THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Presents: Li Zehou on the ‘Deep Structures of Confucianism’
Lead Presenter: Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
Discussants: Robert A. Carleo III (East China Normal University), Emma Buchtel (Hong Kong Education University)
ABSTRACT: Contemporary Chinese intellectual Li Zehou’s cross-cultural methodology blends traditional Confucian thought with thinkers such as Kant and Marx. This seminar addresses the question of culture and its role in Li’s thought. Li has made several claims about how a settled cultural tradition influences the subjects within it. One such claim concerns the existence of ‘deep structures’ of Confucianism, as outlined in this preparatory reading. The idea is that culture, history, and social practice (collectively, a tradition) shape human psychology (including the formation of concepts, emotions, and values) in ways not always apparent to the subject. Within the Chinese tradition, Confucianism constitutes such a deep structure, and its effects cannot be captured by textual studies alone, nor studies of material culture. Rather, the deep structure is articulated in terms of an emergent shared subjectivity. Such traditions can evolve and ultimately dissolve; nevertheless, their effects are deep-rooted. This seminar meeting will aim to identify the parameters of Li’s ambitious theoretical framework and its plausibility, and to explore connections with current work in related fields, such as cultural and empirical psychology.
DATE: March 25, 2022
TIME: 6:30 – 8:00 pm EST
This seminar will take place via Zoom (please scroll down for the full invitation). Below you will find the link to join the meeting. Here is an instruction manual to help you familiarize yourself with the program. In addition to familiarizing yourself with the program’s basic functions, there are two things we ask you to do before the meeting can start. First, you will need to sign in by typing your name in the chat. Subsequently, we will have to agree on the privacy policy for the meeting. The privacy policy provided by the Columbia University Seminars Office will be read aloud. To indicate your agreement, you will raise your virtual Zoom hand in the Participants panel. In the manual, you will find step-by-step instructions of how to sign in and to raise your hand.
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Accessibility Statement: Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. The University Seminars participants with dis- abilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or disability@columbia.edu. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. On campus, seminar participants with disabilities should alert a Public Safety Officer if they need assistance accessing campus.
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/comparative-philosophy/
Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?
This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.
Possible Topics:
● Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime
● Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice
● Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices
● Diversity + Biodiversity
● Capitalism and Climate
● Eco-phenomenology
● Eco-deconstruction
● Environmental Racism/Racist Environments
● Ecofeminist conceptions of nature
● Land Rights and Property Relations
● Posthumanism + Object Ontologies
● Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias
● Environmental Ethics In Narratives
● Mastery of Nature in Philosophy
● Anarcho-primitivism
● Queer and Trans Ecologies
● Local and Global Ecologies
● Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination
Confirmed Conference Keynotes:
Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Dates and Location:
This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).
Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:
Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:
Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:
For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.
For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format
Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com
With responses from Timothy Connolly (East Stroudsburg University)
ABSTRACT: Recent philosophical discussions on compassion focus on the value and the nature of compassion as an emotion. Ancient Asian philosophical traditions such as Confucianism and Buddhism, however, emphasize compassion as a character trait that should be nurtured. This paper examines the insights drawn from these traditions to help inform the nurturing of compassion. For example, is empathy a necessary tool? What is the role of love and care? Does self-reflection contribute to the process?
Dinner will be kindly offered by the Columbia University Seminars.
RSVP is required for dinner. Please email Lucilla with eating requirements at lm3335@columbia.edu.
Book panel: Anat Matar, The Poverty of Ethics (Verso books 2022)
Participants:
Anat Matar (Senior Lecturer of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University)
Simon Critchley (Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at NSSR)
Raef Zreik (Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, and Associate Professor of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College)
Abstract:
It is a common assumption that ethics must serve as the cornerstone of politics. Yet abstract moral arguments have always been used for justifying all kinds of atrocities; ethical sensitivity and compassion have been expressed towards particular kinds of victims, while totally ignoring others.
The liberal West, in particular, continually manifests such blindness. It is horrified by non-Western oppressive methods, but turns a blind eye to their Western equivalents.
The gratification of holding the moral high ground consistently serves as a political instrument in the hands of those seeking to shore up the existing order.
