In this episode, we delve into Chapter 80 of the Daodejing, one of the most vivid portraits of Daoist social ideals. We unpack its vision of a “simple agrarian utopia,” where people live in small communities, ignore labor-saving tools, and resist the endless chase for more. Along the way, we discuss political minimalism, technological restraint, contentment in daily life, and radical localism, asking what it would mean to be satisfied even while knowing other or “better” possibilities exist. We reflect on our own consumerist culture, and probe whether Daoist utopia is naive, radical, or unexpectedly wise for our time. Continue reading →
CFP: ISCP Group Session at 2026 APA-Pacific
The International Society for Chinese Philosophy invites submissions to be considered for inclusion in panels at the upcoming APA Pacific Division Meeting, April 8-12, 2026. Submissions focusing on any area of Chinese philosophy will be considered. Both individual papers and complete panel proposals are welcomed. Please read more for additional information on the session and the submission guideline. Continue reading →
Work-in Progress resuming sessions for Autumn, 2025
Dear all,
We are delighted to announce a new call of applications for the “Works in Progress” series, a part of the 四海为学 “Collaborative Learning” Project. This series aims to provide an academic forum for graduate students and early career scholars engaged in Chinese or comparative philosophy to share and improve upon their projects with peers in conference-style panel presentations. Each session features a chairperson, 2-3 presenters, commentators, and an audience of participants who will provide constructive feedback on content, structure, or presentation style. It welcomes projects at any stage of development, including articles for publication, dissertation chapters, or conference presentations, and aims to accommodate the intellectual needs of each presenter. Events will be held once a month.
We welcome applications with a priority deadline of September 20th, and on a rolling basis after that. In addition, we invite requests to participate in the sessions as commentators, chairs, and general audience or to be included in the community mailing list.
Interested individuals can visit the website (General 2 — 四海为学 Collaborative Learning) or email WorksinProgressSHWX@hotmail.com for more information or an application form to present.
We look forward to receiving your applications!
Best,
Works-in-Progress team
Upcoming 四海为学 Collaborative Learning Project Roundtable
On September 9th at 20:30 Beijing time the 四海为学 Collaborative Learning Project will host our first event of the new academic year. It is a roundtable on “Studies and Translations of the Tsinghua Manuscripts.”
For details and the Zoom link please see our event page: https://www.sihaiweixue.org/tsinghua-manuscripts-roundtable
(Note that no pre-registration or passcode is required.)
Our events this fall have not been scheduled, but you can stay updated with our calendar here. Please feel free to advertise this or share it with anyone. All our events are free and open to everyone.
Sincerely,
Paul J. D’Ambrosio
ToC: Dao 24:3
Dao 24:3 has been published; see here and below for the Table of Contents. Continue reading →
ToC: Asian Studies 13:3
Vol. 13 No. 3 of Asian Studies has been recently published. Please see here and below for the Table of Contents. Continue reading →
Job Opening: Associate Professor/Assistant Professor (Daoism / Religious Studies) at CUHK
The Chinese University of Hong Kong is seeking to fill an associate professor/assistant professor position with a focus on Daoism at its Department of Cultural and Religious Studies. Please see here for more information regarding the position and the application requirements.
Friday, September 19: “Engineering the Dao: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Mengzi” Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
The COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY and the WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE
welcome you to an IN-PERSON meeting:
Hagop Sarkissian (CUNY): «Engineering the Dao: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Mengzi»
With responses from Tao Jiang (Rutgers)
ABSTRACT: Why does Mengzi tell rulers that their love of wealth and women poses no obstacle to ideal rulership, even as he venerates sage kings who seemingly lack such desires? How can he advocate for universal moral response in the child-in-the-well scenario while explicitly rejecting impartial concern? Why does he advise King Xuan to avoid looking at sacrificial oxen—effectively telling him to ignore his compassionate impulses—if moral sprouts are meant to guide ethical action? And why does he reject merit-based appointments, favoring hereditary offices, while advocating ethical transformation of government? These persistent interpretive puzzles have led some scholars to conclude that Mengzi’s philosophy is fundamentally conflicted. In this talk, I propose that these puzzles dissolve when we shift our focus from theoretical systematization to dao construction. Rather than seeing Mengzi primarily as a theorist of human nature, a virtue ethicist, or a political philosopher, I argue he is best understood as a constructor of dao: an engineer of workable frameworks for guiding conduct and organizing social life. Like an engineer, Mengzi builds with available resources—human psychology, institutions, cultural forms—within real-world constraints, prioritizing sustainability over theoretical purity. This “pragmatic constructivist” reading explains Mengzi’s characteristic patterns: motivational permissiveness (redirecting self-interested desires rather than suppressing them), institutional conservatism (preserving Zhou structures while fostering ethical renewal), and accommodation of natural family attachments (without making them the normative foundation). Instead of demanding universal emotional expansion, Mengzi engineers coordination mechanisms that work with human nature, social realities, and political structures as they actually exist. I aim to show how this engineering approach resolves longstanding interpretive difficulties and reveals Mengzi as a systematic social engineer whose methodology remains relevant for contemporary debates on moral and political progress.
DATE: September 19th
TIME: 5:30-7:30pm EST
LOCATION: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University, 1150 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR NON-COLUMBIA GUESTS: All non-affiliated members of our community must RSVP to Helen Han Wei Luo (hl3631@columbia.edu) preferably no later than Tuesday, September 16th, including in the request your name on government-issued ID in order to be granted access to campus. Non-affiliated members who do not RSVP will not be given entry to campus. Please also plan to arrive early.
CFP: Franciscan and Neo-Confucian philosophy
Lance Gracy is seeking abstracts for an upcoming edited volume on Franciscan and Neo-Confucian philosophy. The contributed works would assess anew the “metaxological space” of Franciscan and Neo-Confucian philosophy with the aim of conveying the mutual flowering and divergence between the two traditions. With renewed interest in comparative philosophy, the objective of the upcoming edited volume is to intellectually undertake the challenge of discovering indelible species in a “land”—still somewhat obscured—nestled between two expansive world traditions, so to better situate them within contemporary context. While most adjacent scholarship addressing the dynamism of the two traditions is historical or piece-meal, sustained philosophical analysis of the space between them remains an alluring frontier with signs of both difficulty and promise.
For more information, see here; the deadline is October 3.
Angle Reviews Li, Reshaping Confucianism
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Chenyang Li, Reshaping Confucianism: Philosophical Explorations, Oxford University Press, 2023, 344pp., $36.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780197657638.
Reviewed by Stephan C. Angle, Wesleyan University
Over a career spanning more than three decades, Chenyang Li has become one of the world’s leading interpreters of Confucian philosophy. From the beginning, he has been interested in both historical interpretation and more contemporary questions about comparison across traditions and philosophical development. Reshaping Confucianism is the culmination of Li’s work so far, bringing together and further refining a range of his groundbreaking arguments on issues including harmony, care, ritual, gender, freedom, and equality, as well as on newer topics like friendship, longevity, and civic education. The book is both an ideal overview of Li’s wide-ranging views and, taken as…
