11th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought

North Central College, Naperville, IL

May 1-2, 2015

Friday, May 1

1:00-2:30  The Virtues of Mengzi (Chair: Aaron Stalnaker)

• Dobin Choi (State University of New York, Buffalo): “Mengzi’s Maxim on Self-Cultivation for Righteousness in 2A2”
• John Ramsey (Scripps College): “Are the Fruit of Duan of the Same Species? Mengzian Virtues as Heterogenous”
• Franklin Perkins (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore): “Five Conducts (Wu xing 五行), Mengzi, and the Way of Heaven”

2:30-2:45  Break

2:45-4:15  Daoism in the Post-Qin Era (Chair: Michael Ing)

• Ori Tavor (University of Pennsylvania): “More than Human: Sagacity and Bio-spiritual Technologies of Enhancement in the Huainanzi”
• Judson Murray (Wright State University ): “Shenming 神明 in Han Dynasty Thought: An Ethical Reading of its Import”
• Stephen Walker (University of Chicago): “Guo Xiang’s Qiwulun—Philosophical and Philological Assessment”

4:15-4:30  Break

4:30-6:00  Keynote Address

Donald Harper, University of Chicago
“Reading the Peking University Han Laozi Manuscript from the Perspective of Western Manuscript Studies and the New Philology”
Saturday, May 2

10:00-11:30  Practicing Confucian Ethics (Chair: Judson Murray)

• Thomas Radice (Southern Connecticut State University): “Performing Filial Piety in the Analects”
• Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University, Bloomington): “Teacher-Student Relationships in the Mèngzi”
• Hagop Sarkissian (Baruch College): “Natural Daos, Diversity, and Moral Relativism”

11:30-1:30  Lunch

1:30-3:00  Value Conflict and the Pursuit of Ideals (Chair: Brian Hoffert)

• Dan Robins (University of Hong Kong): “The Way Without Crossroads Revisited”
• Michael Ing (Indiana University, Bloomington): “Irresolvable Value Conflicts in Confucian Thought”
• Michael Paradiso-Michau (North Central College): “The Mystery of Effortless Action”

3:00-3:15  Break

3:15-4:45  Contemporary Confucianism (Chair: Franklin Perkins)

• Larry G. Israel (Middle Georgia State College): “The Renaissance of Wang Yangming Studies in the People’s Republic of China”
• Cheryl Cottine (Oberlin College): “Social and Environmental Justice: What We Can and Cannot Learn from Early Confucian Texts”
• Samuel Cocks (University of Wisconsin La Crosse): “Wang Yangming and Being One with Inanimate Objects”

 

More information, including paper abstracts, available here.