ABSTRACTS AGARWAL, Nishkam Sandesh (Author and Freelance Researcher) “Finding a Place for Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Principal Upanishads” Traditional interpretations of Atman in Advaita Vedanta firmly position it as Conditioned Brahman which is “associated” with a human being. For example, Swami Adiswarananda(The Vedanta Way to Peace and Happiness) says this succinctly when referring to the jivatman, and the Mundaka Upanishad refers to Atman as one of the “indwelling” souls by reference to the metaphor of the two birds sitting on a tree. One of the mahavakyas from the Chhandogya Upanishad, Tat tvam asi, then reconnects the Atman with Brahman. In this mahavakya, the Atman is the subject and Brahman (Object) is part of the predicate. The Isha Upanishad, via Soham asmi, is technically identical with this subject-predicate delineation: aham (Atman) is subject, and saha (Brahman) is part of the predicate. Similarly, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says: Ayam atma Brahma, another mahavakya which also is generally interpreted (e.g., by Shankara) as having the same order of subject (atma) and predicate (namely, Brahman, the object). In this paper, I propose an alternative syntactic re-write of the mahavakya (tat tvam asi and its equivalents), by reversing the subject and object (which is part of the predicate). If the Atman is transposed into the predicate, andBrahman is classified as Subject, then the mahavakya, and its variants are radically changed in meaning and implication. In particular, in this new scheme, the place for Atman in the hierarchy Brahman-Atman-mind/body becomes questionable since it obviates the need to “reconnect” the Conditioned Brahman (or Atman) with Brahman. One of the profound implications of this re-write is that the concept of reincarnation of Atman becomes more difficult to interpret. AI, Yuan (Queen’s College, Oxford, UK) “The Collective Memory of the Place Lv Liang 吕梁 and its Identity Function” Inspired by the idea of “collective memory” which was firstly raised by Halbwachs, and developed by works of Pierre Nora, Chaim Yerushalmi and Jan Assman, this paper examines how the place of Lv Liang 吕梁 in ancient China functions as a cultural memory. Moreover, it discusses what identities are associated with this place. Through analysing different sources from early China up to Qing dynasty, this paper will answer the questions that (1) why this place became memorable in the first place? (2)What identities were associated with this place originally? (3)How and why does the memory of this place transformed? (4) Why the memory of this place can span through generations? Using the place Lv Liang 吕梁 as a case study, this paper demonstrate the 1 importance of “memory of places” in ancient China and how a place of memory transformed from a mythological place to a political area. AKINA, Keli’I (Hawai’i Pacific University) “The Hawaiian Sense of Place as Focus and Field” The Hawaiian sense of place is pervasive in ancient Hawaiian oral literature and in all cultural expressions. For traditional Hawaiians, the sense of place determines individual identity and self-esteem. The most ancient of chants, the Kumulipo, locates individuals within the context of infinite cosmology and limited geography through the expanse of time recorded as genealogy. Hawaiian notions of place are rich and range from the broad concept of the universe to the narrow concept of personal geography and proxemics. Oral literature about the Hawaiian sense of place is replete with dualisms for location such as Earth (ʻĀina) and Heaven (Lani), Moon and Sun, near and far, and intimate and distant, as it describes human "being." Yet, the same oral literature also references processes and continuities between seemingly discrete entities and events as it describes human "becoming." Is the Hawaiian sense of place substance-oriented and dualistic or is it process-oriented and non-dualistic? This paper will demonstrate the usefulness of the notions of focus (de) and field (dao), developed from Confucian thought, for a philosophical description of the Hawaiian sense of place as it applies to human identity, self-esteem, and relationship both to places and persons. ALBERTINI, Tamara (University of Hawai’i) “Places of Exile and the Diasporic Self: Forced Exile, Self-imposed Exile, and Exile in One’s Mind” Rather than living in a place, diasporic selves discover that “places” live in them. These could be ancestral lands, native landscapes, sacred sites, a family home, or merely the memory of a door, porch, or well. “Places” of diasporic selves do not even have to relate to a physical location. A poet like Dante thus described the Paradise and Hell he “visited” in his mind. In the Islamic world, Sufis “traveled” in their minds and made the outermost cosmic spheres their true abodes. This paper explores the “life” places take on in diasporic persons and how they are used to recreate a space lost, inaccessible, or otherwise irretrievable. Another focus is an exploration of how places - physical, remembered, poetical, mystical, or longed for inform one’s imagination, thoughts, and language, especially one’s metaphors. ALFONSO, Russell (Hawai’i Pacific University) 2 “Intimacy, Place and Music” This paper explores the intersection between intimacy, place and music. In the first section I distill some of the main features of place as it is distinguished from space in the writings of Yi-Fu Tuan. Then I turn to the concept of intimacy drawing from two primary sources: Peter Hershock’s ‘Liberating Intimacy’ and Thomas Kasulis’ ‘Intimacy and Integrity’. The examples I wish to focus on are musical; I wish to illuminate the idea that sounds can be used to create a musical place that is especially charged with intimacy, intimacy understood as a felt sense of connection, a sense of meaning and belonging. Generally speaking there is a difference between scored-rehearsed musical performance and improvised musical performance. I would argue here, that there is something distinctive about an improvised musical place. Improvised musical places are at once intimate in Hershock’s sense, liberating in Tuan’s sense that “spaciousness is closely associated with the sense of being free, and epistemically articulated in Kasulis’ sense of knowing how and when to act with the qualities of a virtuoso. ALLIK, Alari (Tallinn University, Estonia) “Same Place, New Locations: Mobile Home and Nomadic Lifestyle of Kamo no Chōmei” In East Asian cultures travelling to various places, which serve as sites for geognostic insight into the true nature of reality, has always been a very important cultural practice. The temporary lodgings used by travellers were often put together from grass and tree branches and were valued over luxurious homes in the capital as true dwelling places for sensitive people. The Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772-846) has said in his famous fourline poem dedicated to the local landowner Mu: ever the most splendid sites / lack a permanent owner. During the subsequent centuries many writers subscribed to this idea: the wandering poet or a monk has privileged access to “splendid sites”, since these are only truly available for those who have renounced ordinary sense of ownership. In this presentation I will take a look at the mobile home constructed by Buddhist writer Kamo no Chōmei (1153-1216) and argue, that the ambition of a poet-recluse such as him was not so much to move around, but to stay in the same place despite of the constantly changing circumstances. During an age defined by impermanence (mujō) the mobile home becomes in his description the only site of permanence since it adapts to the unpredictable ebbs and flows of the environment. In order to stay in the place where the environment supports meditating, playing music and writing poetry one had to sometimes change location. This kind of adjustment of location typical of nomadic lifestyle is very different from the migration of those on religious pilgrimages. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have said in “A Thousand Plateus”: “The migrant goes principally from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforeseen, or not well localized. But the nomad goes from point to point only as a consequence and 3 as a factual necessity.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1990:380). I will argue that Kamo no Chōmei does not live in a hut of a travelling monk, but rather in mobile home of a poetrecluse who does not want move, but often finds that he has to. Comparing Kamo no Chōmei’s ideas with Western theories on nomadism and mobility I will attempt to outline the philosophy of place inherent in his writings. AL-RAWASHDEH, Elham Y. and Oumeima BOUCHLAKA (University of Jordon) “Postcolonial Spaces and Identity in Nathalie Handal‘s Poet in Andalucia” This paper investigates the representation of space in Poet in Andalucia (2012) through which the Arab American poet Nathalie Handal ’’recreates Federico García Lorca‘s journey, Poet in New York, but in reverse.‘‘ Specifically, this paper demonstrates how Handal, through writing, reconstructs what she conceives as lost lands and identities. To the poet, both Palestine and Andalucia are two realms from which her people were expelled. Such memories motivate her to write literary texts that she looks upon as symbolic or imaginative spaces which stand for her own cultural spaces. Such a process renders literary texts as spaces where conflicting ideologies are contested. Throughout Poet in Andalucia, Handal makes reference to colonized spaces showing, therefore, how imperial discourses assume a powerful position of dominance and knowledge legitimization, and how anti-imperial discourses resist and produce an opposing spatial knowledge. Thirding-as-othering strategy brought to us by Edward Soja is best exemplified in Handal‘s poetry; as she endeavours to reconstruct real and imagined spaces in an attempt to bring to readers a clearer vision of their hyphenated identities and the world they live in. Hence, employing postcolonial theory as well as Soja‘s conception of Thirdspace, this paper proposes an analytical reading of Handal‘s Poet in Andalucia. ANDREWS, Wayne (Hawai’i Pacific University) “Understanding Place: A Dialectic within Regional American Landscape Poetry (observing the poetry of Richard Hugo, James Wright, and William Stafford)” Within Eastern Philosophy, Daoism for example, there is often no sharp divide between being a philosopher and being a poet; Laozi and Zhuangzi were clearly philosopher poets, poet philosophers. In contrast 20th century Anglo-American analytic philosophy created little conceptual space for poetry as a mode of philosophical thought. Unfortunately, many American poets internalized this narrower academic view and failed to see they were actually engaged in important philosophical thinking beyond the scope of the analytic tradition. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate and appreciate the contribution and philosophical insight of three latter 20th century Regional Landscape Poets who, while thinking philosophically, did not see themselves as doing philosophy: Richard Hugo, William Stafford, and James Wright. These three poets ultimately viewed blessings and hardships befalling them, their social place in the world, even their existential self- understanding and self-identity as a product of landscapes 4 which shaped them. All three present themselves through a dialectic in which they are both authors of and products of the sorts of landscape they depict. ANGLE, Stephen C. (Wesleyan University) “Where and What is tian in Neo-Confucianism?” Traditionally translated as “Heaven,” tian 天, which I will translate as “cosmos” and “cosmic," plays multiple roles within Neo-Confucian thinking, helping to signal both the all-inclusive ambition of Neo-Confucian theory and also the pervasively value-laden nature of space and place in the Neo-Confucian vision. This paper explores the tensions created by tian's simultaneous invocation of horizontal inclusiveness and vertical hierarchy, as well as examining some of the ways in which tian frames the NeoConfucians’ religious, political, and ecological perspectives. ASHTON, Geoff (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) “Sāṁkhya and the Architecture of Devotion in the Bhagavad Gītā: Liberation through Re-Imagining Place as the Body of Krishna” Place is a problem for the non-theistic philosophers of classical Sāṁkhya—for insofar as place manifests, we are em-placed and hence endure suffering (duḥkha). Accordingly, the Sāṁkhya Kārikā employs metaphysical analysis (as directed toward various tattvas or ontological principles) in order to realize the total dis-placement or isolation (kaivalya) of the true self from place as such (prakṛti). However, various texts exhibiting “proto-sāṁkhya” motifs, ideas, and methods of analysis orient the individual to place differently. Among these is the Bhagavad Gītā, a text that situates sāṁkhya analysis within the yoga of devotion (bhakti) to Krishna. Focusing upon the chapters surrounding the theophany, this paper argues that the Gītā employs characteristically sāṁkhya metaphysical analysis in order to map out the architecture of place (prakṛti). Further, it does so at times in order to dissociate Arjuna from the horrors of the place that he occupies—namely, the duty to initiate a civil war. Unlike the historically later Sāṁkhya Kārikā, however, the Gītā situates sāṁkhya doctrine within a theistic metaphysics and a concern to both re-posses his place in the dharmic order and affirm the battlefield as a manifestation of the cosmic body of Krishna. By re-imagining place as the body of Krishna, Arjuna learns to not simply bear his dharma, but find liberation through embracing his place in the dharmic order in full awareness that his “yes-saying pathos” will not modify his fate. AXTELL, Guy (Radford University) “Moral Learning, Imagination, and the Space of Humor” 5 The functions of humor and laughter in the Taoist and Confucian classics has been a topic of some discussion (Froese; Glavany; Harbsmeier; Olberding). Froese (2013, 2014) for example treats the space of humor as opening a plethora of perspectives/possibilities and, especially in the Zhuangzi, revealing the possibilities but also the limitations of language. These studies of the function of humor are briefly surveyed in this paper, but then pushed in a number of directions, both theoretical and practical. Firstly, on a theoretical level, the space of humor is developed together with the importance of the imagination for moral development in James and Dewey’s thought, and with the manner in which emotions are “ripe for narrativity” in the thought of contemporary enactivists like Daniel Hutto. Secondly, theoretical resources derived from this discussion are used to address concerns that Olberding examines in Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That (2011). Our approach supports certain aspects of Olberding’s exemplarist virtue ethics, while adding correctives and insights on the persistent worries that exemplarism favors imagination over reasoning, and guidance over moral theory (Tan Sor-hoon). Finally, the pedagogical value of humor in transmitting ancient traditions of moral wisdom to today’s young audiences is highlighted through the work of Taiwanese cartoon artist Tsai Chih Chung, a vital figure in moral education in many Chinese-speaking schools, but whose work remains little-known in the West. AYYAGARI, Shalini (University of Pittsburgh) “Dancing in the Desert: Women’s Bodies and Gender Representations in Contemporary Hindi Cinema” In this paper, I aim to tease out the complicated representations of place and the female body in contemporary Hindi cinema by examining intersections of a Rajasthani landscape and the portrayal of Rajasthani women in song sequences from two Bollywood films, Paheli (2005) and Dor (2006). Images and sounds of a distinctly regional Rajasthan in northwestern India are often mobilized in contemporary Hindi cinema to create a timeless, traditional, and heritage-laden backdrop for filmgoers to imagine an inclusive Indian national identity. At the same time, Hindi cinema often reinforces gender and cultural norms, creating comfortable and universal categories of comprehensibility through which contemporary Indian women have come to be understood. In this paper, I zero in on the films’ promises to be voices of social change in India, bringing such important women’s issues to light. I suggest that the use of Rajasthan as regional landscape creates a liminal frontier. As gender violence continues to plague contemporary India, it is only in fantastical song sequences, not in the real world of everyday life, in which such transgressions of gender and societal norms could possibly take place. BABA, Eiho (Furman University) 6 “In Search of Appropriateness through Experience: Gewu and the Place to Conduct Gongfu as Transactional Events” This paper examines the relationship between gewu 格物 and the “place to conduct gongfu” (zuo gongfu chu 做工夫處) in Zhu Xi’s philosophy. I contend that gewu is a method of gongfu that is conducted on the “place” (chu 處) of transactional thing-events (shiwu 事物). I begin with wu 物 and show that they are not discrete “things,” but situated affairs of ordinary events (shi 事) that implicate our involvement or transactions (yingjie 應接) with them. I situate my discussion in the context of process metaphysics adopted from the Appended Remarks of the Book of Changes and the Han cosmology of Huntianshuo 渾天 說 appropriated by Zhu Xi to highlight the importance of cocreativity in his construal of these transactional events. He states that “people often assume that daoli is an abstract (xuankong 懸空) thing. The Great Learning does not say ‘qiongli 窮理,’ but only says ‘gewu,’ because it wants us to comprehend through thing-events (shiwu); only in this way, can we see what is concrete (shiti 實體).” Zhu Xi further defines “格” (ge) of gewu as “to reach” (zhi 至) and explains that “it is to actually go to the place (di 地)” where events unfold (Zhuzi quanshu 14: 469). I maintain that realization (zhi 知) through gewu is not an “abstract,” but a “concrete” understanding embodied or incorporated (ti 體) through cumulative practice (jixi 積習) and repeated applications (shixi 時習) of Confucian learning on or through transactional events as the “place” of gongfu. Zhu Xi also writes that “the heart-mind of the sages... can respond broadly with thorough appropriateness where each and every application is not the same (butong 不同)” (Zhuzi quanshu 6: 96). I shall argue that gewu is a method of gongfu that works to realize appropriateness of our transactions with thing-events through concrete experience (tiyan 體驗) at the “place to conduct gongfu.” It aims to cultivate oneself (xiuesheng 修身) to become virtuosic in making ritual proprieties appropriate and acting with appropriated ritual proprieties in response to ever- changing circumstances as co-creators who “assist (zan 贊) in the transforming and nourishing activities of heaven and earth” (Zhongyong 22). BAGGINI, Julian (Writer, UK) “Dreams of Utopia – On The Absence of Place” Philosophy is caught in a perennial tension. Although it rightly aspires to universal truth, to transcend the particularities of the individual thinker and her time and place, it can only be done by specific individuals in specific times and places. Indeed, philosophy is more defined by these localities than many other disciplines: we study particular works by particular thinkers and group them according to historical era and geographical location. 7 Modern Western philosophy has largely dealt with this tension by ignoring it. Courses in seventeenth century rationalism, for example, tend to pay scant attention to the historical or biographical background. The implicit assumption is that to do timeless, universal philosophy you must think as little as possible about the time and place in which it is done. The irony is that this mode of philosophising results in work that is even more parochial than it would otherwise be, with schools of thought identified with and largely confined to specific institutions, such as Oxford or Cambridge. The result is a mode of philosophising that fails to join-up with the “great conversation” of humanity. This is also reflected in the sociology of Anglophone philosophy, which shows that its practitioners are relatively uninterested in other global traditions and do not participate fully in gatherings such as the World Congress of Philosophy. This paper will argue that to achieve greater universality requires giving due attention to the localities of thought. The theoretical part of the argument focuses on the argument that objectivity requires exploring a plurality of perspectives and that this does not inevitably lead to a kind of relativism or pluralism. A comparison is made with feminist philosophy. Sceptics believed that feminist philosophy challenged the universal aspiration of philosophy and so should be ignored, since there could be no such thing as male or female truths. In fact, we have found that the best feminist philosophy reveals the blind spots of philosophy as a whole, and hence helps it free itself from its patriarchal and parochial assumptions. In the same way, it is only by attending to the locationality of thought that we can see just how far our own locatedness limits our intellectual horizons. I then take as a specific example the debate about free will. I will argue that in Anglophone philosophy, this debate is a demonstrably local one, and that the central concept in dispute is not shared either historically nor globally today. For instance, the contemporary concept of free will is not found in either Buddhist or Ancient Greek philosophy. Furthermore, the assumption that we are only responsible for actions over which we have control is not found to hold in many cultures around the world. It is only by understanding why the notion of free will they debate is not universal that Anglophone philosophers can take the insights they have gained so as to contribute to a more universal understanding of human freedom and its limits. Only by appreciating the contingencies of place can philosophy hope to reach truths that transcend it. BAILEY, Terrance (The University of West Indies, Jamaica) “Bewaji’s Critique of Mills’ Racial Contract Theory: A Challenge of its Structure, Content, and Conclusions” In this paper, I examine John Ayotunde (Tunde) Isola Bewaji’s discussion of Charles W. Mills’, racial contract theory. Bewaji critiques the theory’s structure, content, and conclusions. He argues against its structure by advocating for an epistemological understanding, instead of a historical racial contractarian perception of it. Bewaji contends with the theory’s content by emphasizing how racial distinctions naturally 8 occur, against Mills’ claim that they politically take place in Western society from antiquity to modernity. Finally, he challenges Mills’ idealist racial contract theory conclusions, by asserting his realist position on them. BAINDUR, Meera (Manipal University, India) “Accommodation, Location, and Context: Conceptualization of Place in Indian Traditions of Thought” A human being incorporates within her/his lived experiences ideas of place and location creating what Casey (2001) refers to as a “geographical self.” How does a concept of place feature in Indian traditions of thought? A number of equivalent terms that refer to place or location are to be found in premodern texts. The terms for places are not only used geographically but in a general locative sense, they define the self or identity. References to a soul ‘within a body’ or an embodied experience of the subtle matter within the gross, are prevalent in many early texts