Jim Peterman’s Whose Tradition? Which Dao?: Confucius and Wittgenstein on Moral Learning and Reflection has been published; check it out.
Category Archives: Education Models
Deadline extended: Confucianism and Education CFP
Confucianism and Education: An International Symposium October 17-19, 2014 Ramada Hotel and Conference Center, Amherst, NY
Waldorf meets guoxue in off-the-grid Chinese schools
Read about it here.
CFP: Confucianism and Education
You are cordially invited to submit a proposal to:
Confucianism and Education: An International Symposium
University at Buffalo, October 17-9, 2014; Proposal Submission Deadline: June 15, 2014
For details, please visit Conference Website: http://gse.buffalo.edu/confucius.
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New Translation: Exemplary Women of Early China
Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang
Translated and edited by Anne Behnke Kinney
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16308-8/exemplary-women-of-early-china
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Garfield, Cook join Yale-NUS Faculty
When Yale-NUS College in Singapore opens its doors this fall, it will have one of the strongest comparative philosophy faculties and curriculums in the world, despite its tiny size (initial class of 150, growing to a four-class total of 1000 students). Its common curriculum features a year-long course in Philosophy and Political Theory that has been designed from the ground up to introduce students to multiple philosophical traditions, and it has recently been announced that in addition to the outstanding young philosophers they have already hired (some of whom have substantial comparative interests), Jay Garfield and Scott Cook have signed on as well. Exciting times!
What Would a Confucian University in the US Look Like?
The rather surprising question in my title is inspired by three things. Most immediately, I have just returned from the AAS Conference in San Diego, where I participated in a panel on Elite and Popular Confucianism, presenting a paper called “American Confucianism: Between Tradition and Universal Values.” Second, I have heard some talk about the establishment within one or more Chinese universities of explicitly Confucian-themed academic units. Finally, I recently became aware of Soka University, a liberal arts college in Southern California that was founded by the Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization from Japan.
NYT Columnist Brooks on Chinese Education
This was kind of a fun read. (Read the rest at the New York Times website, here.) Any thoughts?
THE LEARNING VIRTUES
DAVID BROOKS
Jin Li grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the madness was over, the Chinese awoke to discover that far from overleaping the West, they were “economically destitute and culturally barren.” This inspired an arduous catch-up campaign. Students were recruited to learn what the West had to offer.
Li was one of the students. In university, she abandoned Confucian values, which were then blamed for Chinese backwardness, and embraced German culture. In her book, “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,” she writes that Chinese students at that time were aflame — excited by the sudden openness and the desire to catch up.
Li wound up marrying an American, moved to the States and became a teacher. She was stunned. American high school students had great facilities but didn’t seem much interested in learning. They giggled in class and goofed around. Continue reading →
Stoic Week
A fascinating experiment this next week: live like a stoic. Having taught a course, “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” that included a five-day practical exercise at the end (living for those five days as inspired by Seneca was one option; the Analects and Zhuangzi were other options), I am intrigued! (Here is a link to some discussion on our blog here prior to my teaching that class. I keep meaning to post some follow-up thoughts, but haven’t yet gotten around to it….) There is a lot of interesting material available at the website linked above, including specific exercises!
"When two go together"
This post proposes a book project, for anyone who wants it.
Two kinds of serious conversation
By “serious” conversations I mean conversations that work toward knowledge (at least for one party), or good decision (at least by one party), or designing something complex.
The serious conversations glimpsed in the Analects are mainly between a master and student. The Mencius is more concerned with how an adept should counsel a king. 1A7 looks like a handbook for that.
These two kinds of conversation get their shape and point from inequalities: unequal wisdom and unequal power. Between master and student, one side has the wisdom and the power. Between counselor and king, one side has the wisdom and the other has the power. The point of both conversations, as understood by all parties, is to transmit some wisdom from the wiser party to the other — within constraints imposed by the powerful party, such as limited time.
One could do a study of these two forms of conversation in Confucian literature: the varieties of each and the guidance on how to do them well. That’s not my main proposal here.
Is it fair to say that when early Confucianism thought about serious conversation, these two are the main kinds it thought about?
Diomedean conversation
The Western tradition saliently values another kind of conversation, aiming more at discovering or creating than transmitting. Continue reading →