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

A New Book Series: Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy

A New Book Series Published by Springer

Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy

Series Editor: Huang Yong

Purpose

While ‘‘philosophy’’ is a Western term, it is not something exclusively Western. In this increasingly global world, the importance of non-Western philosophy becomes more and more obvious. Among all the non-Western traditions, Chinese philosophy is certainly one of the richest. In a history of more than 2500 years, many extremely important classics, philosophers, and schools have been produced. As China is becoming an economical power today, it is only natural that more and more people become interested in learning about the cultural tradition, including the philosophical tradition, of China.

The Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy series aims to provide the most comprehensive and most updated introduction to various aspects of Chinese philosophy as well as philosophy heavily influenced by Chinese philosophy. Each volume in this series focuses on an individual school, text, or person.

Volumes Published or under Contract

The first volume in the series, Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy, edited by John Makeham, has been published.

Other volumes under contract:

Continue reading →

A Mengzian Answer to Johnson's Incompleteness Objection

As those of you interested in virtue ethics will know, one of the much-discussed objections to virtue ethics in recent years has been Robert Johnson’s claim that any virtue ethical theory that tells us an act is right if and only if a fully virtuous agent would do it is incomplete, since it cannot account for duties of moral self-improvement (“Virtue and Right.” Ethics 113 (2003): 810-34). Sean McAleer has just published an article in the on-line Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy that uses Mengzi as one strategy to rebut Johnson. It’s fascinating to see Mengzi used as one source among others, without any seeming awkwardness, in thinking through this contemporary philosophical challenge. Or at any rate, I find it fascinating; what do you all think? (Full disclosure: Sean was one of the participants in the NEH Summer Seminar that Michael Slote and I ran two summers ago.)

Raud and Defoort (or, Defoort continued)

As promised, I have some remarks on the continuation of the issue that Carine Defoort broaches and that Rein Raud has responded to in a published discussion between the two of them (Philosophy East and West 56:4, 2006). It’s an issue about the demarcation of philosophy and what it means, and has meant, to call something “Chinese philosophy.” As Defoort has pointed out both in her original piece and in her follow-up discussion with Raud, it is puzzling how to understand ‘Chinese’ as an adjective that goes beyond mere historical-geographic placement, since “If philosophy were considered universal in its claims, as positive science is, the adjective would create a contradictio in terminis: there would be no ‘Chinese philosophy’ as there is no ‘Greek science'” (PEW 56:4, 628). Continue reading →

Zhao Tingyang on "Rethinking China"

Manyul’s post about Chinese “philosophy” relates in an interesting way to some reading I’ve been doing lately of the work of contemporary Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang 赵汀阳. Zhao first gained attention for his 1993 book 《论可能生活：一种关于幸福和公正的理论》[On possible lives : a theory of happiness and justice]. He vaulted into super-stardom with his 2005 book, 《天下体系：世界制度哲学导论》[The All-Under-Heaven System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of a World Institution]. This appropriation of the “tianxia” idea has been widely discussed, positively and negatively, both within philosophy and IR circles. Some of Zhao’s work is available in English translation; I’ll cite this at the end of this post. What I want to focus on, though, is Zhao’s insistence on the need to “rethink China (重思中国)” [Zhao 2005, 6]. Continue reading →

New Issue of Comparative Philosophy

http://www.comparativephilosophy.org

COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY      Vol 1, No 2 (2010)

Table of Contents

Articles

THE LABYRINTH OF PHILOSOPHY IN ISLAM
Nader El-Bizri
THE LOGIC OF THE CATUSKOTI
Graham Priest

Recent Work

CONFUCIANISM AND VIRTUE ETHICS: STILL A FLEDGLING IN CHINESE AND COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Justin Tiwald

New Page

I’ve set up a page — Readers’ Posts — that will be useful for readers who have announcements, links, or other thoughts to share with the rest of us. If you can’t see the tab for it, refresh this page and it should appear. Hopefully, this will provide a more obvious forum for the very useful sorts of things that have heretofore been appearing on the Question Board but aren’t questions. Use and enjoy!

Defoort on Chinese Philosophy

I’m working on a “demarcation problem” section for my textbook, touching on issues about philosophy, Western philosophy, and Chinese philosophy. I’ve actually learned a lot from discussing the issue with some of you on the blog. Also, I was happy to discover — belatedly — a great piece by Carine Defoort that lays out the issues in a nicely structured way and helps me to see how my own thinking maps onto the spectrum of views one could have about Chinese philosophy.

Here is a brief excerpt from the beginning of Defoort’s “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate” (Philosophy East and West 51:3 (Jul., 2001), pp. 393-413). I’m not sure why I’ve never read this piece before, given my interest in the topic, but I’m just now discovering it, along with follow-up discussion pieces five years later (PEW 56:4) by Rein Raud and Defoort. Continue reading →