like the Upaniṣads. Some of those terms are sthala, sthāna, deśa, loka (in Sanskrit) and Nilam (in Tamil). The term sthala refers to an accommodative place or a surface, closer in meaning to the simple concept of ‘place’ in English. In contrast the term sthāna refers to designated or appropriate place. Displacement in this sense of place extends beyond the notion of a physical dislocation to that can be differently imagined through notions of sthāna. One could be excluded from certain places because one may not be eligible to occupy that place. Deśa, which is loosely a political-geographical term, is somewhat closer in meaning to the Tamil world Nilam. In contrast with location based descriptions these worlds are used in conjunction with time kāla (in Sanskrit) or neram/ kālam (in Tamil). The deśa-kāla, is also used to signify context, background, causal explanations and many other conceptualizations. The deep connection between time and place is well documented in place studies. For instance Tuan (1977, p. 187) claims that “Objects anchor time.” Do then placements of certain object serve to mark time in various ways? Traditional architectures in India and elsewhere seem to pay attention to landscape and placement as well as seasons and other time cycles. We already see that there are many layers of words for place in these texts. In this paper, firstly I intend to unpack the various conceptualizations of place in Indian traditions of thought. The finer distinctions of these terms and the way they are used to refer to different ideas of place would provide one with a richer layered semantic world of ideas within these traditions. Following this, I would then argue how the “where” given by these place-signifying terms not only constructs locations and situatedeness of beings but also influences relations and identities of these “whats” and “whos.” These locations and identities corresponding to them create a deeper understanding of intrarelations between beings and their life world. This understanding is of significance as, the traditional practices of communities continue to foster location-based identities that influence social relations and ethical norms in the subcontinent. A few concrete illustrations of these relations such as those of caste and gender hierarchies in India, human non-human relations would derive from the understanding of sthala, sthāna, and loka. 9 On the other hand the placement of rooms in a traditional home and in notions of directional/ geographical identities of people will substantiate the understandings of deśa-kala and its conceptual role in inclusions and exclusions. The paper will hope to introduce and clarify these concepts around place in Indian thought while providing a connection between these premodern ideas and practices and norms in contemporary times in India. BAKER, Timothy D. (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan) “The Emplacement of Chinese Tradition into a Christian Context: Ancestral Shrines in Taiwanese Christian Homes and Churches” This paper considers how reverence and offerings to the family ancestors, one of the signal aspects of Chinese culture in both philosophy and popular thought, have been absorbed into and transmuted in different ways by Christian practices - and how these new practices act to personalize places in ways different from traditional Chinese offerings. Taiwan has a well-established and diverse Christian population that has grown steadily since the end of World War II, comprising Catholics, most of the Protestant branches and a number of independent churches. Although the issue of offerings to ancestors was a critical point in the Rites Controversy during the early Qing, at which time these offerings were forbidden by the Catholic Church, with the resurgence and indigenization of Christianity in Taiwan, shrines to the ancestors are part of many Catholic churches and homes. In addition, since the 1990’s Protestants have developed an interest in and body of literature on this issue, and are exploring ways to instantiate it. There are several issues to be considered here. On one hand, the Christian Chinese understandings or theology about the persistence of ancestors differ distinctly from the traditional Chinese understandings; although at the same time they have been, and are being, influenced by those traditional views. On the other hand, there is the issue of how these practices sacralize domestic places and domesticate sacred places. Thus, the home place is connected to a larger matrix of belief, while the place of the church is linked to the family, which is rooted in the home. Traditional ancestral offerings at home can, of course, be related to Buddhist or Daoist practices and they can also be made at temples. But the point of difference is in the way in which the places of Christian offerings are more effectively tied into a community of belief. As a result, these offerings link family genealogy to the physical place of the home or church and at the same time to a non-corporeal “place” of belief. Within this expanded concept of place, attitudes and practices related to the physical place of the ancestors – their graves – have also been altered by Christian beliefs, revising the place-triad of private/home, public/church and public-private/tomb. Note: This paper is part of a series, beginning with a paper in March for the National Zhengzhi University conference「移動的空間──生活世界與人文科學」. That paper will focus on the differing roles of family members - husbands, wives and children - in Christian and traditional ancestral offerings, on which ancestors are included in the offerings, and on the contrast between ritualized actions and spontaneous actions. The third part will be a paper in August for a panel at the St. Peterburg Biannual Conference of 10 the European Association of Chinese Studies on the ways in which Chinese traditional views have affected Chinese Christian concepts of ghosts or spirits. BANG, Hyun Joo (Konkuk University, Korea) “Zhu-Xi’s Metaphysics of Taiji (太極) and It’s Transition” I will suggest that the meaning of Li (理)’s Dong-Jing (動靜) would be properly understood within the scope of the Zhu-Xi (朱熹)’s metaphysics of Taiji (太極), after accepting all Zhu-Xi’s conflicting opinions about Li’s Dong-Jing and about Taiji as the origin(根源) and the first principle(本體) of universe but not scrapping or reducing any of the opinions, and to figure out philosophical relationships with noted Korean NeoConfucians, Yi-Hwang (李滉) and Yi-Yi (李珥)’s metaphysics of Taiji. By noting that Li is the ultimate origin in his metaphysics of Taiji, Zhu-Xi affirms Li’s activity and that it’s self-manifesting activity (自己展開). I will also argue that the core of Zhu-Xi philosophy is the absoluteness of Li and Taiji. BANKA, Rafal (Jagiellonian University, Poland) “Confucian Meditations: Localising the Philosophising Mind” Most philosophers agree in that the ideas they convey possess objective, or at least, intersubjective status. The strength of the conviction is based on the assumption that a philosophising subject is located in the most neutral, culturally insensitive place, where a quasi-God’s-eye perspective can be assumed and universal judgements can be passed. One of the most famous exemplifications can be found in Meditations on First Philosophy, where the ‘perfect vacuum’ of suspended reality enables Descartes to answer most fundamental questions. This metaphilosophical condition can be challenged by an alternative offered by Confucianism, where the subject is specifically located in a multiple-level context and presents a holistic (not universal) perspective. In my paper, I argue for the Confucian localised-concrete subject as a legitimate departure point of philosophical investigations. My main argument consists in showing that the subject contextualisation is an indispensable propensity in cognitive processes. I construct it by referring to enactivism, which concurrently provides a linkage to viewing the Confucian conception of subject from the perspective of empirical sciences. BANNON, Bryan E. (Merrimack College) “Being a Friend to Places” When considering the human relationship to nature, much has been made of the attachment that individuals experience toward specific places. For this reason, environmentalists have discussed the concept of place as a particularly fruitful one for developing a relationship to the more than human world. However, the relationship between individuals and those places has been left somewhat undefined. Deep Ecologists, for example, argue in favor of assimilating the relations of a place into one’s 11 larger “Self,” thereby extending one’s care for one’s “self” to the place itself (e.g., Fox 1990). Bioregionalists, meanwhile, look to places as imposing limits and structure to the form of human life that takes place within them (e.g., Thayer 2003). In both cases (and others), there is a certain givenness to place: the relations to place are viewed as determinative of a particular identity and ethos. The place constitutes the person. On more humanistic views, the embodied or thinking subject constitutes places around it by instilling the environing world with meaning (Casey 1993, Tuan 1972). In this paper, I explore an alternative to this vision of the place to self relation in which the relation is modeled on friendship rather than on the process of constitution. The limitations of the constitution model have been explored by Val Plumwood in her book Environmental Culture (2001), arguing in its place for a self-in-relation model. For this model to work in the context of place, there has to be a meaningful and (to some extent) intentional world around us prior to the presence of human beings. Concurrently, friendship has been criticized as a framework for the human relationship to nature because nature is presumed to lack these meaningful and intentional structures (Freiman 2009, Sandler 2007). Taking up and developing Plumwood’s self-in-relation model, I intend to argue that once a place’s agency is no longer backgrounded and dependencies upon our places are no longer denied, it will be possible to engage with places as already meaningful and historical systems of relations in a way that resembles friendship. Friendships consist in a number of qualities beyond what I will discuss in the paper, but here I intend to focus on the reciprocity and self-formation dimensions of friendship. I do so in order to highlight the mutual formation of place and self that occurs in the interaction of the living being with its environment, but also to argue in favor of a particular normative stance toward that process. Friendship is laden with values and such relationships possess inherent norms that can help us make sense of which relations to place might be more or less ecologically healthy. BARDWELL-JONES, Celia (University of Hawai`i—Hilo) “De-colonial Perspectives of Land and Home: Yearning and a Sense of Place Within Native Hawaiian and Filipino Identities” Though there are marked differences between the experiences of Native Hawaiians and Filipinos in Hawai`i, these identities do overlap one another. First, both Native Hawaiians and Filipino Americans have a shared history of colonization in their places of origin, either in Hawai`i or in the Philippines. Second, both groups were denied a place of belonging within the US national narrative of citizenship. Filipino Americans were allowed into the country as nationals, but not as citizens. Native Hawaiians were forcefully included as wards of the state. Third – and what I would like to focus in this presentation – both held specific strategies for decolonization and the creation of counter hegemonic narratives. Both I argue utilize a sense of place to reassert their specific group’s cultural identity and self-determination. Both invoke a sense of place that on the one hand has been taken away from them because of US colonial practices, 12 and on the other hand a sense of place is what recovers their agency and subjectivity. I aim to examine Trask’s notion of land and Espiritu’s notion of home and how these narratives of belonging offer a sense of place, which can resist the settler colonial logic prevalent in Hawai`i. BEHUNIAK, Jim (Colby College) “Dewey’s Place with Respect to Comparative Philosophy” In at least one respect, John Dewey occupies a special place in the history of comparative philosophy. In 1951, his words were the first to appear in the journal Philosophy East and West. There, he made a bold statement with regard to the geographical assumptions of comparative philosophy, claiming that the journal should “help break down the notion that there is such a thing as a ‘West’ and ‘East’” that stand to be considered. Dewey’s comments can now be understood in light of his once misplaced, but now reconstructed manuscript, UnModern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Here, in 1947, Dewey prepared the way for his famous shift from “experience” to “culture.” Better understanding this shift can help us to appreciate the meaning behind his 1951 comments. Dewey’s thinking had evolved in such a way as to consider philosophy itself a “genetic-functional” activity, one that was ineradicably located in its own social-cultural-geographical situation. From this vantage point, Dewey challenged the idea that one could or should regard “cultures” objectively from vantage points that were not already so situated, e.g. setting out to approach the “Greek” and “Chinese” traditions from some neutral place free from any cultural bias. In addition to shedding light on his 1951 comments, Dewey’s thesis in this manuscript presents a contemporary challenge to any form of “comparative philosophy” that would hope to remain unaffected by its own particular place. BEIN, Steve (University of Dayton) “Being-in-the-World, World-in-the-Being: Finding Ethics in Watsuji Tetsurō’s Socio-environmental Ontology” WATSUJI Tetsurō provides an elegant foundation for understanding environmental ethics but offers very little in the way of concrete guidance. His articulation of ningen 人間 embedded in fūdo 風土 is as elegant a model as one could ask for in framing humanity’s relationship to the natural world, but it is only that: a model, which by itself offers no moral principles. It tells us how we are but says nothing about what we should do. By contrast, Watsuji has a good deal more to say about the moral balance to be struck by the private and public aspects of ningen’s existence. They exist in perpetual tension—creative at its best, destructive at its worst—and this mutually transformative, mutually endangered relationship can be scaled up to the level of entire cultures and their ecosystems. Employing the semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas I argue that from this microcosmic model of ningen sonzai 人間存在 we can extrapolate guiding principles 13 of the moral balancing act to be performed on the macrocosmic scale of ningen in fūdo. Since Watsuji himself has so little to say on the subject, I draw on the work of Aldo Leopold, Michel Serres, and Augustin Berque in fleshing out how best to think of our moral relationship with fūdo given its ontological inescapability. BEN PAZI, Hanoch (Bar Ilan University, Israel) “Dwelling: Levinas beyond Heidegger” In his book Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas discusses the concept of dwelling directed polemically to Martin Heidegger. In this study I want to suggest that the source of Levinas's 'domesticity' may found in his Talmudic readings. His phenomenological research revealed 'dwelling' as an ethical thinking. The Levinasian thought sees Home that is not derived from the Freudian “angst” or from the Heideggerian “thrownness“ [geworfen]: "he does not find himself brutally cast forth and forsaken in the world”. Levinas explains the ethical meaning of 'domesticity' by understanding the ethical aspect of the 'feminine': “in a world that offers it no inner refuge, in which it is disorientated, solitary and wondering… 'The house is woman' the Talmud tells us”. But the terms 'home' and 'domesticity' goes beyond the descriptive social usage of these terms, extending to the meaning of 'being in the world'. Levinas’s concept of feminine and dwelling runs deeper than that and indeed stands in contrast to Heidegger. Heidegger describes the situation of the Dasein’s being as 'thrown into the world', and the way of authenticity lies in accepting the facticity of it. And Levinas uses a difficult metaphor to describe this facticity, that of an actual projectile, as a 'stone one casts behind oneself'. Opposite the possibility of projectedness is “home-ness/dwelling”. One possible perception of “home” would describe it as a person’s protected space, a deliberate turning away from the external and a gathering inward into one’s interior. And there is another possibility for understanding 'home', and he identifies it with 'the feminine'. The new meaning of dwelling is not as shelter but as ethical dwelling. Home that is domesticity intended to welcome, one that remains open in order to accept guests. Feminine offers an alternative in an alienated world, an alternative called 'home'. 'To feel at home' is not to feel protected but rather to feel that one is moving inward to a familiar place, a welcoming place. It is a motion of transition – not an outward one, though, but an inward one. BERGER, Douglas L. (Southern Illinois University) “Three Kinds of upādāya prajṅāpti in Early Buddhist Thought” Early Buddhist philosophy of language has often been seen as strongly reductionist when it comes to how words describe reality. In the most well-known example of such reductionism, early canonical texts and Abhidharma commentarial literature made the case that, just as the word “chariot” was an abstraction based merely on the functional interaction of the vehicle’s constituent parts, so words like “self” or “person” were 14 nothing more than constructed concepts that stood in for the real psycho-physical aggregates (skandhas) that made up individuals. Such constructed concepts were called by early Buddhists upādāya prajṅāpti, or mere “designations” (prajṅāpti) that were “based upon” (upādāya) a collection of parts (āṅga), where the parts were supposed real entities but the wholes they made up were mere ideational artifacts. This reductionist understanding of upādāya prajṅāpti was indeed so influential in early Buddhist circles that the seventh century Madhyamaka commentator Candrakīrti argued that even central Mahāyāna ideas like “emptiness” and “causally conditioned co-arising” (pratītya samutpāda) were exactly these sorts of “designations based on parts” rather than terms referring directly to the ways the world really is and works. However, recent works by Leonard Priestly and Joseph Walser have shown that two other conceptions of upādāya prajṅāpti were widespread in the many strands of early Buddhist discourse. They had to do respectively with how we speak about ideas in a relational complex that are necessarily mutually entailing (anyonya prajṅāpti), such as “cause and effect” or “father and son” as well as dependence relationships that do not require reduction of one thing to another, such as exist between “fire and fuel” or “a tree and its shadow.” This paper will attempt to flesh out these three conceptions of upādāya prajṅāpti in order to demonstrate that, even before Buddhism is fully imported into the cosmologically and personally relational worldviews of East Asia, resources existed within South Asian schools of Buddhism that enabled words to be placed not only in reductionist analyses of presumably false concepts, but in a world of inextricable mutualities and interdependencies between things, persons and ideas. BHATTACHARYA, Sanusri (Bankura Zilla Saradamani Mahila Mahavidyapith Girls College, India) “Place Vs Space: Case of the Amarnath Shrine Controversy” Kashmir has been known from the very ancient times plausibly for two things – legendary natural beauty and the Amarnath Cave Temple ascribed to Lord Siva. Recent addition to its fame/infame has been sectarian subscription to terrorism – Kashmir Terrorism. The cave temple at Amarnath has been a popular place of pilgrimage through ages, but has been the centre of controversy with regard to space – the issue of land transfer (May, 2008) being needlessly politicized and communalized out of proportion for advancement of separatist cause. The ideology of secularism that India has officially adopted since independence and is believed to have adhered to, appeared to fall apart in an instant. It could have been due either to the vacuity of Jammu and Kashmir people’s belief in democracy and secularism, or to the wrong intentions of the people in power, or could have been both. It could also have been the separatists’ attempt to diminish the economic growth of the province in order to fulfill their vile aims by exploiting unsuspecting common people’s religious sentiments. India, despite being the largest democracy, has been tainted on various occasions by the vested interests of the ruling class, and the burnt has always been borne by the common citizens. Corrupt practices here unfortunately follow a top-down model, making it utterly impossible for 15 the masses either to follow the ideologies of or to take the responsibilities of independence. Kashmir has been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan since independence, and not a single opportunity has been spared to further separatist goals in the name of self-determination – the Amarnath Shrine land transfer issue being merely a ploy. Such controversies not only mutilate the image of India as a multi-cultural nation, but also attack the very foundation of people’s belief in democracy. The Indian Constitution, which upholds plurality as a universal value, seems to lose all relevance in such situations of disorder, and the age old identity of India as a spiritual country gets tarnished in every way. I propose to focus on the history of Amarnath as an important place of pilgrimage in India, along with how and why the issue of land transfer became an important political problem of the subcontinent with regard to communal space providing upper-hand to the separatist groups in and outside India. Much has been written on this issue, but there still remains considerable scope for reevaluation. I propose to make an effort to this end in my paper. BHUSHAN, Nalini, and Jay GARFIELD (Smith College) “Cambridge in India” We will talk about the impact of study in Cambridge on Indian philosophy, first in the construction of Aligarh Muslim University on the model of Cambridge, but then about the way that Aligarh itself becomes more than just a place, but a movement. We will then consider how the Aligarh movement reimagines Muslim India as Indian vs Pan-Islamic, and conclude with a comparison of the similar and yet different way that Cambridge informs neo-Vedānta in Calcutta, and on how philosophy in these two different places proceeded in parallel. BIERRIA, Alisa (Stanford University) “Paradoxical Space and the Geopolitics of Race and Domestic Violence” In 2010, Marissa Alexander, a black woman from Florida, fired a single gunshot upwards into a wall to halt an attack by her abusive husband. The shooting caused no injuries. Despite the fact that she acted in self-defense, Alexander was denied immunity from prosecution under Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. In 2012, she was convicted sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. In an interview, Alexander asked, "If you do everything to get on the right side of the law, and it's a law that does not apply to you, where do you go from there?" Recent public debates about the racialized and gendered discrepancies of the application of “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) laws have created