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This talk places master-student relations in the context of Confucian social theory, focusing on issues of obedience, remonstration, and respect for different sorts of authorities. I survey early Confucian accounts of the good society centered on role relations, personal development, and flourishing, both individual and communal. I then examine the question of autonomy within these relationships, looking closely at remonstration, obedience, and disobedience. The talk concludes with a broader discussion of human dependence, placing Confucian conceptions in dialogue with Eva Feder Kittay, Martha Fineman, and Alasdair MacIntyre. All three, like the Confucians, see dependency relations as central to human life and the problems of politics, in sharp contrast to most liberal views that imagine a social contract between autonomous, free, and equal individuals. Confucians view extreme dependence as a special case of the pervasive interdependence of all human beings on each other, with family relations serving in many respects as the model for other relations.

Despite contemporary American resistance to dependence as servile (and thus incompatible with freedom and autonomy), dysfunctional, or lazy, it is an essential condition of human life. None of us could flourish or even survive without care, assistance, and cooperation from others, especially in childhood and old age but also throughout the whole lifespan. As these Confucians argue, dependence on other people is socially and individually good: it satisfies our strong desires for connection to others, as well as many of our other desires, through the practices supported and wealth produced and distributed through efficient, just social cooperation.

Furthermore, despite contemporary American suspicions to the contrary, deference to experts and even to other social authorities is often good. In the case of students, it provides the most effective path to cultivating one’s own autonomy. And general social deference smooths social relations and helps society function, as long as people perform their role-specific duties well. Early Rú accounts of the varieties of authority, as well as the ritual propriety appropriate to different sorts of hierarchically ordered relations, help us to see that deference is quite different from objectionable obsequiousness or lack of judgment.

With responses from: TIMOTHY CONNOLLY (East Stroundsburg University)

We are delighted to announce our Spring meeting dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar. Please save these dates!

January 24 – Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University)
February 28 – Karsten Struhl (John Jay College, CUNY)
March 27 – Jin Y Park (American University)
May 1 – Sin yee Chan (University of Vermont)

Reading and discussing The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt

Where does this sneaking, yet ever more oppressive and widely experienced sense of a generalized lagging behind come from? A feeling which is only strengthened by the perpetual decree that evolution must be preceded by adaptation. In her talk, Barbara Steigler will explore the genealogy of this new imperative which takes us back to the 1930s, to the sources of a new and very powerful political thought—since baptized as “neoliberalism”—which told a great story about the maladjustment of the human race to its new environment. By drawing two completely different meanings from the Darwinian revolution, Walter Lippmann and John Dewey proposed two radically opposed visions of the new liberalism and democracy. But they also provided two powerful and competing accounts of the future of life and the sense of evolution, an old debate forgotten for many decades which now demands renewed attention in the context of the ecological crisis.

Barbara Stiegler is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and the director of the Soin, éthique et santé (“Care, Ethics, and Health”) master’s program at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne. She is also a member of the Institut universitaire de France, a service of the French Ministry of Higher Education that honors professors for their research excellence. Stiegler is a specialist in German philosophy and has authored three books: Nietzsche et la biologie (Presses universitaires de France, 2001), Nietzsche et la critique de la chair (Presses universitaires de France, 2005) and “Il faut s’adapter”: Sur un nouvel impératif politique (Gallimard, 2019).

Event co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the CCCCT.

We are delighted to announce our Spring meeting dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar. Please save these dates!

January 24 – Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University)
February 28 – Karsten Struhl (John Jay College, CUNY)
March 27 – Jin Y Park (American University)
May 1 – Sin yee Chan (University of Vermont)

Reading and discussing Orientalism by Edward Said

Luca Corti (University of Padua) – March 6

Amy Allen (Penn State) – March 27

Andreja Novakovic (UC Berkeley) – April 3

Alberto Siani (University of Pisa) – May 8