There’s a major conference on Chinese philosophy going on this week in Singapore:
“Conflict and Harmony: From Embodied Emotions to Global Realms”
2013 Joint Meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) and the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (ASACP)
July 8-11 2013
Details of the programme are available here, for those lucky enough to be in Singapore!
The deadline for New England Association for Asian Studies Conference has been extended to August 1st. Please submit all panels or individual paper proposals online here. Bridgewater State University is conveniently located between Boston and Providence and easily accessible by car or by commuter rail from Boston. Participants who are from outside Eastern Massachusetts can choose from a large number of hotels south of Boston or around Route 24 near Bridgewater, or stay at a hotel in Boston to take the train from South Station to Bridgewater.
The Society for the Study of Early China’s Second Annual Conference
Thursday, 26 March 2014, 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM
Philadelphia Marriott Downtown
The submission deadline for the 17th Southeast Early China Roundtable is approaching, and more submissions are welcomed! Please see this earlier post for more details.
A major conference on Daoism is returning to Boston next year. For information on registration and paper submission, see below.
Daoism: Tradition and Transition
9th International Conference on Daoist Studies
Boston University, May 30- June 1, 2014
For the last ten years, the series of international conferences on Daoist Studies has been instrumental in enhancing the study, application, and awareness of Daoism throughout the world. The only major Daoist conference series, it follows a tradition that began in Boston (2003) and continued through Mt. Qingcheng (2004), Fraueninsel in Bavaria (2006), Hong Kong (2007), Mt. Wudang (2009), Los Angeles (2010), Mt. Nanyue (2011), and Ammersee Lake near Munich (2012). In honor of its great success and as a tribute to Boston University for the initial conference, the 9th International Conference on Daoist Studies will take place once again at Boston University.
MASTERS OF DISGUISE?
CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS OF “RHETORIC”IN CHINESE ANTIQUITY
Einsiedeln, Oechslin Library, 4th-6thSeptember 2013
Two events at SOAS this week, both celebrating the launch of a new MSc program in Comparative Political Thought:
In addition to the lectures by Kurtis Hagen on Xunzi that I just posted about, there are several other events taking place over the next week at Shanghai’s Fudan University. In chronological order:
Friday May 24, 10:00am, P. J. Ivanhoe (Chair Professor of East Asian Philosophy and Religion, City University of Hong Kong) is speaking on “Kongzi and Aristotle as Virtue Ethicists.” Details are here.
Friday May 24, 6:30pm, P. J. Ivanhoe is delivering the first lecture of a series on “Chinese Research on Confucianism in Global Perspective”; Prof. Ivanhoe’s lecture is titled “Confucian Cosmopolitanism.” Details on this and the subsequent lectures in the series are here.
Saturday and Sunday, May 24-25, an international conference on the topic “Chinese Research on Confucianism in Global Perspective” will take place; details on all speakers and titles are here.
Tuesday May 28, 10:00am, I am speaking on the topic “Progressive Confucianism on Social Criticism and the Values of Deference.” Details are here.
I hope that blog readers lucky enough to be in Shanghai will be able to enjoy some of these lectures!
MOVED TO TOP WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:
We still need commentators, and please let me know if you are interested. Dr. Kim’s and Mr. Lu’s papers already have commentators (and there are three other commentators who are not set on any particular paper yet). Thanks!
– Tongdong Bai (baitongdong@gmail.com)
ACPA Group Meeting at the APA Eastern Convention
December 27-30, 2013, at the Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore
Session 1: Moral Cultivation and Moral Agency in Confucianism and Western Philosophy
1. Mental Blindness and Moral Rectitude: The jiebi chapter of the Xunzi
David Chai, University of Toronto, Canada, david.chai@utoronto.ca
Abstract: The idea of being figuratively blind is a well-used trope in early Confucian thought. Confucius referred to blindness of virtue while Mencius to blindness of the senses and speech. For Xunzi, blindness stems from a person having ‘two minds,’ that is, one’s mind is caught between two principles or goals of moral conduct. Xunzi’s solution, like Guanzi’s theory of ‘mental arts’ (xinshu 心術), was to engage in ‘singular concentration’ (jing 精). Through a close hermeneutic reading of chapter 21 of the Xunzi (jiebi 解蔽, “Removing Blindness”), this paper will examine Xunzi’s use of jing and how cultivating one’s mental essence by adhering to Dao can result in overcoming mental blindness. It will also look at one of the more interesting metaphors Xunzi uses, that of brightness (ming 明). Moral brightness is a quality every person should strive for in that it reflects the perfect virtue of Dao. For Xunzi, using ming to nurture jing is not enough to cure a person completely of their mental blindness however; they must endeavor to replicate the mind of Dao. How they do this is through studying the principle of men’s minds as Xunzi so clearly illustrates: “Sageliness consists in a comprehensive grasp of the natural relationships between men. True kingship consists in a comprehensive grasp of the regulations for government. A comprehensive grasp of both is sufficient to become the ridgepole for the world.” (Xunzi, 21.9)
Last weekend, Wesleyan hosted an interdisciplinary forum on “comparative enlightenments” that blog readers might find interesting; read here for an account in English, and here for a Chinese summary. Keynote remarks were offered by Wang Weiguang and Gao Xiang of CASS and Hayden White of Stanford. Participants included philosophers like Chen Lai (Tsinghua), Wu Genyou (Wuhan), Ding Yun (Fudan), Han Shuifa (Beijing), and Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia), as well as literary theorists and historians. (It’s interesting to note the differences of emphasis in the two write-ups :-).)