an opportunity for stronger spatialized analyses of domestic violence, particularly in the context of the criminalization of battered women who are disproportionately black women and other women of color. In this paper, I ask can a geopolitical analysis of domestic violence 16 create a richer understanding of the criminalization of domestic violence survivors who act in self-defense? The spatialized details of Alexander’s experience was the basis on which the court rejected her SYG defense. The presiding judge argued that Alexander could not have been “genuinely afraid” (an affective requirement of the law) because she failed to successfully escape her home after being attacked. State Prosecutor Angela Corey used Alexander’s movement across her home as evidence that, instead of feeling “afraid,” Alexander was actually “angry.” Corey writes, “a person who holds a genuine fear for their life would have escaped through a window in the master bedroom or from one of the multiple other exits to the home.” In a vivid depiction of the legal burden placed upon Alexander, she is expected to literally jump out of a window to effectively perform “fear.” Although the SYG statute states that, if you feel fear, you have the right to remain where you are and defend yourself, Corey argues the reverse: if you remain where you are, you must not be afraid. Corey effectively creates a logical contradiction that is impossible for Alexander to resolve. In her book, Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Katherine McKittrick employs the concept of “paradoxical space” to describe the account of enslaved black woman, Harriet Jacob’s, long process of escape from slavery that involved hiding in a very small space just beneath the roof of a building for seven years. I argue that the concept of paradoxical space can also be applied to Alexander’s experience, particularly as it relates to the state’s rationalization of why she should be prosecuted. Alexander’s key, open-ended question, "Where do you go from there?" reveals the despair that lives in the impossibility of overcoming the state’s willful contradictions in its application of the law for black women. But the question is also provocative in that it challenges us to consider how the geographic politics of racialized gender violence defines the borders – the whereness -- of freedom, safety, and the right to exist. BILIMORIA, Purushottama (Deakin University, Australia) “Temple Space: The Dwelling Place of the Gods, of the Book, and of Nothingness” In this paper I seek to explore the connection between place and the community of prayer-givers from two Indian traditions: Hindus and Sikhs. I take the tropes of spatiality and embodiment and apply them to the spaces carved out for presentification considered to be divine, even transcendent. While the symbolism is of the 'otherworldly', I will argue, drawing on Heidegger's significant insight of 'in-the-world' situatedness of human beings, that there is no 'external world' . This is so because the gods or planetary and major deities (in the Hindu temple) and the Book (the Guru Granth Sahib in the Sikh gurdwara) are, via the archi-tectonics of vāstu inscriptional edicts, embellished by a series of installational rites and continual rituals, homologized from their respective cosmo-transcendental presences to the dwelling-place of the earthly/terrestrial mandapa, sanctums. Here the adherents re-ignite their inner identity in aesthetic reverence and moral allegiance to the god/s or Guru they behold in darshan or 'sight'. Heidegger's telling proposition sets the tenor for the detailed and in-depth 17 analyses, from my own fieldwork, of the anthro-topological, aesthetic, spiritual and cultural (even political-ethical) role etched by 'place' in the imaginary, architecture, and 'work' of the oikos, or templum: 'Then temple-work , standing there, opens up a world [read 'an other world'] and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground.' (1971:42) The temple, then, opens up a place for 'the "between" of human dwelling' by holding together the earth and world in a creative tension or 'oppositional belonging' and 'intimacy of striving' (Malpas 2006: 199). In the last part of the paper, I relate the thesis enunciated to the Buddhist stupas and the potentials of representing śūnyatā or emptiness, where images, icons, deities, and gurus are all subverted in the proper spaces marked with No-thing/No-Self (neither ātman nor paramātma). What would a temple-work dedicated to the Postcolonial 'NonGod', Karl Jasper's 'Missing God' , Nietzsche's 'Death of God' , and Heidegger's finalé in 'Was ist Metaphysic?' – to Nothingness – be like? What would be their architectonic aesthetics and political ethics? BLAKELEY, Don (University of Hawai’i) “Mapping the Zhuangzi” Like messages from fortune cookies distributed to make evident a pathway, the individual stories of the Zhuangzi provide a trail that can function as GPS location markers of noteworthy sites of achievement. If these markers are processed through a mapping program with various layers used to highlight particular data sets, the Zhuangzi presents a vivid display of concrete existential enactments, of modalities of “place.” ‘Place,’ in this context, indicates the identification of phenomenologically circumscribed concrete existential sites of dao realization. Each is constituted as a limited, holistic, integrated configuration of a life (animal or human) in its earth, body, social, political, heavenly and dao contexts. The key and unifying factor throughout the paper is the term ‘know’ (知 zhi). It, like other basic terms, has a changing holographic profile depending on the particular affordance-conditions that constitute a situation. The paper has three parts. The first focuses briefly on four layers of Zhuangzi’s map. The second part provides evidence of a similar arrangement of data sets in recent work in the area of embodied (embedded, enactive, extended) cognition. This correlation will exhibit the modern relevance of Zhuangzi’s work. The paper concludes with a brief summary appraisal. Part 1. The first map layer follows the sequence of development from chapter 1 to chapter 7. In epistemological terms, the reader encounters an assortment of episodes that shift 18 interpretive approaches, ranging from realism, perspectivism/relativism, skepticism, physical performance skills, to challenges of adeptness in more expansive interpersonal, social, political, and cosmic settings. Each of these locations (placements, dwelling sites) involve specific encounters, ones that can function as learning rehearsals involving the existential features, diverse meanings, and the scope and kinds of dao realizations. The second layer highlights major ontological levels of realization. The spectrum ranges from the indeterminate, inchoate primal ever-present source from which all things emerge, are fueled, and return, to linguistically delineated (this-that, right-wrong) features of common experience in the world, to more general/abstract ideas, including fictive imaginative, dream ideas, and general ethical ideals such as ren, li, and yi, logical perplexities, and the one-many dialectic/dynamic. The third layer is the realization of the ontological spectrum in the context (from the point of view) of the development of xin (heart-mind). This includes the transforming work of “forgetting,” of liberation from the influences of linguistic-conceptual practices, emotive investments, and beliefs. Xin becomes adept by both loosing itself operationally and yet being fully in its particular placement matrix. Dwelling in the “turmoil and chaos” of ongoing transformations also includes a dimension of stillness, emptiness, and not thinking-feeling-speaking, while learning to abide in what becomes illuminated/delineated (明 ming). The fourth layer includes the way to manage a life configured in the multidimensionality of places/placements over time. The challenge is to develop human capacities to operate properly between the poles of indeterminate dynamics of dao and the fine delineations that make-up human understanding “on earth, under heaven.” It is finding the axis (hinge, pivot, center) in the ziran of occurrences. It is learning how, actively and with full immediacy, to find accommodations in the bounded and boundless, sometimes characterized as freedom-from (encumbrances, preferences) and freedom-to (act or engage without interfering). Part 2 A brief overview of major categories and distinctions common to recent works in embodied cognition provides evidence of significant parallels with the project of the Zhuangzi. The correlation shows surprising contemporary relevance of the Zhuangzi in this respect, providing a means to locate the Zhuangzi in this modern setting. The playful fantasy, eccentric disciplinary techniques, miraculous and nebulous mysterious references, paradoxical obscurities, and tricky logical conundrums are absent, the purpose they serve can nevertheless be shown, without the intriguing literary richness, 19 to have significant grounding in the descriptive accounts developed in the work of contemporary cognitive science. A map of major distinctions based on these sources will exhibit the noteworthy features and basis of the comparison. Reference to works by Francisco Varela, Antonio Damasio, Evan Thompson, Daniel Hutto, and Andy Clark will show important correlations. Part 3 Approaching the Zhuangzi from the perspective of the significance of place makes one aware of the intricate, multi-dimensional conceptual structure and organization of the text, of its phenomenological-existential concreteness, and of its heuristic resourcefulness in addressing the question of knowing dao, of dao knowing. The fact that characteristic features of Zhuangzi’s mapping of place can be correlated with contemporary work in cognitive science is additional evidence of its astute, profound contribution and lasting relevance. BRUYA, Brian (Eastern Michigan University) “A Place in the Margins: How the Philosophical Gourmet Report Shapes the Profession of Philosophy” As human beings, we live in an ambience of contingent hierarchical networks fractured along a variety of fault lines, including socioeconomic, ethnic, religious, regional, and so on. Accordingly, academic disciplines have dominant and marginalized populations. In the field of philosophy, analytic subdisciplines dominate in American Ph.D. programs, and non-Western subdisciplines subsist in the margins. Setting aside the possibility of overt coercion in the academy, what factors contribute to one group's dominance, and what factors allow for marginalized populations to make inroads into the mainstream? Having examined several of these factors elsewhere, in this talk I focus on an unexpected impediment to the growth of non-Western philosophy. A small online publication called the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PSR) has an outsized role in entrenching and maintaining the status quo in the discipline of philosophy. I offer a data-driven critique of the PSR, demonstrating its biases toward the dominant population and its biases against marginalized populations. Due to its biases and its influence in the academy, it is having a pernicious effect on the field of philosophy broadly, which should be an urgent concern for all philosophers. BUBEN, Adam (Leiden University College, The Netherlands) “Finding a Place for Transhumanist Immortality in Ancient Indian Philosophy” Transhumanism has much in common with religion as traditionally conceived. James J. Hughes claims that “a variety of metaphysics appear to be compatible with one form of transhumanism or the other, from various Abrahamic views of the soul to Buddho-Hindu ideas of reincarnation to animist ideas.” Most notably, the range of technologically 20 optimistic views held by transhumanists shares with many religions a longing for transcendence of our presently frail and limited situation. In contrast to the doctrines of many traditional religions, however, transhumanist salvation will not come from divine intervention, but solely from our own ingenuity. Due to its obvious Enlightenment humanist bent, the prevailing view has been that transhumanism adopts and secularizes religious tropes, but is importantly hostile to many traditional religions. Nonetheless, there is a growing number of voices arguing that shared interests in the elimination of suffering, the immersion of individual minds in a universal intelligence, or the remaking of the universe itself, indicate that certain construals of transhumanism might actually be continuous with certain religious traditions. I will focus on one common transhumanist goal—personal immortality—that seems inherently opposed to the core philosophical foundations of at least two major religions. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist philosophy suggests that any yearning for extension of individual personalities will ultimately be problematic. On the more superficial understandings of these traditions it may be possible to accept even this transhumanist goal, but at their most philosophical, they teach detachment from the ordinary sense of selfhood. BUDIN, Gerhard (University of Vienna, Austria) “Place Metaphors in E-learning and E-science – Empirical Transcultural Explorations and Their Critical Socio-epistemic Reflections” Space metaphors in general and place metaphors in particular play a crucial role in the conceptualization, design and the discourses of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Marshall McLuhan consistently developed his theories and reflections on electronic media based on the increasing use of spatial metaphors (“galaxy” in 1962, “landscape” in 1969, and in 1989 the “Global Village”). According to Gow (2001), McLuhan put spatial metaphors at the center of his conceptualization of new media. Based on and inspired by his pioneering work and the resulting and widely adopted conceptualmetaphorical framework, the WWW further developed more productive spatial metaphors, and more precisely place metaphors for various user scenarios. In ELearning and E-Science, for instance, we nowadays use “platforms”, “repositories”, virtual learning “rooms”, digital “libraries”, work “environments”, collaborative “laboratories” (or more concisely in the blending “collaboratories”, etc. as “places” where teachers and students, as well as scientists “meet” and work together. For the last 10 years we (at the University of Vienna) have been carrying out a number of research projects co-financed by the European Union in the areas of collaborative ELearning and E-Science. The empirical case study we are currently carrying out focus on the following research questions: how do students, teachers and researchers from different cultures (at the Center for Translation Studies we teach in 14 different languages covering major language communities in all continents world-wide) react to and behave in such virtual “class rooms” and virtual work “environments” and collaborative “platforms”? How do the spatial conceptualizations of E-Learning and EScience shape, influence, and change their learning and researching processes? The 21 approach in this investigation includes a socio- epistemic perspective looking at the “communities of practice”, i.e. learning communities and research communities in their joint and interactive work. One of these projects we have participated in is called “Open Discovery Space” (ODS) (see: http://opendiscoveryspace.eu/consortium for the list of project partners). It is directed towards schools all over Europe and beyond and is thus of a trans-cultural orientation. Yet the project is multi-lingual and multi-cultural, taking into account different learning and teaching cultures in schools in different countries. The research methodology on the metaphors is based on the research tradition in cognitive linguistics (Halliday2004, Ricoeur 1977, Croft/Cruse 2004, Lakoff/Johnson 1980, White/Le Cornu 2011,and many others). In addition to the philosophical – mainly epistemological – reflection the current study also aims at developing innovative approaches for a new, large research project that will be funded by the Austrian Research Fund starting on January 1, 2016 for 4 years. It includes a digital humanities “platform” for research on the use of the German language in Austria. BURIK, Steven (Singapore Management University) “Between Local and Global: The Place of Comparative Philosophy through Heidegger and Daoism” This paper argues for the importance of notions of place for comparative philosophy. I first provide a comparison of ‘local’ and ‘global’ thinking, using Heidegger and Classical Daoism. Next, building on this comparison, I look at a set of related notions of place and argue how they affect how we perceive the goals and ideas of comparative philosophy. It is often argued that the project of comparative philosophy displays some kind of inherent contradiction. For in order to be truly comparative, it needs to have some overarching position with regards to the comparata. In other words, it needs to transcend the things under comparison somehow. So it needs to be understood as some form of globalised or cosmopolitan thinking. On the other hand, that form of global thinking needs to reflect what is often considered its exact opposite, namely a certain form of local thinking or provincialism. For if the claims of comparative philosophy are to be taken serious, they need to display an appreciation of the importance of different ways of thinking as practiced or originated in, and in significant ways bound to, different parts of the world. Yet provincialism is often seen as a negative thing, understood as an unwillingness to see the bigger picture because you are stuck in your own way of thinking. How can we think and use these notions of place in order to alleviate such an apparent contradiction between these two positions necessary to shape comparative philosophy? Here I compare Heidegger and Classical Daoism. I argue that although often understood at least partly as ‘provincial’ thinkers, Heidegger and the Daoists actually display exactly that attitude we need in comparative philosophy. 22 Cosmopolitanism and globalization are often undestood as involving a loss of rootedness, and provincialism is seen as a pejorative term, it has had a negative connotation for some time. Yet more recently, with the revitalisation of non-Western thought, the notion of provincialism can also be understood as standing for the attack on the idea of universality in the form of Western philosophy’s dominance over other ways of thought. Provincial then means rather a challenge to the dominance of the traditional western way of doing philosophy. As such, it is clear to see why the dominant tradition would want to discredit ‘provincial’ thought, since it does not tally with its universalist tendencies and ideals. Provinciality would be a reinsertion of man into his environment, into his place and surroundings, into the world, instead of the dominant approach of situating man outside of his physical and social reality, Thus provincial thought can be seen as a challenge to perceived distinctions between mind-body, ideas-matter, realityappearance, inside-outside. Such an understanding of provincial thought might be able to bridge the notions of cosmopolitanism and provincialism, of the homely and Unheimlichkeit, of localism and globalization, of nostalgia and progress. Using Heidegger’s ideas of ‘Gathering’ and ‘Ereignis’, understood as preserving in belonging together through difference, I will compare such thought to the classical Daoists, and will argue that this way of thinking is also present there. I conclude by pointing to the importance of understanding the project of comparative philosophy in a similar way if it is to live up to its intended purposes. BYRNES, Elyse (University of Hawai’i) “’Becoming Flowers:’ An Alternative Judeo-Christian Ecological Ethic” In his widely read essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” Lynn White Jr. argues that Christians are totally divorced from nature as well as any possibility of sympathy—“to a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact...” he writes, “the whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity....”1 However, I will argue that this is definitively not the case—The Garden of Eden, the original sacred grove of the Judeo-Christian tradition, serves as an image of humankind united with not only God, but nature as well. The garden serves as a symbol of unity throughout the Torah and the later books that compose the Christian Bible—imagery that would be later revived and reinvigorated by the artists of the Romantic movement. In order to construct an alternative Judeo-Christian ecological ethic, I will trace the significance of the garden and nature in Judeo-Christian thought, its development in the philosophy of those who engage in the relation between humanity, nature, and god, (namely Whitehead and Nishida); and its application to our ongoing ecological crisis in the form of a human comportment suited to this particular understanding of nature as garden: cultivation. Using an Arendtian frame, I will argue that only the comportment of cultivation, specifically in contrast to the comportment of the fabricator—edification— allows for human and nonhuman agency, political engagement, and subjective 23 revelation. I will show that cultivation serves as a form of action (unlike labor or fabrication) which both interact with nature purely in terms of use-value. The “boundlessness” of action characterizes the making of permeable boundaries that distinguishes cultivation from edification. To more clearly illustrate these points, I will provide both an example of garden and gardener par excellence; namely, the Garden of Eden, and the gardener-poet, Keats. CAI, Liang (University of Notre Dame) “The Master Kept A Distance from His Own Son: The Place of Family Affection in Confucian Morality” Consanguineous affections and filial piety have been heated topics in the study of Confucianism. Scholars have asked if xiao (filial piety) is the root of Confucian morality and if it leads to moral corruption. Despite different answers to those questions, xiao is generally reduced to family affection, and loving one’s parents, in turn, is said to be the most fundamental human emotion praised by Confucians. During the debate over the filial piety, one passage— The Analects, 16.13— has drawn little attention from scholars. Cheng Kang, a disciple of Confucius, asked the master’s son Boyu if he had received different from what other students received? Cheng was pleased to find out that Confucius not only taught the same teachings to his own son but also kept a distance from him. Attempting to explore the apparent tension between devotion to the master and devotion to the parents, I point out that the family lives of both Confucius and his disciples were absolutely overshadowed by their communal life together. Xiao in the Analects refers to affections beyond parent-child love and is used to prescribe the relationship between teacher and disciples. Although graded love—prioritizing the love of one’s family— has been characterized as one of the most prominent ethical doctrines of Confucianism, it finds no place in Confucius’ learning community. Furthermore, according to Confucius and Mencius, young children are emotionally attached to their parents; but adults’ love of their parents, while still spontaneous and natural, is sporadic and inconsistent. That love needs to be constantly reawakened by appealing to specific circumstances and by the moral action of xiao. Equating family love with xiao and regarding consanguineous affections as primary moral resources of Confucian ethics is a misreading of early Confucianism. CALLICOTT, J. Baird (University of North Texas) “The Ecology of Self as a Focus for Comparative Philosophy” The atomic self is deeply rooted in Western thought. Its advent seems to coincide with the emergence of alphabetic literacy in Greece, enabling a reader/writer to use language in the absence of an interlocutor. Oral consciousness is necessarily relational and communal. Literate consciousness is private and interior. Suddenly death and even change became problematic. The solution to the problem of death was the 24 independent psyche residing in the body, such that the inevitable death of the latter was not also necessarily the death of the former. The concept of the independent psyche is traceable to Pythagoras; it was refined and forcefully defended by Plato. From these Greek origins the atomic self was adopted by the religions of the Book (as they are quite revealingly called); and it was modernized and resecularized by Descartes. It remains to be seen what consequences the new communications technologies (twitter for example) will have for the atomic self. Do they intensify privacy and interiority or reconstitute virtual communities? If popularized, the consequences of the postmodern sciences for self reconstruction are more predictable: consciousness is an emergent property of the central nervous systems of vertebrates, not an entity in its own right; organisms are exquisitely adapted by evolutionary processes to the physical, chemical, and biological conditions of the Earth; multicellular organisms are super-ecosystems, the habitats of thousands of species of microbes outnumbering the organisms’ own cells ten to one; personal identity (the self) is shaped by one’s environmental and social relationships. The increasing popularity of voluntary assisted suicide for those whose quality of life has significantly diminished indicates that death is becoming less problematic, suggesting that the conscious self is regarded as an organic epiphenomenon, the extinction of which is inevitable and nothing to fear—the only question thus being the optimal moment of extinction. CAPPELLINI, Roberta (Centro Interculurale Dedicato A Raimon Panikkar, Italy) “Hermeneutics and the Empeiria of the Soul in Panikkar” XXXXX CARELLI, Paul (University of North Florida) “Beyond the Western Borders” Travel requires crossing borders and changing places. Travel literature in the European tradition has been characterized as progressive and teleological and therefore sees the crossing of some borders as necessary for the establishment of others. The Western traveler (Dante, for example), focuses on the definition (de-finis) of self, the delimiting of possibilities, as the primary telos towards which all travel aims. This is in stark contrast to Daoist notions of travel which stress the freedom of wandering without a specific goal. It is the multiplication of possibility, with the attendant opening up for the traveler ever-widening opportunities for response that constitutes travel for Zhuangzi and others. Travel for the Ancient Greeks does not rest easily on either side of this bifurcation, but, perhaps surprisingly, has more affinities with Daoist travel. Many-turning (polytropus) Odysseus, the Greek traveler par excellence, frequently transgresses boundaries— personal, societal, geographical—becoming a traveler at home in any place though native to none. Attempting to situate this ancient Greek paradigm of travel with respect to the positions of the Daoist and later European models will place us in an ideal location from which to reconsider the borders of our own east/west discourse. 25 CARLEO, R. A. III (Fudan University, China) “This World or That World: Valuing This Place in Contemporary Interpretations of Chinese Tradition” Major works of two of the most celebrated living Chinese philosophers, Li Zehou and Chen Lai, follow Roger Ames in emphasizing a general divergence in worldviews between Chinese and Western traditions of thought. Traditional Chinese thought, they argue, predominantly views humans and the reality they inhabit as “one-world,” celebrating this world and understanding reality (including the divine) as occurring through and within it. This differs from “two-world” thinking, typically more associated with Western traditions, which sees the manifest world (including things, humans, and the divine) as ultimately originating from or grounded in a transcendent realm. Thus, in “two-world” thought, this world is inferior or secondary to that world. The implications of such a divergence—a valuing of this place or that which lies beyond this place—are potentially expansive and fundamental. Li and Chen see the implications of this divergence as crucial to understanding the philosophical and cultural histories of China and the West. For them, “one-world” thinking makes Chinese traditions unique as well as invaluable to global philosophical discourse. This is because such thought suggests alternative approaches to how we understand and value our relationships with the other humans and things through which our world is constituted. It thereby further provides perspectives on ethical issues that have been generally overlooked in Western philosophy. After establishing the general distinction Li Zehou and Chen Lai draw between oneworld and two-world thought, this paper outlines the various historical and philosophical implications that Li claims arise from China’s one-world thinking. Chen Lai generally affirms and even identifies further potential of Li Zehou’s theory here, including how his ideas can contribute to our understanding of early Confucian texts. However, Chen puts forth one major point of dissatisfaction with Li Zehou’s “one-world” claim. I thus conclude by analyzing Li’s and Chen’s divergent positions regarding metaphysical aspects within China’s “one-world” tradition, and consider Chen Lai’s assertion that in such a discussion we must rely on concepts native to Chinese thought, which fall outside the (inherently “two-world”) vocabulary of Western philosophy. CASEY, Edward S. (SUNY Stony Brook) “Implacement and Displacement in the Light of Confucian Thought” I will explore how place figures in Confucian writings with special attention to the contrast between rootedness in a single place (home, region, homeland) and being uprooted from a settled place as in circumstances of forced migration -- a phenomenon now so conspicuously present on a world-wide scale. To what extent can one carry 26 one's placial roots with one in living in new places, and if just how so? What are the limits of displacement? CHAKRABARTI, Arindam (University of Hawai’i) “Going Places: Pilgrimage, Pillage, Penance and Progress” A pilgrimage must be distinguished from just any travel or tourism. Setting out on an arduous self-purificatory journey from one’s own place to a distant holy destination played a crucial role in ancient and medieval religious lives. This paper would briefly discuss three classic examples of such pilgrimage, from Hindu, Christian and Islamic literature and theologies. Arjuna’s so-called “tīrtha-yātrā” before the great battle in the Mahabharata; the Parson’s tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; and Koranic scripture on the ongoing Islamic practice of Hajj to Mecca. Drawing general social, political and cultural conclusions from these disparate examples, I try to unearth some unobvious connections between pilgrims, colonizers, and refugees—lessons relevant to our own times and for a global philosophy of place. CHAN, Wing-cheuk (Brock University, Canada) “Space and Art: From Heidegger to Daoism” In his later topology of Being Heidegger raises the question: “What is the general character of space?” While denying the primordial status of the physical-technological space, Heidegger claims that only art can uncover the authentic character of genuine space. For Heidegger, clearing-away is the special character of space. As release of places, clearing-away is a double movement of unoncealment and concealment. Artist space thereby discloses regions of dwellings for human beings. This paper tries to show that Daoist philosophy of art can concretely substantiate Heidegger’s theses. Particularly, it can explain why the emptiness as the special character of space is neither nothing nor deficiency. In return, it will unfold the ontological character of Daoist philosophy of art and hence its possible contributions to overcoming the danger of our technological age. CHAMPION, Erik (Curtin University, Australia) “Philosophical Issues of Place and the Past in Virtual Reality” There are indisputably many good reasons for finding and restoring heritage sites and artefacts with the most impartial and accurate scientific methods and technological advances. Yet the ICOMOS Burra Charter defines cultural significance in terms of the value of a place as it helps people understand the past, as it enriches the present, and educates future generations, these values can be aesthetic, historic, social or spiritual, (and thus not just scientific). Therefore it does not necessarily follow that the best userexperience for members of the public is purely based on a rigorous scientific 27 perspective, because such a perspective does not fully explain the cultural significance of a place as experienced by the originators of the locally situated culture. On the other hand, evoking cultural significance may be helped by a philosophical consideration of how specific human experiences can be understood and conveyed. The Dictionary of Philosophy says (on p.464) phenomenology “is the attempt to describe our experience directly, as it is, separately from its origins and development, independently of the causal explanations that historians, sociologists or psychologists might give”. While hermeneutics, it says (on p.274-5), “explores the kind of existence had by beings who are able to understand meanings, and to whom the world is primarily an object of understanding (rather than, say, of sense-perceptions)”. I wish to investigate whether an approach that would best utilise multimedia and the differing multimodal ways in which we learn and experience the outside world would be phenomenological and hermeneutical. In other words it would attempt to understand how the way individual societies experience the world, how they interpret the world to themselves and to each other, how their cultural signs are made, modified, and learnt. It would also attempt to discover how the horizons of current visitors could be nudged out of balance by being either overwhelmed by encounters with genuine alterity (that is, sense of otherness), or by gradually learning how to be accepted in this totally different phenomenological world. A further pressing issue in the design of virtual places and especially in the design of virtual heritage environments is to avoid the ‘museumization’ and ‘Western’ viewpoint as forewarned by Ziauddin Sardar and others. Can this technology help provide an appropriate sense of alterity and an appropriate situated sense of place? CHAO, Tien-yi (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) “The Conceptualisation of a ‘Feminine Universe’ in Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing and Jane Lead’s Writings about Spiritual Alchemy” This paper aims to compare the feminisation of the cosmos in ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing with that in the spiritual and esoteric writings by the seventeenth-century mystic Jane Lead (also Jane Leade, 1624-1704). My study suggests that both authors celebrated female-centred cosmology, though the cosmos’ femininity is portrayed in different ways. In Dao De Jing, Lao Zi creates the image of ‘Great Mother’ to illustrate the creative energy of the cosmos, while Lead develops visions of ‘Virgin Sophia’ in Fountain of Gardens (V.2, 1697) and The Wonders of God’s Creation (1696), referring to the image of Sophia as the ‘virgin body’ of God, who revealed the secrets of the cosmos to her (Hirst 2005). By comparing and contrasting the two authors’ narratives about a ‘female universe’, I hope to explore the ways in which both challenged the established male-centred cosmology in their societies through a cross-cultural critical approach. CHAPPLE, Chris (Loyola Marymount University) 28 “Living Within Space and Place: Directionality and Inner Experience in Indian Texts” This paper will open with the famous teaching of Satyakama in the Upanisads, wherein during his time in the forest, a bull teaches him the importance of being oriented to the four directions, the first "quarter" of his 16 fold learning experience. It will continue with a comparative analysis of the elemental and bodily aspects of human experience as articulated in the Sāṁkhya Kārikā, the Abhidharmakosha, and the Tattvarthasutra. The paper will conclude with passages in the Yogavasistha that connect inner space and outer space through the practice of concentration on Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space. CHATTOPADHYAY, Sanskriti (Manipal University, India) “When in Mirror: Parallel ‘Place’ in ‘Film-‘Space’’ Tuan’s ‘undifferentiated’ ‘space’ gains value and familiarity to become ‘place’. The reality of ‘place’ though is geographical and physical for him, in the domain of film becomes reality of a different kind. The question thus becomes that of a possibility of the construction of ‘place’ in and from this domain that contains unique creation(s) of ‘space’. Images that (the analogy of Indian classical music can be drawn, as film practitioner and thinker Kumar Shahani did) ‘always lead from a kinetic home to a point of rest’ create the ‘space’ in and of the film. Thus the film becomes a domain that embodies ‘space’ – open, liberating, and challenging. Perception leads to an object-horizon/figure-ground dichotomy. From that dichotomy the domain begins to take a turn towards familiarizing ‘space’ in more concrete terms. Film is in search of tangible inhabitations of senses (or one may argue of these ‘senseplaces’). From Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani to Deb Kamal Ganguly, in the works of the thinker-practitioner-makers of Indian film, the ‘place’ has been searched through sound, images, and through concept-images (conceptualized as a move from Deleuze’s timeimage and movement-image). These concept-images have the possibility to create a rupture between the ordered relationships of signifier and signified. This rupture leads to an erosion of meaning making which affects the memory-experience and thus, in the next step, the intimate recognition and value endowment that converts ‘space’ into ‘place’. This may come across as the antithesis of the turn of ‘space’ to ‘place’ and yet it is not. Instead of a recognition of a representation (which it ruptures) of familiarity of a ‘place’, through an indulgence of proximate senses as well as the distant senses this practice create a presentation (which is built) of a new ‘place’. The experience and reaction to this sense of ‘place’ thus becomes one that is unique to the domain that is projected singularly by film. The body of film that arose out of the culture of materiality and the body of video that developed on malleability of image construction have separate sense of ‘space’ embedded in them. The expression of the move from ‘space’ to ‘place’ hence is different as well. For the purpose of this research endeavour one shall study into both the body 29 of films by Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, and video by Deb Kamal Ganguly to perceive and compare the flexibility of this creation in different formations of visual art. CHEN, I-Hsin (The University of Manchester, UK) “A Place to Meditate: James Legge’s Translation of Xin 心” James Legge’s (1815–1897) translation of xin 心 in his annotated Chinese Classics (1861; 1893) serves as an excellent example of how translating a key Chinese philosophical concept for an English-speaking international audience is able to create a place for metaphysical meditation on the higher purpose of humanity. Legge translates xin variously into “mind,” “heart,” “soul,” “spirit,” “higher nature,” and “the right way” based on his dynamic understandings of the meanings and contexts of Ruist/Confucian teachings. While modern scholarship has established Legge as a pioneering missionary, sinologist, and translator, my paper suggests that Legge’s translation of xin reveals his role as a philosopher who attempts to build thoughtful connections between the Chinese and Western intellectual traditions from antiquity to the contemporary. For Legge, xin generates universal spaces of thought on the opposition between the animal human and the mind of reason, the dialectic relation between the quiescent and the active, and the transcendence from the selfish desires to the principle of Heaven. By looking at Legge’s nuanced comprehension of xin, the paper demonstrates how Legge draws inspiration from the ancient sources, the commentaries by Zhu Xi and others, and Christian discourses in order to enrich the spaces of his interpretations, and how he transforms these spaces into a place to meditate through cross-cultural hermeneutics. CHEN, Shudong (Johnson County Community College) “Dao of Emily Dickinson: Placing of Poetry and Philosophy across Boundaries” As noun and verb, transitive and intransitive, the word “place” indicates as much of status, stillness, as of action or motion. The word could also connote the imaginary but indispensable locales that creative minds, such as Kafka, depend on for thoughtprovoking argument and imagery as his essay on “The Great Wall of China” and his novel America may so indicate. The word “place” could then also mean the crucial inborn knowledge not necessarily acquired through actual experiences. This seemingly unlimited or infinite space and power of the inborn knowledge is exactly what Goethe once so emphasizes to Eckermann in as much the same way as it is so stressed in Daodejing, which states how “a wise [person who] may know the world without leaving his home” (ch. 47), or confirmed, along with Emerson and Zhuangzi, by Dickinson, who insists likewise how “I never saw a Moor--/I never see the sea--/Yet know I how the Heather looks.” (J1052). Place could certainly also suggest a never ending process of search for common ground across cultures for transplanting, transforming, and translation of ideas. Similarly, it could also suggest a Daoist version of choice, adaptation, and freedom regarding where and when to fit in -- whether at the center, in the “marginal spots,” at the “low places,” or around “back positions.” Whether imaginary or physical, we need a place as Archimedes of Syracuse, who declares: “Give me a 30 place to stand, and I shall move the Earth,” or simply as ordinary humans; we need a place even if just for the necessity to reflect in, upon, through, with, against, and beyond; we may need a place, just like Whitman’s little “noiseless patient spider,” to be at once physically and emotionally attached to, attached from, or nourished by. On the issue of place, the American literature is particularly rich with many of its creatively philosophical minds so brilliantly sensitive to the influences or power of places, such as Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Henry James, and especially Emily Dickinson. On the issue of “place,” it is, therefore, not an issue of whether or what we could learn from Emily Dickinson the poet as philosopher or a philosopher behind a poet, but how, how much, or how infinitely much from the reputed “Wittgenstein of Amherst” so always tirelessly searching from place to place, “from blank to blank,” trying to find her ways to express the “unutterable” (Wittgenstein) “Pain [that] — has an Element of Blank —” (J 659). Unless with the ultimate silence as Wittgenstein also thus indicates, place could also suggest the maximum efforts and possibility regarding how Dickinson really wants all “lofty ideas,” such as “Faith,” “Heaven,” and “God,” which often make us float like Jonathan Swift’s Laputians of the Flying Island, be literally “put down [along with] this World like a Bundle” (J527) upon the “rough ground” of “actual language” with “frictions” (Wittgenstein 1968, 107, 46c). The place therefore could also possibly indicate the risk of such a process that would abruptly collapse or be paralyzed as our language would as the “unusable locale” at any moment once involuntarily overloaded with the infinitely growing messages inherent in the deceptively perspicuous “word pictures,” such as “Four Trees – upon a solitary Acre” (J742). Ultimately, the illuminated could also instantly illuminates as Goethe would so suggest here especially in the case with Dickinson as long as there appear any additional slight tints of light as from Goethe’s little lyric of “Wanderers Nachtlied” and Ma Zhiyuan’s “Tian Jing Sha” besides the subtle refractions of Daoism. All in all, at once as noun and as in/transitive verb, the word “place” indicates how often everything in the world could be so simultaneously of an everlasting spatial tempo and an ever present temporal space, and how, with Dickinson rightly set in place, the word “place” could also thus probably indicate Dao itself in ways so reminiscent of a perpetual sense of lyrical contemporaneity that suggests the forever ungraspable but immeasurably real beauty and power of Dao in an infinitely intricate and simple mode and mood of its timely timelessness and motionless motion. CHENG, Chung-ying (University of Hawai’i) “Place, Time and Confucian Roots” The place exists due to time and thus we may speak of past place, present and future place. The place also exists for yielding its place to things and people. Thus the world is place full of things and people, but it is also open to continued growth or sudden destruction or being laid waste. In this panel we explore whether things and people and cultures have their roots in their places or just flow and being thrown. The speakers will specifically speak and raise about the rooting of Confucianism in the world. My paper 31 will deal with the above issues and take a deep root view of Confucianism and see Confucianism as a transformative force of humanity which would require knowledge and moral action. CHENNOUFI, Ridha A. (University of Tunis, Tunisia) “Territory, Tribe, and Political Power: A Different View onPolitical Space in the Maghreb” The object of my paper is to determine on the basis of Ibn Khaldun’s writings the role territorial stakes played in the formation of the modern state. Indeed, to this day, the theory of political power as applied on Islamic lands is essentially centered on the notions of clan-based ‘solidarity’ (‘asabiyya) and “community” (umma). As a result, the territorial factor has been occultated under the pretense that Kabyle, Arab, or Muslim societies, other than Western societies, do not define themselves in relation to the City. This allegedly explains and justifies that it is border conflicts which prevented and still prevent the so-called Arabic-Islamic Maghrib (West) and Mashriq (East) to mutually recognize each other as sovereign states. My paper will challenge this view by showing that Ibn Khaldun developed a conception of space, territory, and political power that is diametrically opposed to the Westphalian one, and, more importantly, of great actuality. Suffice it to say, the political conflicts igniting the world incessantly since the end of the cold war seem to converge towards the constitution of large geopolitical spaces defined much more in terms of cultural identity than the fundamental rights of individuals. CHENG, Sinkwan (Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Sweden) “Problematizing the Liberal Notion of ‘Self’ via Aristotle and Confucius” My paper uses the classical Greek and Chinese traditions’ common incompatibility with modern liberal notion of “right” to explore the commonalities between them, and examine how two civilizations apart from each other could nonetheless share a similar idea of “self” giving rise to similar notions of “right.” This will serve as the starting point in my search for a new “right” that could better accommodate both Eastern and Western traditions. Note, however, that while exploring the similarities between the ancient Greek and Chinese thoughts— represented in my paper respectively by Aristotle and Confucius--my paper also investigates their critical differences. Both Aristotle and Confucius prioritize the collective before the individual. Contrary to modern liberal rights, Aristotle’s to dikaion and Confucius’s ren are both ad alterum (to another) rather than ad se (to oneself). A major difference, however, exists between the Hellenic and the Chinese thinker regarding the meaning of the “other.” As evident from Nicomachean Ethics, the “other” must be “either a ruler or a copartner” (NE V 1). Justice for Aristotle, in other words, can only occur between “equal members of a civil or political society, who alone can properly be called 'others'” (Annabel Brett). 