2 April 2025 (Wed)
Seminar by Xidian University Scholars
| Date: | 2 April 2025 (Wed) |
| Time: | 10am – 12nn |
| Location: | CEC1002 |
| Speaker: | Dr. Xiang Shuchen Huashan Professor of Philosophy Dr. Jacob Bender Huashan Associate Professor of Philosophy |
| Language: | English |
10:00 – 11:00am
Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea
by Dr. Xiang Shuchen,
Huashan Professor of Philosophy
This talk will be based on my recently published monograph Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea. The talk will briefly summarize my conclusions as to the reasons underlying historic China’s successful multiculturalism and of harmony in diversity. The rest of my talk will address how China’s historic attitude toward cultural differences differs from contemporary “liberal multiculturalism.” Central to my reconstruction of the core characteristics of “Chinese Cosmopolitanism” is that persons are not expected to be an uprooted self that is separate from any cultural or communal context. As distinguished from the dominant Western-liberal paradigm, the Chinese cosmopolitan tradition assumes and argued that it is possible to have common public ends and strong, local identities. The remainder of my talk will analyze the philosophical moves that make such a position defensible and feasible.
11:00 – 12:00nn
The Non-Duality of the ‘Conditioned’ and ‘Unconditioned’:Hongzhou Chan Buddhism on the Morality/Prudence Distinction
by Dr. Jacob Bender
Huashan Associate Professor of Philosophy
This talk illustrates how Hongzhou Chan Buddhism can provide valuable resources for dealing with issues in contemporary moral philosophy. By providing a non-dualistic account of the metaphysical dualism between the “unconditioned” (Sanskrit – asaṃskṛta, Chinese – wuwei, 無為) and the “conditioned” (Sanskrit – saṃskṛta, Chinese – youwei, 有為), the Hongzhou Chan Buddhist can provide an account of compassion that is unconditionally grounded. Their account of compassion can then be understood as overcoming the traditional divide between “morality” and “prudence”.
* For HKBU undergraduate students, to fulfill the CCL requirement, they need to attend both talks.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Shuchen Xiang
Shuchen Xiang (PhD, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and King’s College London, summa cum laude) is the Mt. Hua Professor of Philosophy at Xidian University, China. She is the author of Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2023), which won an honorable Mention for the Asia and Asian America Section Book Award, American Sociological Association. She is also author of A Philosophical Defense of Culture: Perspectives from Confucianism and Cassirer (State University of New York Press, 2021), the coeditor of The Islamic-Confucian Synthesis in China (Lexington, 2023), the coeditor of How China Shaped the Enlightenment: A Transcultural History of Modern Thought (Routledge, forthcoming), the translator of History of Chinese Philosophy Through Its Key Terms (Springer, 2020). She is currently working on her third book A More Complete Humanism: The Confucian Alternative to the Liberal-Capitalist Subject.
Dr. Jacob Bender
Jacob Bender is Mount Hua Associate Professor of Philosophy at Xidian University, Xi’an, China. His works have been published in Philosophy East and West, Sophia, and British Journal for the History of Philosophy. He is also the author of Those Who Act Ruin It: A Daoist Account of Moral Attunement (SUNY Press 2024).
