinese philosophical traditions to approach central issues and ideas in the Bhagavad Gita for a special issue, with the theme “Bhagavad Gita and Chinese Philosophy,” guest edited by Professor Tao Jiang. The Bhagavad Gita, or simply the Gita, is the best-known Indian religious scripture, and one of the most translated texts in the world along with the Bible and the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching). Due to its prominence and influence within India and beyond, the Gita has been the subject of constant scholarly studies in the West, quite often in the context of fruitful comparisons with Western religious and philosophical texts. However, there has been little, if any, effort in the scholarly community to engage the Gita from perspectives arising out of Chinese philosophical texts. In order to facilitate philosophical engagement between Chinese and Indian traditions, we are soliciting papers that draw meaningful and fruitful connections between the ideas presented in the Gita and those in Chinese philosophical texts. The submissions need to be explicitly comparative involving the Gita and some Chinese text/thinker. Please send an electronic copy of your paper by January 31, 2012 to the editor-in-chief, Yong Huang (yhuang@kutztown.edu). If you have any question, please feel free to contact either Yong Huang or the guest editor of the issue, Tao Jiang (tjiang@rci.rutgers.edu).
The deliberation of Dao Annual Best Essay Award 2010 has comes to a conclusion. The process was divided into two stages. At the first stage, we formed a selection/nomination committee consisting of three editorial board members, who went through all main articles published in the four issues of Dao in 2010 and selected the following three articles as the finalists:
KIM Myeong-seok, “What Ceyin zhi xin (Compassion/Familial Affection) Really Is”
Tan Sor-hoon, “Authoritative Master Kong (Confucius) in an Authoritarian Age”
James Behuniak, “John Dewey and the Virtue of Cook Ding’s Dao.”
Congratulations to Drs. Kim, Tan, and Behuniak!
At the second stage, these three articles were presented to the whole editorial board, and each editorial board member was asked to provide a ranking of these three articles. As a result, Dr. Kim Myeong-seok’s paper receives the highest ranking. So the award goes to Dr. Kim, who is currently an assistant professor of philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul.
Congratulations, Dr. Kim!
Journal of Chinese Philosophy
Volume 37, Issue Supplement, Page 1 – 158
Special Theme: CHINESE PHILOSOPHY IN EXCAVATED EARLY TEXTS Continue reading →