32 The “other” for Confucius, by contrast, is all embracive—regardless of birth, class origin, and even species. One of the highest expressions of justice for Confucius is ren (仁). Being compassionate toward any other human being is ren (仁, humane). However, being kind to animals also qualifies as ren. My paper explores why Confucius believes that justice can be best realized in the world (what Confucius describes as “A World for All (天下爲公)”) in contrast to Aristotle’s idea of justice among “equals in the polis.” I do so by probing the different cultural assumptions, moral ontology, and cosmologies underpinning both systems of thinking. CHEUNG, Leo K. C. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) “The Place of the Ture Master in the Zhuangzi” Besides attempting to making all things and discussions equal, in the chapter “Discussion on making all things equal” of the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi, the author tries to argue for the existence of the “True Master”, or the “True Lord”, as the one who controls, or governs, one’s action, sensation, passion, and emotion: …Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. Without them we would not exist; without us they would have nothing to take hold of. This comes close to the matter. But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act - that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form. …The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth. (Watson’s translation; emphasis mine.) The True Master, or the True Lord, is therefore the subject, or, the agent. It is formless, and yet still has its identity. In the story about Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-gait in the chapter “Perfect Happiness” of the outer chapters of the Zhuangzi, the author seems to try to bring out the point that the “me”, or “I”, as my body changes (transforms) in the process of transformation (change): Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-Gait were seeing the sights at Dark Lord Hill and the wastes of Kunlun, the place where the Yellow Emperor rested. Suddenly a willow sprouted out of Uncle Lame-Gait’s left elbow. 33 He looked very startled and seemed to be annoyed. “Do you resent it?” said Uncle Lack-Limb. “No—what is there to resent?” said Uncle LameGait. “To live is to borrow. And if we borrow to live, then life must be a pile of trash. Life and death are day and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?” (Watson’s translation; emphasis mine.) Moreover, as I argue, with supplementary textual evidence, in this paper in detail, the author also seems to think that the “me”, who changes in the process of transformation, is not the True Master, but that the “me” is identifiable with my body. In other words, the True Master, who governs my action, sensation, passion and emotion, cannot itself reside in its actions, sensations, passions or emotions, and, in particular, the world—the process of transformation. The claim that some authors of the Zhuangzi hold that the True Master, or the subject, does not change with, nor resides in, the process of transformation at least is supported by the following passage from the chapter “Tse Yang” of the miscellaneous chapters of the Zhuangzi: And because day by day he was with the one who transforms things, he was one who never transforms—so why should he ever try to stop doing this? (Watson’s translation with alterations.) The True Master is then a formless subject, who governs one’s action, sensation, passion and emotion, and yet has its identity, and is also the one who never transforms and thus never resides in the world or the process of transformation. One may say, the True Master is transcendental in the sense that it governs, and influences, one’s engagement in the process of transformation, that is, in the world. Besides arguing for the claim that the Zhuangzi adopts the notion of the True Master as the transcendental formless subject, this paper also aims to investigate the place of the True Master in Zhuangzi’s philosophy. CHINN, Meilin (Santa Clara University) “Space is the Place: Musical Space as Place in Early Chinese Philosophy” Music has been called the most temporal of the arts and even the art of time itself. The same is not said of music and space. The assumption that music is not spatial depends primarily on a definition of space as physically extended and dimensional. Following this, music occurs in space, but there is no space in music. In contrast, early Chinese philosophers were disinclined to treat space and time as objective and separate categories, rather taking them to be particular, idiosyncratic, and best understood in terms of events, cycles, and movements. Space is as much an event as time. 34 Drawing on work by early Chinese philosophers, especially the Confucian view of music articulated in the Yue Ji or Book of Music, I will make the case that music is not only spatial, but that musical space is best understood in terms of place, that is, as an always particular space that emerges through the mutual resonance of performers and listeners within and across their cultural and historical contexts. Consequently, music can be used to cultivate virtue as a kind of virtuosity of sense: skilled, keen abilities to sense right moments, optimal formations, and appropriate, meaningful responses. Finally, and perhaps more controversially, I hope to use this account of musical space as place to explain the Confucian belief that the character of people and cultures could be heard in music from distant places. CHOI, Dobin (Towson University) “Environment and Virtue in the Moral Thoughts of Mengzi and Hume” This paper explores the influences of environment to a person’s virtues in the moral thoughts of Mengzi and David Hume. Our common sense admits that environmental factors exert notable influences toward a person’s temper and character. Those who live near seashore would have acquired different characters from those who dwell in high mountains, or crowded urban area. While Mengzi acknowledges that the change of residence would have great influence on one’s nurturing both qi and body (7A36), Hume admits that ordinary people ascribe “the national characters” to such “physical causes” as “the air and climate” of their dwelling in his essay “Of National Characters.” However, Hume dismisses the physical causes due to their having “no discernible operation on the human mind,” but instead relies on “moral causes” for the characters that are “fitted to work on the mind as motives and reasons.” Given his emphasis on the faculty of sympathy and the force of moral sentiment in motivation, the most influential environmental causes for a person’s virtue are the characters of her surrounding people rather than physical environment. Not surprisingly, Hume’s human environmental causes aptly explicate Mengzi’s ideal dwelling. The environmental influence to a person’s qi does not rule out the change of human environment. Above all, Mengzi’s conviction that a person’s ultimate residence is ren (7A33) delivers the significance of human environment. Given that ren is the other-regarding virtue to care “all in the Four Seas,” a person’s dwelling in ren would partly involve her living surrounded by people, namely the “moral causes.” In sum, both Mengzi and Hume would agree that human environment is the central factor in forming our virtues and character traits. However, Mengzi goes further to claim that we have the natural capacity to construct the best kind of human environment with our own effort of introspection. While our introspection of the heart and achievement of the inherent ren makes the best residence for our life (4B14), our failure to dwell in ren is identical with “throwing oneself away” (4A10). Mengzi’s suggestion of the autonomous creation of human environment affords us an inward way of virtue cultivation. It enables us to avert the negative influence of undesirable human environment, and further to keep our natural aspiration for benevolence untarnished. 35 CHUNG, Hyun-jung (Yonsei University, Korea) “Uncleanness of Childbirth and the Purity of Ancestral Rite” According to one of the Confucian classics, the Book of Rites, one should perform purification before conducting ancestral rite, and a husband is not supposed to enter the delivery room of his wife when he is performing purification. Childbirth had been regarded as an unclean event by the Confucian scholars of the Joseon Dynasty. They argue that if a wife is in childbirth, the family must not conduct ancestral rite because the childbirth disturbs the purification and soils the cleanness of ancestral rite. In general, Confucianism put a high value on human life and being alive. However, Confucian scholars of the Joseon Dynasty define the moment of birth as a kind of uncleanness in contrast to purification for ancestor worship ceremony. CIOFLEC, Eveline (University of Tubingen, Germany) “Belonging Somewhere: Journeys and Dwelling” In my paper I will show how “belonging to” defines identity by being a central component of “dwelling”. “Belonging somewhere” is necessarily included in the first sense of belonging. Hence, “belonging” cannot be reduced to virtual or abstract entities, but remains rooted in places exceeding meaning by being grounded on earth. Such, “belonging to” has a bodily component of “belonging somewhere”. As Edward Casey has shown, journeys like those of Basho and Odysseus reveal the interlacement between places and identity. CLAUS, C. Anne (American University) “Coral Reef Cultures and Place-Making in Okinawa” Over the past 40 years in southwestern Okinawa, views of the sea and ino (nearshore coral reefs) have shifted as this region has become a site of stewardship among coastal residents. Village life shapes and is shaped by the coral reef in multiple dimensions. Spiritual interests in the nearshore sea result in engagements with the sea during annual festivals and in daily prayers, occasions during which the nearshore sea (ino) becomes a site for purification and protection. At the same time, Shiraho village has emerged as a cohesive target of mainland scientific and tourist interest because of its presentation as an eco-village with a strong “coral reef culture.” Past and present articulations of Shiraho as a cohesive village shaped by its coral reef are conditioned by demographic changes that have brought increasing numbers of newcomers from mainland Japan. Two recent conservation projects involve residents in new kinds of material engagements with the ino, and I examine how the Sunday Market and periodic walks provide the platform for self-reflective enforcement of a village sense of place as well as aspirational place-making by mainland Japanese conservationists. COOK, Benjamin (Almiraj Sufi and Islamic Study Centre, Australia) “The Place of the Zawiya within Sufism” 36 The Zawiya (Sufi Centre) occupies a significant place within Islam generally and the Sufi community in particular. For the general population, a zawiya may be seen as a place wherein people gather and worship. For the adherents of Sufism, the zawiya is a transformative space wherein teaching is transmitted, baraka (spiritual energy) is concentrated, and soteriological development is intensified. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section will provide a historical overview of the development of the zawiya. The second section will detail what a zawiya ideally contains and how this informs its functionality. The third section will explore how suhba (companionship) is an important aspect of the zawiya and how this can contribute to an intensified soteriological development for the adherents of Sufism. COYLE, Daniel (Birmingham—Southern College) “On Global Wandering and Strategic Place: Nietzsche’s Trans-Asiatic Hyperboreans” Throughout his professional career, Nietzsche employs a hermeneutic method of deliberately and experimentally estranging (entfremden) himself from the time, place, and culture of the present so that he might “look 'into the world' otherwise.” The practice involves a strategic distancing that seeks to awaken ordinarily dormant perspectives on emerging futures. This “subtler art and aim of travel” reveals a global sensibility that we can trace from Nietzsche’s first book to his last. His genealogical and depth-psychological searching of the ancient past presages a trans-historical philosophy of a global future, his interest in traveling to North Africa arises from a specific desire to sharpen his “judgment and eye for all things European,” and finally, his admitted transcultural need employs “the foreign” to “learn to think more orientally,” even “emigrate to Japan.” This global aspiration matures in the “trans-Asiatic eye” of Zarathustra and the enigmatic experience of eternal recurrence, which arrives through the spontaneous cycle of process itself. Since this eye “sees under itself,” it undermines fixed place. Nietzsche’s places are strategic: calls to wander, signposts for global travelers. His culminating figure of the “Hyperborean” is curious in many ways. For one, the selfproclaimed “disciple of Dionysus” in a final flash of lucidity again identifies himself as a pious worshiper of Apollo, thereby establishing a global task. I argue that within the polar continuum of human experience, when we increase distance we increase intensity and effect, and that Nietzsche’s mask of Apollo imparts the insight that reversing perspectives (Perspektiven umzustellen) derives states of affairs from their correlative opposites, and thus propel us beyond metaphysical contraries to “life herself.” Nietzsche's method of temporal, spatial, and cultural distancing provides a valuable hermeneutic resource for understanding East-Asian ways of thinking, specifically, I show that his deliberate strategy of estranging himself in quest of an optimal disposition towards the oscillating recurrences of life remarkably resonates with the proactive Daoist strategic praxeology of “fan 反” (‘returning’). CRELLER, Aaron B. (University of North Florida) 37 “Place-ing Chinese Epistemology on the Map: The Danger of Ignoring Place in Accounts of Knowledge” Analytic epistemology has largely ignored the works of non-English (specifically Chinese) speaking comparative epistemologists. This paper investigates the problems of contemporary attempts to integrate Chinese philosophy into Anglo- and Euro-centric models of knowledge, as well as the role played by geo-political place in dismissing comparative approaches to theories of knowledge. Starting off with an analysis of the recent attempts at comparative epistemology surrounding Ernest Sosa, I argue that much of the original comparative work done by major analytic Chinese philosophers in the Twentieth Century is ignored because it does not conform (and perhaps even undermines) contemporary models of knowledge. One major cause for this confirmation bias amongst English-speaking analytic epistemologists is the lack of attention to the importance of place, power, and history. The second half of the paper examines the works of Zhang Dongsun and Jin Yuelin, identifying the influence Western philosophy has had on Chinese thinkers, as well as the ways in which they integrated the nuances of both traditional analytic philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy. Contemporary attempts by Western epistemology to find “universal epistemic principles” can easily be put into dialogue with the ideas of philosophers such as Zhang and Jin because they are all discussing the structures of knowledge, but these figures are mostly ignored in English language sources that are “discovering” epistemology in Chinese sources, such as Warring-States era texts. I conclude by arguing that the possibility of such a dialogue demonstrates that the new interest Western epistemology has in Chinese thought at minimum ignores the history of Chinese comparative epistemology, and at worst is actively ignoring the important particulars of its own geo-political place. CUNEO, Daniele (Leiden University, The Netherlands) “An Unheeded Locus of the Aesthetic Experience (rasa): The Performer Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien across Indian Philosophical Sources” The figure, role and personal experience of the performer have been the object of practical and theoretical scrutiny across latitudes and cultures since the very beginning of the various dramaturgical traditions of the globe and the ensuing aesthetic reflections on the phenomenon of artistic performance in particular as well as art in general. Famously enough, with regard to the actor’s emotional involvement within the enactment of the play, the positions at the two extremes are represented by Diderot’s absolute refusal of any affective relation of the actor to the character he is portraying and by Stanislavsky’s relentless focus on the complete emotional engrossment within the fictional, emotional scenery being performed. Similar extreme positions as well as bold intermediate stances can be found in numerous Sanskrit dramaturgical-cum- 38 philosophical sources. In these works, the various opinions are defended and refuted according to both more narrowly aesthetic and more largely philosophical arguments concerning, for instance, the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience, the emotional make-up of the human mind, and their relation with the underlining configuration of reality—often viewed as a playful manifestation of an absolute consciousness- principle. In the most commonly accepted theory, the spectator of the dramatic performance is understandably considered to be the recognized locus of the aesthetic experience, an experience of blissful savouring (rasa, ‘taste’), which foreshadows the mystical experience of oneness with the absolute. However, the existence of a previous, identical experience in the author of the play and its indispensable transmission through the medium of the performer —be it an active or a passive recipient of that— are also recognized as vital aspects of the aesthetic process. In this presentation I’ll try to sketch some of the arguments put forward by Indian authors with regard to the actor’s aesthetic role and the implicit rationale behind them, starting with the seminal dramaturgical treatise by Bharata, the Nāṭyaśāstra, up to the second-millennium theories of Bengali Vaishnavism, where aesthetics and theology merge in the intentionally paradoxical figure of the actor-devotee. The major protagonist in our excursus will be Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century, Kaśmīr), a tantric master and philosopher who fashioned a masterful synthesis of earlier aesthetic theories, in which the role of the actor is scrutinized from both a practical and a theoretical perspective, in order to situate its function within a renovated understanding of the aesthetic process itself. In such a re-positioning of the actor’s role, fictional detachment and emotional involvement are integrated in the figure of the performer and in its liminal nature of both creator and recipient of the blissful elixir of aesthetic experience. CURLEY, Melissa Anne-Marie (The Ohio State University) “Voluntary Captive: HANAYAMA Shinshō’s Prison Pure Land” In the autumn of 1945, the United States Army took possession of Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, outfitting it for use as a detention facility to house those charged with war crimes. Upon discovering that most of their prisoners professed to be Buddhist, the army invited Hanayama Shinshō—Shinshū priest and scholar of Buddhist Studies—to serve as a volunteer chaplain. My presentation examines how Hanayama improvised an interpretation of the space of the prison as a pure land, both ritually and narratively. Taking up Keta Masako’s discussion of the two visions of the world offered by Pure Land Buddhism—the world of death and the world of salvation—I explore how Hanayama understood his role as chaplain in terms of constructing the prison as a site of liberation, even for those prisoners who had been sentenced to death. I conclude with a tentative comparison between the forgotten place of Sugamo and the national memorial site, Yasukuni Shrine. DAI, Yuanfang, Dongping ZHENG, Yang LIU (University of Hawai’i) 39 “The “Place” of Identity Construction” In this paper we to address learning experiences via mobile technology that take place where social space and school space meet. Using a different dataset sampled from the same project as in the third paper, Guardian of Mo‘o, we argue that this meeting place is also a place of identity construction that can accommodate the multiplicity of identity. We draw on the idea of “genuine pluralist categorization”(Marilyn Frye 1996, 2005) to interpret language learners’ identity and agency shifts as they move between game space and built environments such as the Japanese garden and Korean center on UH campus. According to Frye, a category is constructed by working differences into structure, rather than sorting things according to a list of properties and attributes. The structure requires that the elements that it arranges be in a significant variety of relations with each other and that they have internal complexity, thus difference of any specific kind is preserved and organized. For instance, the category of “women” should be demonstrated by images such as an individual woman located in “a correlational density in a multidimensional quality space” (2005). In a similar vein, the category of “language learners” should be constructed through multilayered correlations, which involve surprise, satisfaction, confusion, struggles, and conflicts. In a sense, this is a matter of overlapping clusters of similarities and differences among language learners. An identity of a language learner is constructed in the multidimensional space where the past self meets the present self, the Western culture meets the Eastern culture, and the social space meets the school space. DALLMAYR Fred (University of Notre Dame) “Thomas Merton and Asian Thought” XXXXX D’AMBROSIO, Paul J. (East China Normal University, China) “A Wider Space for One’s Place: Contemporary Challenges to Confucianism and a Communitarian Response” Chinese conceptions of the self, as discussed by Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont, Li Zehou, Yang Gourong and others, largely rely on the place a person occupies in social roles and interpersonal relationships. Moral appropriateness is then achieved through productively excelling in one’s place. Accordingly, one learns how to properly cultivate themselves in relationships beginning with immediate role models in the family, which provide the guidelines for how one should behave in broader social contexts. The self, in turn, is also broadened. This perspective does, however, contain certain limitations, which contemporary Chinese society now faces. For instance: 1) What happens if one 40 has bad role models? 