Robert Bellah’s New Book “Religion in Human Evolution”

Looking back at the year 2011, I think Robert Bellah’s book Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Harvard University Press, 2011) is arguably the most important book published last year. I hope the word “religion” in the title would not stop readers of this blog, who are interested in Chinese philosophy, from reading it. The book is really about civilization or culture (wen), which includes both religion and philosophy. One could understand the term “religion” in a very broad sense, which seems to be what Habermas does. In his blurb for Bellah’s book, Habermas says, “In the second part of his book, he succeeds in a unique comparison of the origins of the handful of surviving world-religions, including Greek philosophy.” In fact, since many of our readers believe that early Chinese thought is often both religion and philosophy, they might find this book especially stimulating.

Happy New Year

May you all have a prosperous year of the dragon! Thank you all for making this site lively and intellectually rich.

2012 Tang Junyi Lecture at Michigan

Blog contributor Brian Bruya will be delivering the 2012 Tang Junyi Lecture at the University of Michigan this coming March. His topic is “Nature, Self, and Artifice: On the Divisibility of the Self in Action and Aesthetics.” Congratulations, Brian!

PEW 62:1 TOC

This issue includes, by the way, a piece by blog contributor Dan Robins on the Mohist concept of jianai 兼愛. Here is a link to the Philosophy East and West journal blog. Below is a cut and paste of the information that appears there.

CFP: Conference on the Four Books

This is an announcement and Call for Papers for an international symposium to be held in Beijing in late April on the Four Books. For details, read on!

Results of Survey on teaching Chinese Philosophy

Back in 2009 and 2010, Minh Nguyen surveyed a wide range of instructors of course on Chinese philosophy to learn about the challenges they faced and about resources they found particularly useful. He has now published the survery data in the Fall 2011 Newsletter of the APA Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies. He and Manyul Im are working on an essay extracting lessons from the survey, but in the meantime, discussion of its results are welcome here.

Moral Perfection in the Analects (and Beyond?)

As part of some commentary on Paul Goldin’s new book Confucianism, Bill Haines has noted the centrality of the idea of moral perfection in Goldin’s characterization of the basic convictions of the Confucian philosophical orientation. In a subsequent comment, he questions to what degree the ideal of moral perfection was actually held by Confucius. With Bill’s permission, I’m re-posting his comments on this latter subject here, because I think they deserve more attention than they may get buried deep in a comment string. Read on, and please direct your comments to Bill, the author of what follows.

CFP: 2012 ISCWP Beijing Roundtable

2012 Term
“Beijing Roundtable on Contemporary Philosophy”
2012年“北京當代哲學國際圓桌學術研討會”

Theme / 討論主題

“Philosophical Methodology:
From the Vantage Point of Comparative Philosophy”
“哲學方法論﹕從比較哲學的觀點看”

Comparative Philosophy 3:1 Table of Contents

Here is the Table of Contents for the latest issue of Comparative Philosophy (issue 3:1)

Reminder of Free Dao Downloads

Just a quick reminder that the journal Dao gives out free promotional downloads of their top five downloaded articles at any given time. Here is the link (freebies are at the bottom of the page). There are some great articles right now on that list!

Confucius in Contemporary Art at Useless Tree

FYI, Sam Crane has a great post over on his blog about the “Q Confucius” contemporary art exhibit in Shanghai.

Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought — proposal deadline extended one week

Just in case this has slipped your mind, you now have one extra week to send in a proposal for the 8th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought. Proposals are now due next Friday, January 13. The conference will be April 13-15 at Indiana University. For more information, see the revised cfp below:

Wang Chong at Unpolished Jade

FYI, contributor Alexus McLeod, has begun a series of postings on Wang Chong over on his blog, Unpolished Jade.

Do Ruists overemphasize filial feeling?

I was at the APA in Washington DC last week, and it was great to get a chance to hear about some very interesting work in Chinese philosophy. A couple of papers got me thinking about the reasoning behind the emphasis on filiality (xiao 孝) in classical Ruism. Whether Ruism gives too much weight to filiality at the expense of other values has been debated recently, and an issue in Dao a year or two ago presented some of this debate. At the conference, I started wondering about a slightly different problem: do Ruists put too much faith in the assumption that someone who is filial will have other moral virtues as well? Is there good reason to think this is generally true?

Fudan’s English-language Chinese Philosophy Programs

Fudan University has successfully launched its English-language Chinese philosophy programs (a one-year Visiting Student program, and a two-year M.A. program) this fall, and is now offering information for those who want to learn more about applying to begin in Fall 2012. Please see this poster for the basic information, and this document with further details. Anyone who has experience with the programs, please let us know in the comments!

Review Article on Several Books on Confucius

A recent article in T’oung Pao 97 (pp. 160-201) might be of interest to many readers of the blog. In “Recent Monographs on Confucius and Early Confucianism,” Oliver Weingarten of SOAS considers the following books:

• Il confucianesimo: i fondamenti e i testi. By Maurizio Scarpari. Turin: Einaudi, 2010. vi + 300 pp.
• Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics. By Annping Chin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv + 268 pp.
• Confucius. By Rémi Mathieu. Sagesses éternelles. Paris: Entrelacs, 2006. 271 pp.
• Lives of Confucius. By Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson. New York: Doubleday, 2010. 304 pp.
• Sang jia gou: wo du Lunyu. By Li Ling. Revised edition. Two volumes. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2007. 2 + 11 + 390 + 120 pp.
• Qu sheng nai de zhen Kongzi: Lunyu zongheng du. By Li Ling. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2008. 13 + 7 + 302 pp.
• Confucius. Spiritualités vivantes, vol. 198. By Jean Levi. Paris: Albin Michel, 2003. 322 pp.

Goldin’s Confucianism

I’ve written a review of Paul Goldin’s book, Confucianism, for Dao. I don’t know when it (the review, that is) will come out, but I’ve posted roughly the first half of it below. [Addendum (1/19/12): some general discussion of the book by Bill Haines and others starts at comment 17.]

ACPA New Officers Elected

Soon-to-be-former ACPA President JeeLoo Liu writes with news of the ACPA election. Congratulations to the new board!

The Philosophical Gourmet Chinese Philosophy Specialty List of PhD Programs – 2011

Well, technically, it’s a ranking.

Call for Papers: 8th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought

CALL FOR PAPERS

EIGHTH ANNUAL
MIDWEST CONFERENCE ON CHINESE THOUGHT

APRIL 13-15, 2012
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
BLOOMINGTON

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: STEPHEN ANGLE, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY