Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) was launched in 2012. Co-directed by Tao Jiang, Dean Zimmerman and Stephen Angle, RWCP is designed to build a bridge between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy and to promote critical engagement and constructive dialogue between the two sides, with the hope of bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourse within the Western academy. It is run every other year, usually in late spring.
5th Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy: Chinese Philosophy and Virtue Epistemology
The 5th RWCP will be held on Friday, April 17, 2020. In this one-day workshop, six scholars of Chinese philosophy will engage two leading virtue epistemologists, Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski. The program and papers will be available in the spring of 2020, one month before the workshop. RSVP will become available at that time as well, and it is required for attendance. Please stay tuned.
FAQs
1. Where can I park?
Details will be provided as we get closer to the day of the workshop.
2. How can I get to the event on public transportation?
Take the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line to New Brunswick (njtransit.com). Make sure the train stops at New Brunswick as some might skip it during rush hours.
Co-sponsored by Rutgers Global-China Office and the Confucius Institute.
RSVP is required for both in-person and remote attendance. Click here to RSVP.
Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) was launched in 2012. It is designed to build a bridge between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy and to promote critical engagement and constructive dialogue between the two sides, with the hope of bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourse within the Western academy. It is run every other year, usually in late spring.
Registration for the conference is free, but required. To register, click here. Note that, as of now, NYU still has several COVID safety protocols in place. In order to be allowed to enter an NYU building, proof of full vaccination against COVID, including a booster shot, must be uploaded to NYU’s COVID portal in advance of the visit. Upon submitting your registration, you will receive an email with instructions for how to upload your proof of vaccination. Your registration will not be valid until you have received an email of approval from NYU Campus Safety informing you that you have been cleared for building access. Moreover, a high-quality mask (such as a disposable surgical mask, an N95, KN95, or KN94) must be worn at all times while indoors. Because of the extra time required to process the vaccination documentation, registration for the conference will close on April 29; no exceptions. It may be that NYU will loosen its mask requirement between now and the conference; we will post an update if that happens. For now, you should only register for the conference if you are firmly planning to attend, and if you are prepared to comply with the indicated requirements.
Saturday, May 14
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Allen Wood (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“Kant on Friendship”
Commentator: Colin Marshall (University of Washington)
Chair: Paul Guyer (Brown University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania)
“The Subjectivity of Visual Space: Descartes and After”
Commentator: Nick Stang (University of Toronto)
Chair: Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Pat Kitcher (Columbia University)
“Kant’s Conscience and Freud’s Superego”
Commentator: Karl Schafer (University of Texas at Austin)
Chair: Sally Sedgwick (Boston University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Hannah Ginsborg (University of California, Berkeley)
“Self-consciousness, Normativity, and the Agential Perspective”
Commentator: Stefanie Grüne (Free University, Berlin)
Chair: Karl Ameriks (University of Notre Dame)
Sunday, May 15
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt University Berlin)
“Hegel on Subjects as Objects (according to the Phenomenology of Spirit)”
Commentator: Scott Jenkins (University of Kansas)
Chair: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Richard Moran (Harvard University)
“Swann’s Medical Philosophy: Pessimism and Solipsism in Proust”
Commentator: Nick Riggle (University of San Diego)
Chair: Chris Prodoehl (Barnard College)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Tyler Burge (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Kant on Primacy of Practical Reason”
Commentator: Anja Jauernig (New York University)
Chair: Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Béatrice Longuenesse (New York University)
“A Philosophical Journey”
Chair: Don Garrett (New York University)
- Thursday, 12-2pm: Mini-Course Lecture 1: “Learning from Chinese Philosophy” (presents an overview of how Chinese philosophy was originally accepted into the Anglo-European canon but later excluded due to pseudo-scientific racism, along with brief overviews of several ancient Chinese philosophers, including Kongzi [Confucius], Mozi, Mengzi, and Zhuangzi)
- Thursday, 3-5pm: Mini-Course Lecture 2: “Mengzi’s Virtue Ethics” (introduces the Confucian Mengzi, and his conceptions of human nature, ethical cultivation, and the cardinal virtues)
- Friday, 10am-12pm: Mini-Course Lecture 3: “Zhuangzi’s Therapeutic Critique” (introduces the Daoist Zhuangzi, who presents arguments for skepticism and relativism that I argue are “therapeutic” rather than “systematic” in Rorty’s senses)
- Friday, 2-4pm: Mini-Course Lecture 4: “Zhu Xi & Wang Yangming on Weakness of Will (briefly introduces the medieval “Neo-Confucian” synthesis of Buddhism and Confucianism, and how two seminal Confucian philosophers took opposing views on the possibility of acting against moral knowledge)
This talk explores the reflexive nature of consciousness, which consists primarily in the fact that a state of consciousness has a reflexive relation to the subject who has that state, so that the subject can typically be aware of itself as having that state. Comparing Kant’s, Fichte’s, and selected contemporary analytic theories of this reflexivity shows that there is a crucial difference in the way the relation between form (or mode) and content of a state of consciousness is conceived. The first part examines Kant’s formal theory of consciousness: reflexivity is understood not in terms of a self-referential content resulting from a reflection on the state of the subject, but as the universal transcendental form that any content must have in order to be representationally significant and potentially conscious to the subject. The second part examines Fichte’s departure from Kant in his theory of a self-positing consciousness: in the original act of self-positing, the mere form of reflexivity is turned into a self-referential content that determines the subject as an object from the absolute standpoint of consciousness. The third part examines analytic theories that explain the reflexivity (or what is often called the subjective character) of consciousness on a model of mental indexicality. These theories tend to reduce reflexivity to an objective constituent of content that, although often implicit, can be read off from the subject’s contextual situatedness in nature. In conclusion, Kant’s theory can be understood as a moderate, human-centered kind of perspectivism that navigates between Fichtean absolute subjectivity and a naturalist absolute objectivity.
