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

Message from Tu Weiming

An interesting one, sent via Jeeloo Liu (ACPA president). I’m not sure Tu reads this blog, but comments and discussion are welcome in any case.

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To:  Fellow Students of Chinese Philosophy

From:   Tu Weiming

Re:  The State of the Field

It gives me great pleasure to share my tentative thoughts on our field both as an intellectual pursuit and as an academic discipline.  Let me first give you some background.  Otherwise this might easily be construed as presumptuous and even self-serving.  As some of you know, I attended the last Congress in Seoul (June 2008) as the speaker (Maimonides Lecturer for one of the three endowed chair.  I was allotted a 90-minute plenary session to present my reflections on the Analects.  However, more pertinently, I was elected as a member of the Steering Committee of FISP (Federation of International Philosophical Societies) which, among other things, has the authority to oversee the organization of the Congress.  Since its inception in 1900, the Congress had never met in Asia.  The 2003 Congress was held in Istanbul, but ironically, even though Turkey is located in Asia broadly defined, its national aspiration is to join the European Union.  I was told that during all the plenary sessions there had only been an African voice, and no Asian voice. This reminds me that my Chinese colleagues told me that during the 1998 Congress in Boston, my presentation on the Confucian idea of the educated person was the sole Asian voice.

However, the Seoul Congress must be fully recognized as the single most significant event for Asian and comparative philosophy and with far-reaching implications for Chinese philosophy.  It recognized Buddhist philosophy, Daoist philosophy, and Confucian philosophy as integral parts of world philosophy, to be seriously considered as important as metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Continue reading →

The Future We Make

Well, the marking of the Chinese new year (good fortune to all of you out there!) provides an opportune moment to think about “the future of Chinese philosophy,” not so much in our soothsaying mode but in our capacity as people who are invested in shaping the field. Taking our cue from Robert Neville’s ambitious and provocative list of projects, perhaps we could think about the projects that we think would be important to take up and pursue vigorously in the field. Maybe each person interested could contribute one item to the list. Okay, I’ll start:

  1. Identify and defend something that is philosophically distinctive and valuable from the variety of writings and movements of Chinese philosophy.

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Neville's Projects for Chinese Philosophy

Many of you will recently have received the most recent ISCWP Newsletter. (If any readers are not members of the ISCWP and would like to be, please see information here about joining. There no mandatory dues.) In a short lead article, Sor-hoon Tan summarizes some remarks the Robert Neville made on the subject of the future of Chinese philosophy. I post the key points here.

The following is an excerpt of the eight projects which is discussed in much greater detail in the paper, a revised version of which will be published in the Pluralist, vol. 5, no. 2 (Summer 2010):

Big Moment Ethics and Philosophy

Prompted by a posted question from Scott Barnwell on our Question Board, Bill Haines has made some provocative comments regarding two related topics that for some of us may now count as conventional wisdom: that Chinese philosophy has more to say than Western philosophy about everyday life, and that Western ethics tends correctly to be characterized as “big moment ethics.” Scott and Bill both reference this interview with Joel Kupperman. I’d like therefore to move his remarks up to a main post, to encourage further discussion. The rest of this post is by Bill. –Steve

I can’t claim knowledge here, but I can’t imagine how someone could think that that Asian thought has significantly more to say about everyday life and the little things than does Western thought. I wonder whether Kupperman’s view amounts to a kind of semantic point, or semantic mistake, about the word “philosophy.” Continue reading →

Empirical Perspective on Mencius-Xunzi Debate

Eric Schwitzgebel, one of our contributors, is having problems registering for a WordPress ID, so he has asked me to post this podcast of a lecture that he presented on the Mencius-Xunzi human nature debate. It is also cross-posted over at his blog The Splintered Mind:

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Podcast of “An Empirical Perspective on the Mencius-Xunzi Debate about Human Nature”

… given to the Confucius Institute of Scotland on Jan. 19, available for listening or download here.

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Cult of Ancestry

I get nearly the same question about the cult of ancestry every time I teach the Analects, but I’ve never been able to answer it to my own satisfaction, much less to my students’. The question is bascially, what background assumptions and beliefs about the dead are in play for Confucius and his followers when they place such heavy emphasis on the continuance of filial piety for their parents and prior ancestors, post mortem? Of course, there’s this famous exchange with Confucius in 11.12, in which he seems to say that one should remain agnostic about death:

Ji Lu asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The Master said, “While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their spirits?” Ji Lu added, “I venture to ask about death?” He was answered, “While you do not know life, how can you know about death?” (Legge translation)

季路問事鬼神。子曰：“未能事人，焉能事鬼？”敢問死。曰：“未知生，焉知死？”

We could take some agnosticism about death seriously here, or we could imagine that Confucius is simply deflecting for the sake of getting Ji Lu to think more about the problems of the living. Continue reading →

Hong Kong U Fellowship in Philosophy

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong is inviting applications for a special postdoctoral fellowship in HKU’s “Society of Scholars,” a programme that began last year. The fellowship is intended for recent PhD graduates (degree received within the last two years) or those about to receive the PhD. Information on the Society is available here. Application information is available here.

Isabel Archer, American Sinology, and a certain Confucian Vagueness

During the last weeks, I have been thinking about how to write my first entry in this blog. Too much work and some kind of reticence held me back for many days. However, after having discovered Alexus McLeod’s thoughts on Proust and Confucius (on his Unpolished Jade Blog), I finally sat down and decided that it would be most appropriate to begin my first entry with a deep (ironical) bow to Henry James’ Isabel Archer…

Why Isabel Archer? Because she gives a wonderful example of the moral and cultural sensitivity we all need of when writing about Chinese philosophy. Also, because her case stands for a certain paradigm of (American/Western) modernity which still influences our thoughts and which, I guess, also motivates us to search for a constructive dialogue with the “Chinese mind”. And, finally, there is Isabel’s intriguing “fear”: her being frightened by Warburton’s offer, of Caspar Goodwood’s persistence, of Gilbert Osmond’s anger, her fear of cultural alienation, her fear of herself – somehow, I believe, this fear inhabits us all, being embedded in a Western cultural/philosophical framework, but being convinced at the same time of the necessity of “opening up”, engaging “the other”. In one word, Isabel Archer could remind us of the deeper tensions and darker forces which are at work today between the different cultural worlds. Certainly, she wouldn’t want us to buy too easily into a narrative of global harmony… Continue reading →