2) How can one flourish in stifling roles? 3) How should strangers be treated? At least in modern times Chinese society seems to have difficulties in these areas, although there are certainly traditional resources for dealing with these challenges. For example, the Analects records Confucius as saying "Within the four oceans [i.e. in the entire world] all men are brothers (四海之内皆兄弟).” By extending the person's ties beyond established relationships (推己及人), this idea provides a way to deal with the first and third challenge by expanding one’s field. In other words, it sets up a sense of community where one's allegiances are not limited to static (individuated) relationships. The person's concerns and involvement (关) with others is no longer narrowly fixed (系) in individuated relationships. Unfortunately, however, these arguments have not been emphasized in recent Chinese philosophy or society. Michael Sandel’s communitarian approach offers a way to bolster Confucian philosophy. In general, communitarianism focuses on the importance of communal ties in developing one’s sense of self and moral reasoning. Although Sandel himself does not deal directly with the Chinese Confucian tradition, his ideas can be used to address challenges outlined above in a way that compliments Confucianism. Sandel’s approach is more or less in line with the social orientation of Confucian ethics and perspectives on the self, but emphasizes aspects not stressed in the Confucian tradition. In this way communitarian philosophy can be used to address some of China’s most pressing moral crises. This type of dialogue is more promising than others, such as injecting “human rights” and other notions based on individualism into Chinese society, since communitarian approaches are much more compatible with traditional Confucianism. DARWELL, Stephen (Yale University) “Presence: Place and Second-Personal Space” What is presence or to be in someone's presence? And how does it relate to the familiar and our sense of place? I will investigate these issues and how presence as a secondpersonal space of potential interpersonal interaction informs the emotional apprehension of place. DAVIDSON, Lake (Colorado State University) “Yibing: Human Nature’s Impact on the Confucian Model of Righteous War” Warfare has pervaded humanity across cultures and through time. Because war is ubiquitous, many philosophers from around the globe have theorized on how best to deal with it. However, it seems that in order to properly develop an account of military ethics, philosophers need to establish a substantial view on the nature of humans. Many moral thinkers on the topic of war have failed to do this; however the early Confucian philosophers, Mengzi and Xunzi, give very clear accounts of human nature. While both thinkers hail from the tradition of Confucianism, their debate on human 41 nature remains a major point of inquiry for many scholars, yet the differences between their ideas of yibing (義兵), “righteous war”, are much more subtle. Several questions may arise here. What are their views of human nature? How do these views help to ground their accounts of what constitutes “righteous war”? What impact does the selfcultivation/reformation of the ruler’s nature have on their thoughts of yibing? This paper serves to answer these questions by highlighting that both Ru stressed the importance of benevolence, propriety, and righteousness from the peasant to the sage-king. One key feature of Confucian political philosophy is the consideration of proper governance through a supreme ruler, who oversaw the conducting of martial affairs. The ruler’s retention of these virtues was seen as fundamentally important to maintaining an ordered and noble realm, and to their overall doctrines on righteous warfare. DAVIS, Gordon F. (Carleton University, Canada) “The Ethics of Hierophany and Theophany: Buddhist vs. Modern Liberal Perspectives on the Geography of the Sacred” One feature of Buddhism that has intrigued many Western philosophers is its apparently atheist character (at least as ‘atheism’ has been understood in mainstream Western theology). On a strictly atheist interpretation, Buddhism would seem to hold that theophanies are illusory. Some religious scholars, such as Mircea Eliade, have tried to rescue the phenomenology of religious experience, even for those who consider themselves atheists, by analyzing what they call hierophany. Epistemologists will remain sceptical of the significance of both ‘theophany’ and ‘hierophany’; and meanwhile many liberal and cosmopolitan ethicists may express concerns about the geographical implications of hierophany narratives – in particular, their potential for divisiveness among various religious communities, some of whom may seek special protection for, or special access to, the sites where sages or prophets claimed to have profound religious experiences. Many ethical perspectives would take a different view, but there is also one normally thought of as modern and Western that would approach this in a more relaxed spirit, namely consequentialism. In fact, consequentialists keep an open mind not only about the significance of the experience of hierophany, but even about reports of theophany – and the same goes for consequentialists who happen to be atheist. The Mahayana Buddhist context provides an interesting point of comparison. On the one hand, there are many tantric traditions in the Mahayana tradition that speak of a kind of theophany; on the other hand, they are embedded in scriptural traditions that include texts whose ethical message is more or less consequentialist (either entirely, e.g. according to Charles Goodman’s interpretation, or partially, as seen in piecemeal appeals to upaya (‘skillful-means’)). A case in point is the usage of Santideva’s texts within Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. I consider what this kind of consequentialism would imply about the geography of the sacred, and how the Mahayana’s ‘two-truths’ conception can inform a philosophical 42 account of the interplay between ethics, religious experience and spiritual orientation to particular places in the extended landscape of a religious tradition. DAVIS, Jake H. (Brown University) “The Scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons” The denial that persons exist, in some ultimate sense, is widely understood to be a central Buddhist doctrine. In Consequences of Compassion, Charles Goodman (2009) suggests that in a range of classical Buddhist sources some version of this metaphysical thesis about persons helps to underwrite an ethical thesis, that we ought to minimize the total amount of suffering there is in the world. There is a compelling connection between these two ideas: since we all agree that our own suffering is to be avoided, if there are ultimately no distinctions between persons, then perhaps one ought to act or live in whatever way will most effectively reduce all of the suffering there is in the world, regardless of whose it is. Nonetheless, as a characterization of early Buddhist thought this proposal is doubly mistaken. The Buddha, as he is portrayed in the early Buddhist discourses, endorses neither the metaphysical claim, that persons on some ultimate level do not exist, nor the ethical claim, that we ought to live in whatever way will minimize the total amount of suffering there is in the world. Instead, early Buddhism has a different, and more novel, contribution to make to contemporary ethical thought. DEAN-HAIDET, Kate (Ohio Health Hospice/Ohio University) “Thanatopoiesis: Zen and the Art of Hospice Care” Contemporary Western hospice care was conceived as a place for providing respite and peaceful dying with attention to the whole person, yet cultural trends in American healthcare delivery are eroding the hospice ideal. This paper describes the moral distress that emerges for interdisciplinary caregivers when their intimacy-based assumptions about human beings are overshadowed by integrity-based practices in end-of-life care. I assert that these affective energies are transforming hospice care towards a new balance, in the service of a resonant death, where the dying process is shared in intimate bonds among those in presence. Thanatopoiesis, a word chosen to connote the creative making of death, refers to a broad range of holistic transformations that dynamically unfold in spaces of death and dying. This paper suggests that Zen Buddhist philosophy is reinvigorating the hospice ideal towards creation of a place where dying resonates within a web of interdependent relation, beyond the individualized death of Western medicine. DEFOORT, Carine (University of Leuven, Belgium) “The Non-Place of ‘Chinese Philosophy’ at European Universities” 43 During the last decades, there has been a lively debate on the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy and its continuous exclusion from the academic world. This debate has reached a point where it would benefit from more focus upon different periods and regions within and beyond China. As for the Western world, the situation in the United States has been mostly discussed. In this paper, I focus upon the situation in Europe, using my own university and research funding organizations as a case-study. The position of “Chinese philosophy” at European universities not only reflects longstanding views or assumptions concerning philosophy, but is also representative of the institutional rejection of China (along with other non-Western regions) in other disciplines of the human sciences. Detailed documentation of the non-place of Chinese philosophy at European institutions shows how different Europe is from the United States in this respect. DIPPMANN, Jeffery W. (Central Washington University) “Residing in De: Contentment, Home & Finding One’s Place in the Liezi and Zhuangzi” Although traditionally recognized as a classic, the Liezi 列子 has remained one of the most understudied and, in some ways, most misunderstood texts within the Daoist canon. The present study first elucidates the Liezi’s conception of de 德 as it relates to contentedness with one’s particular allotment (or fen 分) in life. Special attention is paid to the exchange between Beigongzi and Ximengzi (found in the Li Ming 力命 [Endeavor and Destiny] chapter). Here, in spite of his mean status and circumstances, Beigongzi discovers that contentment arises in the recognition of the virtue/worth/value inherent in his particular ming (命) from heaven. Whereas Ximengzi’s privileged status, and apparent happiness, was a result of his heaven-allocated luck, Beigongzi, and by extension the Liezi’s readers, learns that true happiness resides in making the most of one’s de, the inborn manifestation of dao 道 within all things. The paper then moves on to explore similar themes in the Zhuangzi, teasing out the various ways in which the text both supports and expands the Daoist conception of locating contentment and “home” within one’s “heavenly mandate” (tian ming 天命). As we read in Zhuangzi 4, “To serve one’s own mind so that neither sadness or joy sway or move it; to comprehend that what you can do nothing about and rest content it as your ming 命, this is de 德 perfected” 自事其心者,哀樂不易施乎前,知其不可奈何而安之若命,德之至也.Who and what we are ultimately resides in our homeground, the perfection of the virtue provided to each of us by heaven’s allocation. DIXON, Mark H. (Ohio Northern University) “Place and Emplacement in the Cinema” Much has been written about place and its role in being human. The simple truth is that as embodied beings, as beings in the world, humans are also emplaced beings – beings that must exist in some place at some particular time. The interactions between 44 human beings and place is an intricate one in which places influence human beings and then human beings in turn influence places. Indeed the details that describe our emplacement then – the where, the when, the how, the why – have formative roles in our, social and personal, identities. In broad terms emplacement emerges through both conscious deliberate process – one chooses to live in a particular place – and through happenings outside our control – one receives a promotion and is sent to another office. There are also still other places where we have been throughout our lives and to which there are greater or lesser connections. Together all these places and connections influence who we are as persons. A place then is more than a geographical location it also includes all the historical associations and personal attitudes that binds us to the place. The question I shall consider in this paper concerns the role that place has in the cinema. German director, Wim Wenders writes that it is place that motivates the stories that films weave. Is this place’s sole role, to motivate stories? There is I believe deeper role as can be seen in this question: Can films ‘emplace’ us? Our lives and bodies emplace us somewhere in space and time. Our motivations and desires emplace us in particular places at particular times. But can films emplace us in the places that the film describes? I shall argue that, through image, sound and dialogue the cinema does have to power to emplace us – emplace us within moving frame in all its richness. As such the places we inhabit within films have the capabilities to influence or identities and the manner in which we dwell on the earth has human beings. What is in question here is more than a mere passing relocation or distraction, what is known as the suspension of disbelief. The best films do more then than relocate us in some trivial and provisional manner, rather through their visual, linguistic and aural properties these films emplace us within the place(s) the film describes. The processes here are analogous to those through which our choices and other happenings emplace us in ‘real world’ places. DONAHUE, Amy (Kennesaw State University) “Places of Knowing in Nyāya and Buddhist Philosophy: What ‘Philosophy’ Cannot Mean if It is Global” If philosophy is a universal human activity, then conventional representations in the academy of the concept ‘philosophy’ must change. In Nyāya and Buddhist philosophies of language, conceptual understandings are always situated in some place. These conceptual understandings are jn̄ānas – episodic cognitions involving specific knowers, objects, and mechanisms of cognition. Further, in Buddhist philosophies of language, conceptual understandings are inferential. They therefore emerge only from specific pakṣas, or places, and only through spatially, temporally, and causally situated (deśakālāvasthāniyata) processes of determination. Ultimately, according to these 45 philosophies, therefore, understandings of concepts such as ‘philosophy’ cannot be universal. However, if one wishes to avoid radical implications of such Buddhist nominalist arguments for possibilities of communication (as I do), then one might instead seek to ground global understandings of ‘philosophy’ in other, perhaps less extreme, philosophical frameworks, such as Madhyamaka philosophies of conventional truth and Nyāya realism. However, arguments developed by Gaṅgeśa and Jñānaśrīmitra suggest that one could then no longer legitimately conceive of ‘philosophy’ as a universal human activity inaugurated by the Greeks dedicated to the examination of a vaguely specific set of “central” human problems and questions. DORSEY, Donna (MacEwan University, Canada) “A Buddhist View of Rebirth: Place or Not-place?” A Buddhist concept of rebirth might be understood as a way to enable a continuous presence, a determinate linking place, as it were, enabling karmic continuity. Or rebirth may be seen as a conduit to a place on the karmic wheel where a relative position is held within a sequence of possible ethicized places and, here, rebirth may be conditioned by craving and not by karma. However rebirth is envisioned, imagined or understood, the relation of rebirth to place is complicated. Rebirth is both place and not place since rebirth meets some of the conditions of place, but it also rejects such categorization. If rebirth is a place in the sense of a momentary existent determined by past acts it is also, in an important sense, no more of a place than any other moment in existence. The Buddhist doctrines of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and impermanence (anitya) reject the belief that rebirth indicates a continuity, and the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anātman) is a challenge to any claim that rebirth is an event in the history of a continuous being. In spite of these foundational Buddhist principles, rebirth seems to function in the manner of a fixed place for a rebirth-seekingconsciousness bound to the ethicized space of worldly samsara. Since no one account of the rebirth doctrine crossing all Buddhist schools is agreed upon, this paper instead will focus on the work of Santideva where, for example in the Bodhicharyavatara, rebirth is referred to as a snare. An explication of his thinking may provide a way in which the Buddhist idea of rebirth as place, or as not-place, can be best understood. DOTTIN, Paul (Fudan University, China) “ChinAfrican Philosophy: Places of Engagement” The recent exponential growth in Sino-African relations has captured the world’s attention. Economically, the value of exports between China and Africa has skyrocketed from 10 billion dollars to almost 200 billion dollars in the last 15 years alone. Demographically, both Chinese and African nationals have “followed the money” resulting today in two million Chinese living abroad in Africa while 500,000 Africans make lives in China. Now, for the first time in a colossal face-to-face, African and 46 Chinese nationals struggle to come to a meeting of the minds vis-à-vis their respective values and broader systems of thought. Such trends and issues have spurred investigative and theoretical responses from philosophers. The collaborative work of Chinese philosophy scholar Daniel A. Bell and African philosophy scholar Thaddeus Metz on Confucianism and Ubuntuism (a southern African ethical system) is a major bridge connecting these fields. African philosopher Jim I. Unah’s study has expanded this search for “common grounds” to include West Africa’s Yoruba and Igbo traditions. African philosopher Chris Akpan’s pursuit of causality has drawn Buddhism into discourse with seemingly parallel formulations in traditional African conceptual schemes. Yet what these different scattered comparisons of African and Chinese philosophies have in common is their reliance on a sole orientation: Analytic philosophy. I argue that this approach, which favors the dissection of concepts and arguments, should be complemented with the “platial” methodology of African philosophy scholar Bruce Janz which favors the generation of concepts and arguments phenomenologically and hermeneutically in situ. I conclude that for “ChinAfrican philosophy” to develop systematically through both approaches requires theorizing its correct placement within the broader Chinese “constructive-engagement movement” delineated by Chinese philosopher Bo Mou. DUAN, Xiaolin (Elon University) “Seeking Identity in Place: Hangzhou’s West Lake as Site for Cultural Pilgrimage” West Lake, a scenic site next to the city of Hangzhou, is one of the most visited places in today’s China. Its status as a cultural landmark, however, was first established during the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when the capital was relocated to Hangzhou. Attracted by its beautiful scenery, increasing number of scholars paid visit to the lake and left extensive literature works. Examining how this natural landscape has been conceptualized and represented in these writings, this paper explores how the lake accumulated its cultural significance as a destination for “cultural pilgrimage” through scholarly practices of reading, traveling and writing. More importantly, this paper investigates how the lake was told by different voices as a way to reinforce visitors’ varying social identities. Traveling to the lake, literati participated into the virtual conversations with historical figures who were known for touring and living around the lake. By so doing, their senses of belonging to a cultural community were enhanced. Such identity as literati was also maintained and confirmed via gatherings on the lake and especially their writings about such gatherings. During and after the Mongol invasion, state officials regarded the emerging sightseeing activities around the lake as a symbol of empire-wide revival, in order to consolidate the ruling of the new regime. On the contrast, however, local gentry sought to mitigate the feeling of political instability by compiling gazetteers for this eternal natural landscape. It therefore argues that in the process of travelling and writing, the lake was transformed into an “anchor for identity” and thus enabled the 47 visitors to claim and reinforce their identities with literati culture, state power and local history. In this process, place is no longer simply a context for historical events or an aesthetic target, but an acting role in shaping the social-cultural frameworks. DUFRESNE, Michael (University of Hawai’i) “Abstraction and Narration: Interpreting Sagacity in the Confucian Tradition” I seek in this paper to develop an understanding of sagacity (sheng 聖) and of those who embody it that genuinely engages with the terms and texts of classical Confucian tradition, from which these notions emerged. Rather than making any explicit claims about sagacity, I instead attempt to understand it as it has unfolded within its own context. What I have determined in making these examinations is that, contrary to many interpretations of the sages (shengren 聖人), one cannot properly define them as individuals nor can one define sagacity as an achievement of individuality. To do so is to misconstrue what it means to be a person within this tradition and misinterpret what the attainment of sagacity entails. In order to highlight these concerns, I approach sagacity from two different but complementary perspectives. The first looks at it as a process of abstraction in an attempt to show that sages are abstractions and that the complexities of sagacity have frequently gone unrecognized. Sagacity can be understood as a movement from particularity to generality, but if this process is to be understood to the fullest extent, we must not let its connection to particularity be lost. The second perspectives looks at sagacity as a process of narration in order to clarify the place particularity occupies within it. Through persistent cultivation, each particular person may develop from a unique personal narrative into a social narrative shared by people, and finally into a cosmic narrative shared by myriad phenomena (wanwu 萬物). Sagacity is not some unattainable ideal possessed only by a few venerable figures we call “sages,” but is a quality shared by all who partake in sagely activity. DULL, Carl J. (Southern Illinois University) “Ox Mountain and Not-Even-Anything Village: The Importance of Place in the Moral and Political Psychologies of Mencius and Zhuangzi” Mencius and Zhuangzi both utilize models of emotion and cognition that are central components of their moral and political psychologies. Mencius famously describes the four principles of virtue (II.A.6) and Zhuangzi discusses the importance of 遊心 youxin or “wandering heart” (Books 4, 7, 8, and 21). Both models regard emotion and cognition as emerging from the heart and seeking completion in the social environment. For Mencius, acting on the four feelings of the 心 xin results in virtuous activity. For Zhuangzi the pursuit of completion (成 cheng) often results in strife or conflict. Both propose models of moral psychology that seek to help develop healthy emotional and cognitive activity: Mengzi through nourishing the four principles in healthy environments and Zhuangzi by cultivating the wandering heart. 