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.
Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Location TBA
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.
- 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)
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)
Serving as a response to Aimé Césaire’s call for a universal filled with particularity from his infamous resignation from the French Communist Party in 1956, I focus on the role of culture for a project of universal emancipation. To do so, I follow Sylvia Wynter’s statement that the Négritude movement is an example of a universal and cultural project. Recalling Césaire’s words in “Return to My Native Land,” culture that serves universal emancipation must be “free of the desire to tame but familiar with the play of the world.” To this end, I develop a conception of culture that is both local and universal, that centers on the importance of what it means to be human, as life, as being, and as experience by reading culture as necessarily local, collective, disenchanted, and related to play.
Bio:
Elisabeth Paquette is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her book, titled Universal Emancipation: Race beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), engages French political theorist Alain Badiou’s discussion of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution to develop a nuanced critique of his theory of emancipation. Currently, she is working on a monograph on the writings of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. She is also the Founder of the Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop, which takes place annually during the summer.