NEH Seminar Announcement

Confucianism and Contemporary Virtue Ethics

We are excited to be co-directing an NEH Summer Seminar Traditions Into Dialogue: Confucianism and Contemporary Virtue Ethics, to take place from Monday, July 7 through Friday, August 15 (six weeks) at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

We both feel that there is a tremendous opportunity right now to stimulate new philosophical growth through broadening the sources drawn on by contemporary virtue ethicists, or those interested in virtues more generally, to include the Confucian tradition.  Our goal in this Seminar is to provide a context in which participants can develop the familiarity with Confucianism that they need in order to begin using it in their research and teaching. We also hope to initiate an on-going conversation about the ways in which putting Confucianism into dialogue with other work in virtue ethics can contribute to both. To this end, we will be organizing a conference in Beijing in 2009 on Confucianism and Virtue Ethics, and will be able to provide financial support for any participant in the 2008 Summer Seminar who is able to present a paper at the 2009 conference.

For more information, please visit our website: http://neh08.wesleyan.edu, or contact us via email ([email protected]) or telephone (860/685-3394).

Please spread the word! Thank you.

Stephen Angle                            Michael Slote
Associate Professor and Chair UST Professor of Ethics
Department of Philosophy             Department of Philosophy
Wesleyan University                    University of Miami

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Should anyone be interested in an introductory glossary guide for some key concepts in Confucianism (by way of enhancing 'familiarity with Confucianism'), along with a substantial selected bibliography, you can e-mail me at patrickseamus"at"hotmail.com [use 'at' symbol].

[Steven Larmore]

Although I have a previous engagement, this is very exciting to see. I have been looking for Graduate programs with a more global philosophy program, especially "Eastern" philosophies.

I see on the Philosophical Gourmet a list of universities with a focus on Indian or Chinese philosophy, but the rankings were done in 2006 (http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/breakdown/breakdown32.asp). Are there universities, that anyone knows of, with a large focus on these philosophies that are not listed?

I hope the conference goes well.

Thanks and Warm Regards,
Steven Larmore

[Justin Tiwald]

Steven,

I can't speak for Indian philosophy, but the situation in Chinese philosophy hasn't changed much since 2006. We had an interesting discussion of the current state of Chinese philosophy on Leiter's blog about one year ago, which you can find here.