Registration is free but required. A registration link will be shared via email with our department mailing lists a few weeks before the event. Please contact Jack Mikuszewski at jhm378@nyu.edu if you did not receive a registration link.
The Philosophy Department provides reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Requests for accommodations should be submitted to philosophy@nyu.edu at least two weeks before the event.
Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) was launched in 2012. It is designed to build a bridge between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy and to promote critical engagement and constructive dialogue between the two sides, with the hope to diversify the practice of philosophy by bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourse within the Western academy. It is run every other year, usually in late spring.
Sixth RWCP, “New Voices in Chinese Philosophy,” will be held in person, with live streaming through Zoom, on Friday, April 28, 2023. Six junior scholars of Chinese philosophy, representing new voices in the field, will engage six more senior scholars. This year’s workshop is co-sponsored by Rutgers Global, Religion Department, Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy Department. RSVP is required for attendance, either in-person (limited to the room capacity) or online. Click here to register.
Program
8:20a.m. Breakfast
8:50a.m. – 9:00a.m. Welcoming Remarks
Karen Bennett, Chair of Philosophy Department, Rutgers University
9:00a.m. – 10:00a.m. “Relational Normativity: Williams’s Thick Ethical Concepts in Confucian Ethical Communities”
Presenter: Sai-Ying Ng (CUNY Graduate Center)
Commentator: Alex Guerrero (Rutgers University)
Moderator: Stephen Angle (Wesleyan University)
Rapporteur: Esther Goh (Rutgers University)
10:00a.m. – 10:15a.m. tea break
10:15a.m. – 11:15a.m. “Paradoxes in the Zhuangzi”
Presenter: Chun-Man Kwong (University of Oxford)
Commentator: Graham Priest (CUNY Graduate Center)
Moderator: Karen Bennett (Rutgers University)
Rapporteur: Adrian Liu (Rutgers University)
11:15a.m. – 11:30a.m. tea break
11:30a.m. – 12:30p.m. “A Mohist Theory of Reference”
Presenter: Susan Blake (Skidmore College)
Commentator: Jane Geaney (University of Richmond)
Moderator: Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers University)
Rapporteur: Esther Goh (Rutgers University)
12:30p.m. – 1:30p.m. Lunch (onsite)
1:30p.m. – 2:30p.m. “Wealth, Poverty, and Living a Moral Life: Confucius and Mencius”
Presenter: Frederick Choo (Rutgers University)
Commentator: Stephen Angle (Wesleyan University)
Moderator: Tanja Sargent (Rutgers University)
Rapporteur: Esther Goh (Rutgers University)
2:30p.m. – 2:45p.m. tea break
2:45p.m. – 3:45p.m. “Gratitude and Debt in Western and Confucian Ethics”
Presenter: Choo Lok-Chui (Nanyang Technological University)
Commentator: Frances Kamm (Rutgers University)
Moderator: Hagop Sarkissian (CUNY Baruch College)
Rapporteur: Esther Goh (Rutgers University)
3:45p.m. – 4:00p.m. tea break
4:00p.m. – 5:00p.m. “‘Flying by Not Having Wings’ — in and beyond the Zhuangzi”
Presenter: L. K. Gustin Law (University of Chicago)
Commentator: Lincoln Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University)
Moderator: George Tsai (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Rapporteur: Esther Goh (Rutgers University)
Program
May 23, 2023
9:25–9:30: Welcome
9:30-10:50: Keynote Talk by Michael Della Rocca (Yale)
10:50-11:00: Break
11:00-1:00: Spinoza Panel, featuring talks by Karolina Hübner (Cornell), Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins), and John Morrison (Barnard)
1:00-3:00: Lunch break
3:00–4:20: Keynote Talk by Elizabeth Radcliffe (William and Mary)
4:20–4:30: Break
4:30–6:30: Hume Panel, featuring talks by Rachel Cohon (SUNY Albany), Peter Millican (Oxford), and Karl Schafer (UT Austin)
May 24, 2023
9:30–10:50: Keynote Talk by Christia Mercer (Columbia)
10:50–11:00: Break
11:00–1:00: Early Modern Women Philosophers Panel, featuring talks by Maité Cruz (Union College), David Landy (SFSU), and Antonia LoLordo (Virginia)
1:00–3:00: Lunch break
3:00–4:20: Keynote Talk by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (UNC Chapel Hill)
4:20–4:30: Break
4:30–6:30: Naturalism panel, featuring talks by Angela Coventry (Portland State), Louis Loeb (Michigan–Ann Arbor), and Justin Steinberg (CUNY, Brooklyn College)
riday, November 10
9:30–9:55 Check–in and Coffee
9:55 Welcome
10:00–12:00 Adam Smith
Speaker: Ryan Patrick Hanley (Boston College)
Commentator: Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois Chicago)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Immanuel Kant
Speaker: Marcia Baron (Indiana University Bloomington)
Commentator: Kyla Ebels–Duggan (Northwestern University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 German Romanticism
Speaker: Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University)
Commentator: Owen Ware (University of Toronto)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, November 11
9:30–10:00 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaker: Andrew Huddleston (University of Warwick)
Commentator: Claire Kirwin (Northwestern University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Simone De Beauvoir
Speaker: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
Commentator: Susan J. Brison (Dartmouth University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Contemporary
Speaker: Simon May (King’s College London)
Commentator: Alecxander Nehamas (Princeton University)
6:30–7:30 Reception