Chris Fraser 方克濤

Update: The conference program is here.

Later this month I’ll be attending an international workshop in Singapore called “Global Themes in Ethical Naturalism,” hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the National University of Singapore, June 27–28. My talk will be entitled “Chinese Naturalism and the Limits of Ethics.” An abstract follows. Continued…

Joseph Chan, of HKU’s Department of Politics and Public Administration, has organized a mini-workshop on Confucian Political Philosophy to be held 29 April 2011 (at 2 pm)  in the PPA dept library. The speakers will be Joseph himself and Daniel A. Bell, of Tsinghua University, along with four commentators: Ci Jiwei and Fan Ruiping, on Joseph’s paper, and P. J. Ivanhoe and myself, on Daniel’s. Joseph’s topic is “Interplay between ideal and nonideal thinking in early Confucian political thought: A reconstruction and application,” while Daniel’s is “Confucianism and nationalism: A reconciliation.” I’m sure we’ll have some lively discussion.

UPDATE: Anyone who would like the text of my remarks is welcome to contact me.

Update: The web page for the workshop is here.

The Department of Philosophy of the University of Hong Kong will be holding a workshop entitled “Happiness and the Dao: Ancient Greek and Chinese Approaches to Ethics,” March 25–26, 20111. The workshop is organized by Patrick Hawley, Chair of the Department of Philosophy. Presenters will include A. A. Long, Nicholas D. Smith, Lisa Raphals, Yong Huang, Chad Hansen, Siu-fu Tang, Timothy O’Leary, and myself. My talk will be entitled “Rational Souls or Virtuoso Performers? λόγος versus Dào-dé 道德 in Ancient Greek and Chinese Thought.”

The workshop announcement follows. (Continued…)

I was the kick-off speaker at a recent conference in Taiwan entitled “英美哲學觀點下的中國哲學研究”—or “Chinese Philosophy from the Perspective of Anglo-American Philosophy.” Although the conference was held December 17–18 at National Cheng Chih University 國立政治大學 in Taipei, I only recently noticed the website here. This was an enjoyable event that gave me the great pleasure of meeting up with a dozen or more old friends from Taiwan. I presented my forthcoming paper on “Knowledge and Error in Early Chinese Thought.”

An exciting event for those of us who work on Chinese logic is the upcoming workshop on "The History of Logic in China" scheduled for November 24–25 in Amsterdam. The workshop is organized by Prof. Johan van Benthem and Dr. Fenrong Liu and hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies.

My contribution will be an ambitious paper called "Distinctions, Judgment, and Reasoning in Classical Chinese Thought" that I've kept on the back burner for almost ten years now. Although ideas from the paper have appeared in several of my articles, I'm happy to finally present the whole thing. I'll post a draft of the paper here eventually. In the meantime, an abstract follows. (Continued...)

Update: This paper appears in Asian Philosophy 21.1 (2011): 97–121. A preprint can be downloaded here. For a related blog discussion, see this.

I've just returned from an August 27 conference at Chonnam 全南 University in Gwangju 光州, Korea, entitled "Reflection on Philosophical Roots of Korean Emotion," which covered Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. For me this was an interesting and unusual event, as most of the presentations were in Korean, with simultaneous interpretation. I'm grateful to Prof. Yonghwan Chung and the other organizers, who arranged a very successful program. It was a pleasure to see old friends such as Hagop Sarkissian and Georg Moeller and to meet many new colleagues from Korea, China, and Japan.

My contribution to the conference was an extension of recent work I've done on Zhuangzi. A precis follows. (Read more...)

On April 23, 2010, the "Philosophy, Therapy, and Medicine" research cluster of HKU's Centre for the Humanities and Medicine will hold a research workshop entitled "Death: Philosophy, Therapy, Medicine."  The workshop is organized by my colleague Barbara Dalle Pezze. I'll be giving a talk entitled "Xúnzǐ and Zhuāngzǐ: Two Approaches to Death in Classical Chinese Thought," as part of a panel on “Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Cross-cultural Considerations.” An abstract follows. (Read more...)

On Dec. 10–11, 2009, the HKU Department of Philosophy hosted a quite successful international conference on comparative philosophy: “Happiness East & West.” Details are here.

The conference organizer was my colleague Timothy O’Leary. Much thanks to Timothy for planning the event and to the Louis Cha Fund, the HKU Faculty of Arts, and the HKU School of Humanities for their sponsorship.

My own contribution to the “Happiness” conference is called “Wandering the Way: A Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuangzi.”

Update (Jan 3 2010): A working draft of my paper is here. A précis follows. Read on…

From June 25–28, I will be attending what promises to be quite an interesting workshop hosted by Professors Carine Defoort and Nicolas Standaert at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven entitled “The Many Faces of Mozi: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study of Mohist Thought.” Despite the title, the workshop actually focuses on the “Dialogue” and “Summary” books of the Mozi, not the core essays. My own paper is on the ethical thought of the Mohist “Dialogues,” specifically how they differ from the core essays. An abstract follows.

Read more…