In The Poverty of Ethics, philosopher and activist Anat Matar argues for the conceptual primacy of political discourse over ethics and claims that only the political force which stands for equality, justice and democracy – the Left – can provide the coordinates for an ethical life under conditions of global injustice.
Appealing to philosophical ideas on the essence of language, Matar shows how the ethos of the Left, as it has evolved over years, underlies and gradually forms the basis for ethics.
Struggles against slavery, racism, colonization and militarization, protests against exploitation and the capitalist order, the feminist movement, global demands for climate action – all these are primarily motivated by a deep understanding of Left heritage rather than by abstract ethical requirements or by airy sensitivities. They, in turn, shape and reshape our notion of moralit
What makes right acts right? A Stoic answer to Ross’s question.
When W.D. Ross poses the question, “what makes right acts right?” (The Right and the Good ch. 2), he is asking a question that is prior to the deliberative question, “how do I determine the right thing to do?” The Stoics recognize this: in De Officiis 1.7, Cicero says that every inquiry about duty has two parts: (1) a theoretical part concerned with the end of goods and evils, which addresses such matters as whether all duties are perfect, whether some are more important than others, and what are the kinds of duties, and (2) a practical part which sets out rules (praecepta) by which our conduct can be made to conform with the end. This paper focuses on (1) and in particular asks Ross’s question about Stoic right actions (kathêkonta).
The endpoint of Stoic deliberation is determining what token action is the right action. The paper begins with the Stoic distinction between a thing’s choiceworthiness, its intrinsic disposition to elicit a choice response in a suitable subject, and its possession being to-be-chosen. The determination of what is to-be-done is made by weighing against each other all the values of the relevant action types specified by their content (the so-called ‘intermediate actions’) that are in accordance with nature, as Stoic value theory says that according with nature is an objective reason to do an action. What constitutes the rightness of the token right action, and is given in its reasonable defense, is the same as what constitutes the rightness of a perfect (katorthôma) action. The Stoic distinction between right and perfect action depends on the action’s moral goodness—not rightness—which is due to its causal origin.
Presented by Professor Rachana Kamtekar (Cornell University)
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to automate and scale solutions to perennial accessibility challenges (e.g., generating image descriptions for blind users). However, research shows that AI-bias disproportionately impacts people already marginalized based on their race, gender, or disabilities, raising questions about potential impacts in addition to AI’s promise. In this talk, Cynthia Bennett will overview broad concerns at the intersection of AI, disability, and accessibility. She will then share details about one project in this research space that led to guidance on human and AI-generated image descriptions that account for subjective and potentially sensitive descriptors around race, gender, and disability of people in images.
The NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents:
March 31st — Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and Care Ethics
April 14th — Camila Lobo (PhD candidate in Philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon and visiting scholar) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and hermeneutical justice in connection with the so-called “problem of the new.”
April 21st — Harmut von Sass (Humboldt University Berlin and a visiting scholar) will be presenting on gratitude.
April 28th — Janna van Grunsven (Delft University of Technology) will be presenting on How Social Media Platforms Disrupt the Field of Social Affordances and Threaten Human Flourishing.
With the exception of our last talk (which will take place over Zoom), workshops will be in person from 4 to 6 pm EST, followed by a reception. As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.
Look out for an email closer to each event with more details regarding the location and materials the speaker would like to circulate.
What is an appropriate response to humiliating treatments such as insults? This question is not only relevant to today’s discourse but has also piqued the curiosity of thinkers in classical Chinese philosophy. The Warring States period debate regarding whether one’s inner sense of shame can shield one from insulting situations and from experiencing shame is frequently presented as a one-sided narrative that focuses on the Confucian texts. Meanwhile, the views of their rival thinkers, such as the Daoist, legalist, or much-neglected Songzi (3rd century BCE), are rarely the focus of attention. This paper brings Songzi, a key player in the debate of emotions as responses to external triggers, into the picture and restores the historical intellectual discourse over the topic of what constitutes an appropriate response to humiliating situations such as insults. More importantly, I point out the philosophical significance of this debate, namely how Songzi prompts Xunzi to respond to an ambiguity within the Confucian doctrine: The early Confucians appear to think that an individual’s internal virtues can isolate and shield one from hostile external stimuli while also maintaining that the external environment impacts one’s moral cultivation and moral life in significant ways. Xunzi’s strategic move, I argue, is to give credit to both an inner sense of shame and the function of external stimuli in inducing negative emotions, thus making an important philosophical concession compared to Confucius and Mencius.
