I think it might be worthwhile for us to reflect a bit on some of the regional differences in interpretation of the Chinese philosophers we all study. I was struck by two aspects of this recently. First, in the Conference and Book Symposium announcement that Kai Marchal wrote (though I posted it for him), Kai says: “Traditionally, Chinese scholars have argued that Neo-Confucian teachings are best understood within a Kantian deontological framework.” This interpretive trend is in part a result of Mou Zongsan’s influence, but some evidence that it is more complicated than that comes in two essays in the new anthology, Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously, edited by Kam-por Yu, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Two essays in this volume, by Qianfan Zhang and by Julia Tao, draw strong links between the idea of ren in early Confucianism and Kantian notions of the equal humanity or human dignity of all (among other things). At the very least, neither of these essays shows any direct evidence of the influence of Mou, and they can serve to suggest that the influence of the Kantian framework among Chinese scholars is widespread, indeed. Continue reading →
Category Archives: Chinese philosophy – 中國哲學 – 中国哲学
CFP: Virtue and Luck: Virtue Theory and Chinese Philosophy
CALL FOR PAPERS
Virtue and Luck: Virtue Theory and Chinese Philosophy
International Conference and Book Symposium
Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Soochow University, Taiwan
Co-hosted by the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, and the Department of Philosophy, Huafan University.
June 02 ~ June 04, 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
Summary: Our three-day program includes the following three events: (a) a series of Philosophical Dialogues; (b) a Book Symposium; and (c) the one-day International Conference “Virtue and Luck: Virtue Theory and Chinese Philosophy”. Continue reading →
Ability and cultivation in Mencius 2A/6
This is part of an argument I’ve been developing for an embarrassingly long time. I gave it most recently at the APA in Boston last week. I’m focusing here on a point in my talk that Steve Angle took issue with in his comments.
Section 2A/6 of the Mencius famously tells us that anyone, or at any rate any person, would feel alarm and compassion at the sight of an infant about to fall into a well, and that this reaction amounts to a heart of compassion that we can “expand and fill out,” thereby becoming benevolent. One way to read this is as a call for self-cultivation: it’s saying, more or less, that each person can become benevolent by cultivating his or her heart of compassion so that gradually, over time, it develops into full benevolence. You may recognise this sort of reading, since it’s ubiquitous in the English-language Mencius scholarship. It’s also wrong.
Undergraduate Institutions for Studying Chinese Philosophy
In response to a few emailed queries from students about where they might go, or transfer, to study Chinese philosophy at the undergraduate level in the U.S. I wrote the following, really off the top of my head. But as I was writing it, it occurred to me that it might be good to collect a more comprehensive list and create a separate reference page on the blog for it in the near future. So, please look at the list and see what or who is missing from the list — the list is, as I’ve said, off the top of my head. This is a list specifically of “Philosophy” or “Philosophy and Religion” departments in the U.S. I know there are people in other departments teaching undergraduate Chinese philosophy courses. They should be included too, but I’ll need to know what departments they teach in at their institutions. Also, for the purposes of this list, it will make sense only to include places with relatively permanent faculty teaching Chinese philosophy who are actively doing research related to it, as far as you know.
Fudan M.A. and Visiting Program in Chinese Philosophy
Tongdong Bai sends this update to a previous announcement:
The M.A. and Visiting Student Programs were finally approved by Fudan University, and the application materials are available now. The programs are aimed to offer opportunities to students who wish to study Chinese philosophy but are not yet able to master the Chinese language. Various types of scholarships will be available. In particular, I will personally help to attract funding and to find part-time-job opportunities for students who will enroll in these programs.
Confucian Fundamentalism?
As a follow-up to my earlier post regarding the controversy that has arisen around the proposed Christian church in Qufu, the following remarks from Prof. Peng Guoxiang of the Tsinghua University Philosophy Department are quite interesting (I quote his remarks with his permission):
…Some self-proclaimed Confucians…are trying to stop [the church] by launching a social movement. This fundamentalist attitude, mingling with nationalism, is embraced not only by the young people, but also by some scholars in Confucian studies. A typical feature of Confucian tradition, religious tolerance and open-mindedness, which we have been proud of and exactly from which that multiple religious participation and multiple religious identity has been developed, is now severely damaged by this extremism. How to redevelop a healthy and profound Confucian vision as one of the great spiritual traditions and make its contributions to humankind in a global context is really a painstaking project.
Also: Continue reading →
2010 WW&W blog year in review
A very happy new year to all our readers! Posted below is a brief WordPress-provided narrative summary with some statistics for our blog in 2010. We’ll be making some changes in the coming month, adding some new faces and parting with some. If you have any suggestions for adding features, topics, or anything else please use the comment field for this post and we’ll take them into consideration. Thank you all for reading and for your insightful discussions, making 2010 a successful blog year. We look forward to an even better 2011!
CFP: Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
7th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
Keynote Speaker: Michael Puett, Harvard University
Friday, May 6 ~ Saturday. May 7, 2011
North Central College
Naperville, Illinois
The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese! thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. Submissions are invited for papers on any aspect of Chinese thought, as well as papers dealing with comparative thought that engage Chinese perspectives. Participants from any geographic area are welcome.
Please submit 1-2 page abstract by February 28, 2011 to Brian Hoffert:
For inquiries about the conference, please contact Brian Hoffert at bhoffert@noctrl.edu
Lilla in TNR on Strauss and Schmitt in China
Shaojin Chai draws our attention to a recent and intriguing essay by Mark Lilla in The New Republic, entitled “Reading Strauss in Beijing: China’s Strange Taste in Western Philosophers.” Shaojin expresses some skepticism about a connection between the interest in Schmidt and “China’s imperialistic ambition or statist future”; but I found this bit of Lilla’s piece to ring true: Continue reading →