48 In the theme of this conference I am especially interested in demonstrating the relationship of moral psychologies of Mencius and Zhuangzi to the idea of place, and in examining the kinds of places and environments they believe are necessary for healthy psychological activity. The first part of this paper discusses the moral psychologies of Mencius and Zhuangzi, first reviewing Mencius’ theory of emotions and then examining Zhuangzi’s therapeutic approaches of wandering and emptiness. The second part of this paper examines these two approaches in relation to the concept of place and what kinds of places are most important to Mencius for moral development and to Zhuangzi for wandering at ease. I engage the stories of Ox Mountain (6.A.8) and Not-EvenAnything Village (Books 1 and 7), and demonstrate how both are important parts of creating first a moral psychology and then for Mencius’ and Zhuangzi’s differing visions of political psychology and appropriate governing. For the final part of this paper I suggest these models can be linked to contemporary discussions regarding emotional and cognitive health. I am particularly interested in discussions regarding the concept of “natural environments” and the reduction of stress and anxiety. A body of research growing since the 1990s suggests relationships between increased exposure to natural environments and decreased indications of levels of stress and anxiety (through physiological markers and self-reporting). Using the models of Mencius and Zhuangzi I propose one possible interpretation for these findings, and offer suggestions for using Classical Chinese models in contemporary settings. DUNLAP, Rika (University of Hawai’i) “A Place for the Minorities: The Issues Surrounding the Ambiguous Subject of ‘We, the Minority’” The minority group often confronts the majority with the first person plural form of the subject, “we, the minority.” However, this practice cannot help but perpetuate the structure that creates the problem, insofar as the ambiguous subject of “we, the minority” not only leaves behind a group of people who do not quite fit into either the majority or the specific minority group, but also tends to ignore the intersectional identities within the same group. The dilemma, however, is that the practice of becoming an ambiguous plural subject is the only effective way for the minorities to claim their place within society to become a visible subject at all. While this practice of becoming a visible subject can refer to the problem of the racial issues within the United States, I argue that the nationalism of Japan is a twisted form of the same practice, orientalism as a way to become a visible subject in the international community where they would otherwise feel invisible. Specifically, I would like to make a connection between David Haekwon Kim’s analysis of the problem surrounding the Asian-American assimilation in the United States and Naoki Sakai’s critical cultural studies on nationalism by focusing on the issues of the ambiguous plural form of the subject, “we, the minority.” 49 EL-KHOLY, Yomna T. (Cairo University, Egypt) “Ibn Al-Hytham from the Place to the Space: A Comparative Approach” In Arabic, the word ‘makān ’مكانmeans both place and space. However, place is more definite and determined, whereas space is more comprehensive. From a human and cultural perspective the concept of place is more efficient. But from a physical and scientific perspective the concept of space is of a higher status; so Newtonian absolute space – with absolute time – then Einsteinian four dimensional Spatio-temporal continuum played essential roles in modern science. This paper explores how the prominent scientist-mathematician al-Hassan ibn alHytham (354-433 A.H / 965-1042 A.D.) contributed to the development of modern science. Till his time, philosophers and scientists had operated with the concept of makān as a notion closer to place. Ibn al-Hytham rejected this, criticizing his ancestors and contemporaries in details. In his elaborated concept of al-Makān, he introduced the idea of ‘al-aba'ād al-mutakhayyila ’األبعاد المتخيّلةwhich means "imaginary dimensions". He thereby moved the concept into space, and contributed to a development which led to the formulation of "absolute space" in modern physics. This paper adopts comparative method, not only when examining Ibn al-Hytham and his ancestors and contemporaries, but also – for the sake of a dialogue between East and West and between past and present – in comparing Ibn al-Hytham and P. W. Bridgman (1882-1961) whose Operationalism assigned great role to space, spacialization and place. Let's see whose approach was more fruitful? FECH, Andrej (University of Tuebingen, Germany) “Place in the Philosophy and Biography of Laozi” In the philosophy of the Laozi, location and directionality play an important role and are invested with a wide range of meanings. The central notion of the text, the Way 道, signifying the origin of the world and the ideal mode of action, is associated with several directions and positions in space, such as the “center” (zhong 中), the “low” (xia 下), the “behind” (hou 後) etc. The emergence and unfolding of the universe is also often depicted with the spatial metaphors connoting locations and movements of the Way (or beings). Likewise, the actions of the exemplary person are often conceptualized in spatial terms both, static, as in “dwell in the deeds of inaction” (chu wuwei zhi shi 處無為 之事) (ch. 2), and dynamic, as in “walking on the great Way” (xing yu da dao 行於大道) (ch. 53). The main idea of the text according to which the ruler should act in accordance with the principles of the Way entails that the former has to emulate the motions/take up the position of the latter. The ensuing moral teaching commanding the ruler to lower himself in front of his subordinates challenges the traditional understanding of human agency in the world. 50 Besides showing how the characteristic understanding of the spatial arrangement of the universe and the state influenced the philosophical teaching of the text, including its concept of time, I also would like to address the alleged biographical account of Laozi in this talk. According to it, Laozi left China after having become discouraged with the political decline of the Zhou dynasty. The depiction as made in the Shiji allows the inference that he went to the West. While this direction was associated with the sacred purview during his supposed lifetime, making his choice understandable, I will argue that it is also possibly his preference for certain spatial directions that could explain his move. FINK, Brian (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) “Synthesizing Qi and Zeitgeist: A Study of Hegelian Dialectic and the Flow of YinYang” In this paper I argue that the logic of the Hegelian dialectic can be interpreted as giving a description of the flow of qi in Confucian philosophy. This argument is possible when we compare similarities between Hegel’s Zeitgeist and the Confucian idea of qi. We can also see that Hegel’s process of the thesis, antithesis and synthesis have a similar relationship to yin, yang and the myriad things. In Hegel’s The Science of Logic, Hegel argues that the starting point of dialectical logic is to take being as a thesis. Once being exists as a thesis, nothingness is immediately created as antithesis. I argue that the relationship between thesis and antithesis is a western interpretation of the flow of qi. Whereas the cyclical nature of yin and yang give rise to the myriad things, the interaction of thesis and antithesis of Hegelian dialectic give rise to synthesis. Being and nothingness are synthesized with the idea of becoming which becomes a new thesis and the cycle is repeated thus producing a multitude of other thesis and antithesis relationships. Ultimately, Hegel shows that this dialectical process continues until the idea of being then becomes a synthesis and the entire cycle starts over. The process of the Hegelian dialectic is then the manifestation of the Zeitgeist which moves and develops in terms of place. One major step in showing that Hegelianism is compatible with Asian philosophy is to argue against the philosophers who take Hegel’s philosophy as not allowing for there to be philosophy in Asian culture. I will show that we are able to find this compatibility when we view Hegel’s philosophy in a postcolonial context. This argument is in line with Hyo-Dong Lee’s argument in “Interreligious Dialogue as a Politics of Recognition: A Postcolonial Rereading of Hegel for Interreligious Solidarity”. I argue that, with this postcolonial reading of Hegel, it is possible to make some comparisons between the movements of Hegel’s Zeitgeist and the flow of qi. FIRESTONE, Jessica (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) “Exchanging Places of Yin and Yang: A Feminist Reiteration of Junzi (君子) ” 51 Aristotle’s hierarchical method of categorization into genera and species implies an ultimate homogeneity of the myriad things. In conjunction with his misogynist views on gender norms, I will show that, for Aristotle, there is a single human genus predominantly made up of two species: the ideal human specimen -- man -- and the mutilated, inferior woman. This male chauvinism heavily influenced Western thought and perpetuated the problematic normalization of patriarchy, sexism, and strict gender roles. As a method of evaluating and potentially remedying this imbalance, I will compare Aristotle’s view with the implications of the Eastern concepts of yin-yang, which views masculinity and femininity as correlative polarities, and junzi, the ideal human being. In place of the Aristotelian assertion of the naturally superior position of the male gender, the yin-yang model views the feminine -- yin -- and the masculine -yang -- as interdependent and interpenetrating opposites with equal import and function in humanity and the cosmos. Man and woman cease to be static, mutually exclusive species, as Aristotle views them, and become dynamic combinations of both masculinity and femininity. These qualities not only interpenetrate, existing in differing proportions in every entity, but serve to define and create one another. While the yin-yang paradigm ultimately seeks balance between the polarities of yin and yang, this system is not ignorant to the tradition and continual tendency to “fu yin bao yang [embody yin and embrace yang],” of which Aristotle seems to be guilty. To counteract this propensity, yin-yang philosophies advocate nurturing yin -- passivity, mystery, femininity, emptiness -- to place the energies on equal ground and establish harmony. The emptiness of yin, I will argue, is also the source of creativity and therefore resonance, the ultimate directive of Confucian praxis as articulated by Zhang Zai. Junzi can then be defined as a master of enhancing human life in the world and promoting the free flow of the cosmic qi by 1) resisting the human tendency to overvalue yang and thereby balancing yin and yang energies both internally and externally and 2) promoting creative interaction and resonance amongst humans and their environment. Just as Confucius sought to redefine junzi, making it available to every social class, I propose a second reiteration of this concept that respects and empowers the feminine. In contrast to Aristotelian ideality, which woman is fundamentally incapable of achieving, I will argue that the status of junzi is not only available to woman but she is naturally closer to this human ideal than her masculine counterpart, as she harbors stronger yin energy. FOX, Alan (University of Deleware) “Transcendence versus Immanence: Concrete Mysticism” I propose to introduce the idea of belonging as an example of what I will call a "concrete mysticism," using several Daoist and Confucian texts as my primary sources, but referring to other traditions and texts as well. The goal of a concrete mysticism is to 52 merge, not with some abstract and metaphysical absolute, but with the concrete and immanent world around us. Concrete mystics seek to be at home in the world, rather than escape from it. The ideal person in such a sense is the one who is perfectly at ease in any and all situations. FRENKIEL, Emilie (Université Paris Est Créteil, France) “The World-Wide-Web and Social Networks as a Political Place: The Impact of Uncensored Internet Access on the Political Interest and Participation of Chinese Exchange Students” Recent statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center have revealed that China now has about 650 million Internet users with 70% of these so-called netizens connecting to the web with their mobile phones. When the Chinese Communist Party displayed a strong resolve to allow for a wide access to the Internet, analysts announced inevitable political change with optimism. The technological determinism manifest in early Internet studies as regards old democracies and as regards authoritarian countries like China promised that the web would help recruit previously inactive citizens into political participation and enhance robust political debate. Researches have however repeatedly shown that, with digital technology, political engagement and participation has mostly been enhanced among already active citizens and reinforces existing patterns of political participation (Davis, 1999); greater access to information, enabled by online does not directly lead to increases in political participation, or greater civic engagement, or trust in political process (Bimber, 2001; Kaid, 2002) and the internet is susceptible to the profit-making impulses of the market, which do not traditionally prioritize civic participation or democratization. However, the Internet’s challenge to traditional media is real and it can “give new voice to people who’ve felt voiceless” (Gillmor 2004). Collective use of the Internet can lead to greater political participation when it is characterized by trust and reciprocity (Kobayashi, Ikeda, & Miyata, 2006). Numerous studies have emphasized that among the young generations, the use of digital technology can have a strong impact on levels of political participation and engagement. This paper will reflect on our place in the world, on the impact of changing places and on the conception of the Internet as a political place. Based on a general review of the literature on Chinese Internet studies quantitative and qualitative interviews with a sample of Chinese exchange students in France, it aims to understand if, how and to what extent, depending on the location where they stay, especially through uncensored access to the web, Chinese citizens, especially youngsters, change their internet routine and come to political interest and active political participation. FREEMAN, Tim (University of Hawai’i-Hilo) “Place on Fire: Climate Change and the Summit of Mauna Kea” 53 It has become obvious to all who take science seriously that the problem of climate change is perhaps the most difficult challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. In his later writings, Heidegger suggested the problem posed by the development of modern technology can be traced back to a way of thinking that has framed Western thought since the ancient Greeks. The danger that Heidegger warned of in this way of thinking is that everything is reduced to a resource for human use, like a forest of trees considered only as timber. The most difficult thing about this problem, Heidegger suggested, is that this way of thinking is so deeply entrenched that it is hard for modern humans to even comprehend that there could be a different way of thinking. This paper takes up a reflection on place through a consideration of the dispute concerning the summit of Mauna Kea. For the scientific community this place is perhaps the very best place in the world for the placement of telescopes and the new telescope will thus undoubtedly provide a significant advance in our knowledge of the universe. For many Hawaiians the obstruction of the landscape by the building of the telescopes has in some way been a violation of the sacredness of the place. It would be a terrible, final irony, if we discovered some secret about the origins of it all just as we became extinct because we never really figured out how to live in this place we call Earth. This paper will consider what implications this dispute about place might have in confronting the problem of climate change. FUJIMOTO, Matthew (University of Hawai’i) “Nishida’s Language of Place: Understanding Nishida’s Philosophy of Place through his View of Language” In this presentation, I will examine Nishida’s view of language as seen in “Expressive Activity” (Hyōgen sayō, 表現作用) and show that it plays a vital role in his larger philosophical project of constructing a truly universal philosophy. I will do this by; first, examining several passages from “Expressive Activity” in order to construct a basic understanding of Nishida’s view of language, and second, draw out the implications of such a view of language for his philosophy of place. I will conclude by showing that a relationship between language and Basho should be expected given our intuitions about contextualized experiences and persons. FUNES, Ana (Loyola Marymount University) “Upaniṣadic Isomorphisms: Mapping the Universe Within the Body” Isomorphic correspondences between the cosmic and individual spaces is a characteristic feature of Indian philosophies. In the Upaniṣads we find a model that maps a particular cosmic Deity with a specific organ of the body and its function in such a way that the Sun is said to preside over vision; Goddess Earth over smell; the Lord of Water (Varuna) over taste, and so on. What is the logic behind these correspondences? What is the significance of those deities with respect to the faculties of perception and action? Can the understanding of the intimate relation that the natural 54 elements have with our own faculties of perception and action help us re-structure our relation with this world as a place of environmental harmony? This paper examines the logic used to establish the correspondence between cosmic deities and bodily functions as described particularly in the Praśna Upaniṣad and then compares it to the logic used in contemporary cognitive studies to map external stimuli to neural activity. By doing this it will be shown that the "ancient" idea of mapping things seen as located in an external space into a space that seems to be internal like our bodily organs presents a dynamic interrelation between cosmos and individual that makes one the reflection of the other. If the “external” space expresses the functions of the “internal” space, then this suggests the important role that self-transformation has in re-structuring our relationship with the environment. GANGULY, Deb Kamal (Film and Television Institute of India, India) “Territorialization by Moving Image Practices: The Transformations of Spatiality and Placiality in Cinematic Creation and Reception” 'Space' and 'place' are mutually depending experiential categories, as proposed by YiFu Tuan, where 'place' signifies location, stability, safety, pause within the movement, and 'space' indicates a sense of yearning, a drive to transcend the boundary, an overarching trajectory towards 'here and now', illuminated with the sense of being and becoming. Gaston Bacherald on the other hand postulates the reverberation of spatial imagination within the most commonly encountered architectural elements which are abound in our living localities, both indoor and outdoor. While 'place' has a mappable quality, bounded space may have a measurable quality. In Indic tradition the space has been conceived both as bounded and unbounded, a philosophical move to account for the 'apeiron' while confined in the affairs mostly related to the 'peiron'. Georg Cantor has shown that the 'apeiron', the infinite and the finite should not be treated as opposites, because the constant striving to sense the infinite can go on through the reasoning of transfinite numbers. While 'space' remains as a primary philosophical category, the conceptualization of 'place' has seen limited intellectual appeal so far. The further conceptualization of 'place' can initiate with the abstraction and extention of its mappable, locational, inhabitable and territorializable qualities. If we relocate ourselves to the domain of cinema, we find a curious flow of space and place related characteristics. We always have to situate a camera in a 'place', but what we record becomes a 'cinematic space', no longer a representational image of a place or a location. Interestingly the place where the camera is placed does not have a frame; the camera frames and creates the off-screen space, which remains invisible to the sensory eye, but immediately lends itself to the contextual imagination of potentially countless variations. Cantor's transfinites are already operational qualitatively around the corners of the framed cinematic space. Similarly seeing a film (or for that matter relating to any artifice) in transient phases of movements between more defined locations, can provide inhabitable qualities in terms of mnemonic values to those otherwise spaces of 'non-significance' vis a vis individual memory. The qualities of the 55 so called non-significant spaces gathered into the being through the mode of involuntary attention create an additional frame of mnemonic reference around the experience of watcing the film. Interestingly Hugo Munsterberg commented on the importance of involuntary attention even in the primary act of seeing a film almost a century ago. In the proposed paper attempts will be made to speculate on the possible human practices regarding cinematic creation and reception with respect to 'spatial' and 'placial' characteristics and their modes of transformations, while also borrowing from deterritorialization and reterritorialization from Deleuze and Guattari. GARFIELD, Jay, and Nalini BHUSHAN (Smith College) “Cambridge in India” We will talk about the impact of study in Cambridge on Indian philosophy, first in the construction of Aligarh Muslim University on the model of Cambridge, but then about the way that Aligarh itself becomes more than just a place, but a movement. We will then consider how the Aligarh movement reimagines Muslim India as Indian vs Pan-Islamic, and conclude with a comparison of the similar and yet different way that Cambridge informs neo-Vedānta in Calcutta, and on how philosophy in these two different places proceeded in parallel. GARRISON, James (University of Vienna, Austria) “Does Cultural Incommensurability Measure Up? A Consideration of Nearness and Distance in Intercultural Philosophy” There is the need for self-defense, not uncommon when presenting intercultural philosophy to a wider audience, as questions of cultural incommensurability inevitably arise. Is comparative philosophy legitimate? Is intercultural? Is any type of global philosophy possible? Are the cultural, terminological, and perspectival differences simply too great? Indeed, intercultural philosophers and methods should indeed have to defend themselves, since critical inquiry demands no less. However, they should not find themselves initially and forever thereafter in that position of defense and haunted by the supposedly frightful specter of the culturally incommensurable, when that question is itself predicated on many less than defensible premises. The vices of