With responses from Nalei Chen (New York University)
- September 15 – Jing Hu (Concordia)
- October 13 – Bill Waldron (Middlebury)
- October 27 – David Wong (Duke)
- December 1 – Stephen Angle (Wesleyan)
Keynote: Harry Brighouse (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Pedagogy Workshop Leader: TBA
Location: The Graduate Center, CUNY—New York, New York
Abstracts & Workshop Applications due: July 31st 2023
Responses: August 31st 2023
Organizers: Michael Greer (CUNY), Maria Salazar (CUNY)
Contact email: gscope.committee@gmail.com
The committee for the Graduate Student Conference on Philosophy of Education (GSCOPE) invites abstracts for papers on the topic of Higher Education, Democracy, and Controversy. The theme of the conference & post-conference pedagogy workshop reflects the difficulty in creating and maintaining respectful discourse in higher-education classrooms, especially surrounding controversial empirical, moral, and political issues. Some argue that this is an equity issue. Undergraduate students who come from rural and/or underprivileged areas are more likely to experience alienation on campus, sometimes because they have never been exposed to certain “politically correct” language or ideas, and sometimes simply because they lack the financial and social capital that their peers have. It seems crucial (and follows from democratic and civic values) to foster safe learning environments for all students, especially those students who are more likely to feel alienated on college campuses and in elite spaces. At the same time, some argue that the aim of higher education is purely epistemological, and not civic or democratic. Proponents of this view might hold that free speech and academic freedom must be properly protected for higher education to perform its proper social function: education. What is the appropriate relationship between higher education, knowledge-production, teaching, free speech, and democracy? How can higher education instructors and professors be effective teachers in the light of these relationships?
Papers must pertain to higher educationbut maybe about anything from interpersonal classroom dynamicstoinstitutional policies to campus controversy. We are particularly interested in papers that explore the following topics:
- Philosophical issues around teaching controversy
- Navigating different identities in the classroom and on campus
- Free speech and controversial issues in classrooms and on campus
- Differential roles of various higher education actors when it comes to protecting free speech (administration, tenured professors, students, residential life)
- Training (or lack thereof) of graduate students to be teachers and the impact of this on teaching in our current political moment
- Theright relationship(s) between democracy, knowledge,free speech, and higher education
- The role of controversy in democracy
- The relationship between controversy and equality
- Teaching as an equity issue – how education might foster or impede different kinds of equity (class equity, racial equity, urban/rural equity, gender equity)
- Disagreement in classrooms
- Epistemological issues around disagreement and understanding
- Trust in classrooms
- Pedagogical tools to cope with disagreement in classrooms
- Philosophical views on coming to understanding from different social locations, epistemic commitments, and material circumstances
We especially welcome contributions that:
- Think about universities outside of the “top 50” and the “top 500” — we want our conversation to reflect issues found across the entire spectrum of international higher ed institutions
- Engage with CUNY-specific issues and offer CUNY-specific solutions
Abstracts should:
– Outline the paper’s principal argument(s).
– Give a good sense of the paper’s philosophical and/or empirical contributions and methods.
– Be anonymized.
Proposal Guidelines:
Please submit abstracts of up to 500 words by midnight EST on Monday, July 31, 2023.
PDF or DOC.X by email to gscope.committee@gmail.com
Post-Conference Pedagogy Workshop
The theme of our conference Higher Education, Democracy, and Controversy is relevant to graduate student educators, who are routinely under-trained and under-equipped to engage with real-life problems they may encounter in the classroom. The lack of training for higher education teachers is a growing iue in philosophy of education.
This workshop attends to this issue by facilitating a space for graduate student educators to reflect on how to foster good teaching environments for controversial issues, and be good interlocutors with each other on controversial issues. The workshop will also touch on promoting equity in classrooms. We will provide workshop participants with a certificate of completion.
https://philevents.org/event/show/112546