Justin Tiwald will give a colloquium talk titled “Confucian Disagreements about Autonomous Understanding 自得 (zìdé) in Ethics” at the University of California, Riverside hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages and the Department of Philosophy on Friday, Oct. 31 at 4pm PST (hybrid format). Please read more for details, the zoom link, and the abstract.
Location: UCR, INTS Building, Room 1113
Time: 4pm PST, Friday, Oct. 31
Zoom Link: https://ucr.zoom.us/j/98616286765?pwd=4g42nRkbfFE4UEmncWTvIExCWI1o1y.1
Zoom Meeting ID: 986 1628 6765
Zoom Passcode: 934300

For more information or a personal zoom invitation, please reach out to Jordan Jackson at jjack052@ucr.edu

Abstract: In this presentation, Dr. Tiwald will reconstruct competing views on epistemic autonomy in traditional Confucian philosophy. Roughly, epistemic autonomy is the sort of thing one has when one knows something on one’s own epistemic authority, rather than (say) on the basis of someone else’s reliable authority or expertise. Knowing something on one’s own epistemic authority may consist of grasping the relevant reasons for oneself or affirming a view on the basis of one’s own aptitudes of good judgment. Many present-day philosophers who work on Confucianism seem to suggest that epistemic autonomy is thematized by Confucian philosophers, and that certain evaluative claims and assumptions about epistemic autonomy help to justify their distinctive views about ethical education and cultivation. But we have yet to see a relatively clear articulation of the positions that were in contention, and of the arguments for those positions. Dr. Tiwald proposes to begin the work of clarifying the positions and arguments by looking closely at two sets of discourses. One consists of the defenses of deference to tradition and expertise in the Xunzi (attributed to Xunzi 荀子, 3rd century BCE). The other set consists of the descriptions of and arguments for zide 自得 (“getting it oneself”) in the later Confucian tradition, by philosophers such as Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032-1085) and Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724-1777).