Vortragsreihe (Frühjahrssemester 2010): Researching Philosophy in Asian Contexts
Die Vortragsreihe "Researching Philosophy in Asian Contexts" wird organisiert vom UFSP Forschungsfeld "Begriffe und Taxonomien".
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The Centrality of Philosophy in the Pre-Modern Islamic Intellectual Tradition
Dimitri Gutas, Yale University Tuesday, 13 April 2010, 18:15 - 20:00 KO2 F-152, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich.
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Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge and Error
Arindam Chakrabarti, University of Hawaii, Manoa Tuesdasy, 11 May 2010, 18:15 - 20:00 KO2 F-152, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich
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Confucian Role Ethics in a Changing World Culture
Roger T. Ames, University of Hawaii, Manoa Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 18:15 - 20:00 KO2 F-152, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich
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The Sense and Significance of Japanese Philosophy
John C. Maraldo, University of North Florida Tuesday, 1 June 2010, 18:15 - 20:00 KO2 F-152, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich
The research field “Concepts and Taxonomies” of the
University Research Priority Program Asia and Europe of Zurich University
investigates the concept of philosophy in diverse intellectual traditions
across Asia. By identifying the taxonomies of different terms for philosophy
and exploring different answers to the question “What is philosophy?”, we bring
into view the self-conceptions of these traditions, whose terminologies (both
from an internal and an external point of view) and historical development will
be studied in various cultural, social and institutional contexts. As part of
these research efforts and following up a symposium held in December 2009, we
have invited four leading scholars, who will deliver public lectures to present
their argued views and exemplify how philosophy can be done or researched today
in the respective contexts of Europe and the Arabic-Islamic world, India, China
and Japan.
Our research focus is timely. Academic philosophers
have for long taken their subject-matter as unquestionably a Greek invention followed
by a largely European tradition. Today, however, Asian texts and contexts increasingly
find their way into philosophical endeavors and reflections. The claim that
there is or never was philosophy outside Europe has ceased to be persuasive. Avicenna,
Nagarjuna, Mengzi and Watsuji Tetsuro are each being researched in their own
right as well as in cross-reference to Aristotelian, Kantian or Derridean philosophy
to address concerns prominent, for instance, in the philosophy of language,
epistemology, aesthetics, environmental ethics or social justice.
Appraisals of this new situation differ. For some, the
situation calls for no less than turning all philosophy into comparative
philosophy; for others, the burgeoning discipline of comparative philosophy
denotes but a stage on the way toward true world philosophy; finally, there are
many immersed in philosophical study within a specific philology or an area
study without interest in meta-reflections of comparative philosophy; for them,
the question simply is how best to research philosophy based on a given
Sanskrit text, a set of Chinese bamboo slips, or some specific period or
context. Meanwhile, interpretative and other approaches abound, ranging from
hermeneutical to critical and from cultural romanticist to analytical.
Controversies over translation or the role and status of context continue and
remain far from being settled. Universalisms, pluralisms, and relativisms of
all shades are advocated and each embraced for many a purpose.
How do these different approaches and views weigh
against each other? Do analytical approaches that search texts from distant
places and times for answers to current problems operate out of context, or do
they merely re-contextualize the “contents” of the texts? What makes a text
philosophical, or can any text be read philosophically? Do different cultural
spaces make for different philosophies? Why should the alleged difference, say,
between Greek, Indian and Japanese philosophy be more crucial or more interesting
than the differences between aristocrats and commoners, poor and rich, between man
and woman, young and old, colonizers and colonized? Or are these distinctions
already irredeemably culturally prefigured? How does philosophy relate to politics,
ideology and efforts at instrumentalization? How does philosophical criticism go
together with the authority invested in texts by “tradition”?