cultural incommensurability questions become apparent as something of a “sorites paradox” emerges when considering how contemporaneous cultures talk to each other or how contemporary idioms speak to the past. The sorites paradox, using the Greek term for “heap,” refers to the slippery slope question of quantification. A heap might have a certain large number of straws of hay in it, but taking them away one by one, at some point a threshold is reached whereby the heap ceases to be a heap. What does this mean here? Well, the idea is that some point exists where things either become intracultural, occurring within a single proper domain, or intercultural, occurring 56 between two separate cultures. This implies a threshold, a spatial, temporal, or spatiotemporal border at which this culture here ends and that culture there begins, and also a border where each becomes a proper entity, a heap unto itself, and not just subcultural detritus. What then is to be done? There has to be a way of recognizing real differences without giving into the pernicious logic of presuming separation. How would it then make sense to talk of cultures having conversations if the fallacy of misplaced cultural concreteness is taken seriously? How can things be intercultural if there are no cultures as such? How is it possible to rescue basic talk of cultures more generally and avoid somehow implying that all talk about Chinese philosophy, French culture, or American literature is in some way essentialist, racist, and/or nationalist? Answering such questions is no mean task. There needs to be a type of intercultural philosophy which does not lapse into pernicious abstractions of cultures, and which still retains the ability to speak of this culture or that as the case may be. There needs to be a way of talking about world philosophy as a unity while respecting philosophical worldviews as a dynamic manifold where the constituent elements are fluid, yet insistent particulars and not simply so much misplaced concreteness. The approach here takes up Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizomatic method, Franz Martin Wimmer’s polylog model, and Roger Ames’ observations on interpretation as negotiation to reconsider place, nearness, and distance in light of the questions that dog intercultural philosophy. Recognizing the sorites paradox, the response here shifts away from the incommensurability question’s underlying notions of objective purity that quantify self-sameness in seemingly monolithic “heaps” of time, place, and culture. Instead, this approach emphasizes self-consciousness of the necessary impurity of all perspectives in any multi-point, non-hierarchical conversation that would seek to appreciate the qualities, not of abstracted and quantified cultures, but of individual voices within dynamic and constitutively pluralistic philosophical cultures. GIANETTI, Jason (Eisho-ji-Northwest Zen Center) “Dialectical Method in Plato and Nagarjuna” In the interest of brevity, this paper will attempt to concisely present Plato’s formulation and development of the so-called “Theory of Ideas” and the science of dialectic. I will attempt to show how the “Theory of Ideas” and the science of dialectic are necessarily connected; how Plato presents these concepts in various dialogues which, if taken in the order that I present them, can be understood to roughly correlate to the stages of developmental complexity presented in the “Divided Line” and “Allegory of the Cave” sections of the Republic; and how the mysterious and ambiguous things which are said about ideas and dialectic in the Republic can be deciphered by a careful reading of the Phaedo, Phaedrus, Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus. Through an examination of those dialogues I shall argue that Socratic dialectic operates on two different levels, one of the eide and dianoia, which consist of discrete and self-consistent units, and one of the koinonein and episteme which involve a “blending” and “community” which 57 necessarily violates the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Finally, I will compare the methods and conclusions found in the Platonic corpus to some rather evocative passages in the Hindu and Mahayana tradition of Buddhism. GILSON, Erinn (University of North Florida) “Places of Vulnerability” Vulnerability has recently emerged as a central concept in ethics and politics (e.g., Mackenzie, Rogers and Dodds 2014). Signifying a fundamental quality of openness, an openness to being affected and affecting in turn, vulnerability characterizes human existence as well as that of nonhuman animals and the natural world; in this sense, it is an ontological concept. Yet, the fundamental capacity to be vulnerable can be exploited, lives rendered more precarious and the ability of natural places to thrive can be destabilized. In Judith Butler’s terms (2009), this kind of heightened susceptibility to harm can be termed “precarity.” Conditions of precarity are produced when vulnerability is politically framed and differentially distributed: basic vulnerability is exacerbated and rendered harmful through social, political, and economic conditions and policies to which some are more susceptible than others. In this way, vulnerability is a core political concept and ameliorating the inequitable distribution of vulnerability is crucial for social justice. This paper explores how places of heightened, harmful vulnerability are constituted through the modulation of spatial and temporal patterns and arrangements. It develops the argument that the exploitation of vulnerability can only be understood fully when we understand how places of greater vulnerability, precarity, are made. I begin my analysis by articulating the way vulnerability operates as a spatial and temporal phenomenon; that is, I offer a brief account of the temporal and spatial dynamics of fundamental ontological vulnerability. Then, I identify the main features of harmful vulnerability, asking, how are spatial and temporal modes of being modified when lives are rendered excessively precarious? In particular, I focus on the qualities of places in which people are deprived of basic forms of control, autonomy, and self-determination. I explicate how these places are formed via the usurpation of people’s ability to shape their own relations in and with the places they inhabit. Such deprivation of the ability to engage in mutually constitutive relationships can take (at least) two forms, which often coincide: 1) having one’s spatial and temporal modes of being subject to the ordering and control of others and 2) being subject to a pervasive spatial and temporal lack of order, which produces not so much a place as an antiutopic non-place. I consider a variety of contemporary examples to illustrate these claims, including the experiences of incarcerated persons, refugees, undocumented migrants, and those subject to intensive police surveillance, as in the racial profiling of Black citizens in the US. GLUCHMAN, Vasil and Marta GLUCHMANOVÁ (University of Presov, Slovakia) “Moral Education as the Place of Person and Moral Development” 58 Moral education is one of the ways how to place children and people to the world. We will compare Philosophy for Children (P4C) and ethics of social consequences (ESC) as the models of moral education, moral and personal development of children. The aim of P4C is to encourage and develop these skills: to understand the text they read, to identify what they understand and do not understand, to be interested in what they read and discuss. Furthermore, it is about their ability to ask relevant questions, to develop mental abilities, to express ideas and hypotheses, to use imagination in their own thinking, to examine alternative ideas and explanations. At the same time, the purpose of P4C is to constitute assessment attitudes, judgements, ability to assess value of ideas, ability of self-assessment and self-correction. All these abilities are to be developed through cooperative activities. Furthermore, we will present ethics of social consequences (ESC) offering a possibility for moral and personal development through critical moral thinking. The ESC emphasizes basic values accepted by the moral of the society, i.e. humanity, human dignity, moral right for life, justice, responsibility, duty and tolerance. On the other hand, in the process of moral thinking it requires to regard future or past consequences emerging from our thinking, decision-making and acting. The aim is to create a model of moral and personal development through critical thinking on the basis of criteria, which form conditions for free decision-making and acting of person, his/her moral responsibility determined by the effort to achieve positive social consequences emerging from our behaviour and acting or at least to achieve predominance of the positive over negative social consequences. GOLDBERG, Stephen J. (Hamilton College) “The Fate of Place and Memory in the Art of Yun-fei Ji and Hai Bo” The recent work of the Chinese painter Yun-fei Ji (b. 1963, Beijing) and photographer Hai Bo (b. 1962, Changchun) offer a timely optic through which to examine the fate of a “sense of place” and corresponding individual and social memory in contemporary China. Both artists resist the “siren call of amnesia” in order to bare witness, through the stories they tell, of small village life and the forced migrations of peoples from their ancestral lands, and the environmental effects of pollution to the waters and air of rural and urban China. Drawing on the studies of “place,” “memory” and “forgetting” in the works of the historian Vera Schwarcz, the philosopher Edward S. Casey, the French anthropologist Marc Augé, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and Norwegian architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz, this paper will discuss the art of Yun-fei Ji and Hai Bo and the light it sheds on the issues of “place” and “memory” in contemporary China. GNERRE, Maria Lucia Abaurre (Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil) “The Place of Yoga in Brazilian Culture” 59 In this paper, we will make a brief analysis of the place of Yoga (an ancient practical and philosophical system related to the Hindu religion) within the Brazilian cultural universe, a context wherein it starts to create new identities. Yoga tradition has gained its own features in Brazil, due to peculiarities of our cultural identity. Our proposal is to discuss, in an introductory way, the forms and discourses through which Yoga tradition is presented to our society both as a philosophical and as a practical-physical system by Brazilian Yoga masters who, since the 1960's, begin to publish their own books and to create explanations and their own terminology to suit our cultural context. We intend, therefore, to analyze the ways in which Yoga's place is being built in our culture, and, at the same time, the ways in which it is being adapted to our own socio-cultural characteristics. Although some contemporary Brazilian teachers insist on the importance of valuing certain practices exactly because of their "purity", "originality" and "fidelity to the Indian philosophical tradition", we consider the reverse process as the most important from a historical point of view: the formation of a "Brazilian Yoga", which results from a particular reading of this Indian tradition in Brazil, due to our historical specificities. Such specificities – which, since the beginning of colonization, acted in the shaping of our bodies, our beliefs and the way we relate to the world, – will be analyzed in our speech. We believe that it is exactly through the lenses of these constitutive elements which came from the historical and social formation of the Brazilian identity that Yoga finds its place in Brazilian culture since the mid-twentieth century. GRIFFITH-DICKSON, Gwen (Lokahi Foundation, UK) “The Place of ‘Place’ in Communities: Symbol, Substrate, or Actor?” Humanity moves place; and two of the most urgent and destabilising issues of the current moment have arisen from humans dramatically moving place: those fleeing from Islamic State (and allied movements e.g. Boko Haram) to save their lives and modes of existence, and those fleeing to Islamic State precisely to realise an imagined life and mode of existence. These mass movements then throw up chronic, unanswered questions of what it means to belong in/to a place; with sharp political divisions in the countries receiving refugees and ‘migrants’; but also those same countries alarmed by the rejection of their citizens who leave to join Da’esh. Meanwhile, those whose territory is taken feel alienated from the purported new nation-state in their own earthly place that rejects and indeed endangers their lives and ways of life. Against this backdrop, I ask what it means to belong to a physical place and what place can uniquely contribute to human communities. By this point in human history, most of our human habitats are palimpsests: written on and scraped off to be written on anew by new occupants, cultures, civilisations. Most of us now live in a diverse human landscape: whether patchy, with pockets of demographic difference created in layers of migration and change; or whether hybridised; or both. So what gives a people a purported ‘right to be here?’ And is the physical (or better, earthly) place – the land, the waters – ever an entity or indeed an actor in communitarian living, or must it only be the 60 passive substrate for human activity that creates a community and a sense belonging out of everything but this land? The fantasy of creating a new state – be it Israel, a newly independent nation-state of Hawai‘i or indeed Da‘esh – where it will at last be possible to right historic injustices and lead a life in accordance with communitarian values and vision, is a very powerful one. How much easier and faster to sweep aside a messy or failed historical project and begin anew, as compared to the slow, ongoing work of scraping and rewriting on a palimpsest. In some cases (Israel, Hawai‘i) the land itself – this earthly place – is an ineradicable dimension of that vision. In others, whatever the historical significance or symbolism ascribed to particular spots, the vision is a universal one; and its current location or battlefield is merely political expedience, the first, most likely win of an imagined sequence of conquests to establish a limitless state of righteousness. But even when the place itself is part of the compelling vision, is the power of a place in its own right undermined when other tests of belonging are applied – whether it be ideology, religion, race or ethnicity, or even the rule of a particular vision of law? And if so, is that not a betrayal of the ‘power of earthly place’? GROFF, Peter S. (Bucknell University) “Cultivating Weeds: Ibn Bājja and Nietzsche on the Philosopher’s Regime of Solitude” This paper returns to an old question first raised by Socrates: what is the appropriate place of the philosopher in the polis? In Platonic dialogues, we see again and again the apparently corrosive effect that the philosopher’s activity has on the laws, myths, traditions and inherited values of the city-state. Socrates’ solution to this tension in the Republic is to distinguish between “true” philosophers and their various eccentric or vicious imitations, and then resituate the former from the periphery of society to the center of Kallipolis. In this way he seeks to establish the optimal coincidence of knowledge and political power necessary for justice in the city. The Platonic ideal of the “philosopher ruler” gets taken up by al-Fārābī (872-950 CE), who reinterprets it in the Islamicate context as the philosopher-legislator-prince-imām who rules the virtuous city and makes salvific happiness possible for all. Like Socrates’ Kallipolis, al-Fārābī’s madīnat al-fāḍila is conceptually set over against a host of ignorant, immoral and erring cities. But it also contains within itself dangerous oppositional forces: a profusion of citizens who in various ways share in the nature of the philosopher but who also fall short (i.e., with respect to the ultimate goals they pursue, their ability to reason properly, their capacity to enact their convictions about the good, etc). Al-Fārābī calls these diverse types “weeds” (nawābit) and proposes different means of ameliorating, controlling or eliminating them altogether. Enter Ibn Bājja (1095-1138), who initiates a crucial shift regarding the place of the philosopher in the city. He adopts and to a large extent accepts al-Fārābī’s normative ideal of the perfect city, but rejects the possibility of it ever being brought into being. For Ibn Bājja, all cities are inescapably sick and ignorant, and thus inimical to the 61 philosophical life. The philosopher must therefore cultivate a regime of solitude, dwelling in the imperfect city and depending upon it to some extent for her bodily survival, but carefully insulating herself from it spiritually and intellectually. For Ibn Bājja, solitary philosophers effectively become the “weeds” of imperfect cities and the best possible regime is reduced to a microcosm of the solitary individual. Interestingly, we find a similar idea in Nietzsche, despite his rather Platonic insistence that genuine philosophers are “commanders and legislators.” Particularly in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche emphasizes the necessity of solitude as a kind of naturalized ascetic practice directed towards the cultivation of higher types. For both Ibn Bājja and Nietzsche, then, the philosopher must live an isolated, parasitic life on the margins of the society she rejects, in order to preserve her spiritual autonomy and care for herself properly. I shall consider the prospects of a “regime of solitude” (both positive and negative) for the philosophical life, as well as the metaphor of “weeds” and the ironies involved in the deliberate cultivation of such life-forms. GUERRERO, Laura P. (Utah Valley University) “The Place of Reality and the Reality of Place: Ramifications of Buddhist Conventionalism about Reality” Coming to realize that reality is ultimately conventional is, according to Mahāyāna Buddhists, transformative in a positive way of how a person acts and reacts to her lived world. However, and perhaps ironically, the claims to conventionality threaten to undermine the epistemic and ethical norms required to support the Buddhist soteriological project and defend it against rivals. In an effort to address this concern, this paper explores the role that lived experience pragmatically plays in shaping that conventional reality and determining its norms in non- arbitrary ways. Focusing on a comparison between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra articulations of the conventionality of reality, I will argue that the Yogācāra account of representation that is defended by Dharmakirti provides a pragmatist account that can support the necessary norms while retaining the conventionality that is important to the Buddhist account of the reality of one’s lived world. GUPTA, Sandeep (Dei University, India) “Consciousness - Space – Place” “Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other” and “what begins with undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” observes Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan’s observations reflect the Eastern philosophy wherein experience is central to human life and ‘place’ is a subset of ‘space’. Organic survival, satisfaction and multiplication are the three genetic compulsions of all living species and it is no different for man. Based on the quality of his experience each one creates his own ‘place’ (physical, mental, social, economic, political and religious) and holds on to it, in his bid to feel secure, happy and loved. Unmindful of his basal 62 instincts (desire, anger, attachment, greed and ego) he more often than not becomes the slave of his ‘place’ rather than its master. He identifies himself with his ‘place’ to such an extent that expansion and protection of his ‘place’ becomes his sole goal of life. This tendency became all the more pronounced during the scientism and materialism driven 19th & 20th centuries which perceived reality and life in material terms and declared the higher realms of reality (spirit & mind) as a figment of imagination. However, with systems theory and quantum physics gaining acceptance in mainstream science, there is a growing realization that spirit and mind also have an identity of their own and are as real as matter. This makes it necessary to look afresh at the concept of ‘place’ in light of the scheme of an integrated universe so that instead of being a limiting factor to human growth, ‘place’ becomes a contributing factor to human growth. In the Indian thought the creation is made of spirit, mind and matter and so is man, which makes him the perfect microcosm of the macrocosm. Further, nature has bestowed him with a dual dimension consciousness which not only gives him the ability to change himself but also his external environment. At the spirit level there is no differentiation between ‘space’ and ‘place’. The differentiation sets in at the mind* level in a subtle form (*mind is different from brain), which gets highly pronounced at the material level. In the ordinary course, human consciousness is pre-occupied by the material world and its dynamics. Once it learns to subsist and operate from the mind level a marked change takes place in the way one perceives life and reality. ‘My place is different and I need to protect its uniqueness’, which earlier seemed important, ceases to be so as it becomes ‘my place is different but similar’. Similarly as consciousness expands and starts operating from the spirit level, the subtle differentiation which exists between ‘space’ and ‘place’ at the mind level also ceases and one starts seeing the entire creation as one big undifferentiated ‘space’ from which the mind spaces and material places have been born. This transformation in consciousness is a mental revolution in the way one sees, thinks and acts and in no-way undermines the ‘place’ creating propensity of man or the necessity of ‘place’ in man’s life to enable him to lead a full life. Drawing from the ancient Indian philosophy which integrates the secular and the nonsecular needs of man, and has evolved through the ages (Vedanta & Buddhism) and still continues to evolve in modern times in the form of Sant-Mat and gives out a definite “science of human possibilities” (philosophy of consciousness), this paper focuses on how through the process of consciousness expansion, ‘place’ a core human requirement can be transformed from a growth limiting factor to a growth promoting factor. GURU, Gopal (Jawahrlal Nehru University, India) “The Metaphysics of Pilgrimage: Wari as Dynamic Space” Arguably, places are empty; they become meaningful after they are filled with different kinds of meanings. These meanings are generated through social relations and are communicated through language. Logic of social hierarchy for example, tends to 63 fragments place thus nesting people in stigma and un-freedom. Spaces with their dynamic nature, on the other hand, assigns liberating meaning to places thus erasing the stigma that is associated with place. Places provide basic normative condition for the realization of values such as freedom, equality and dignity. Place, in order to develop this normative capacity has to be reconfigured along new organizing principles such as democracy. Thus, the realization of freedom depends on places that are seamless both in terms of time and space. One could argue and scholars have been arguing that reconfiguration of place occurs in the modern time. It is here one can raise the point: do we require modernity as the moment of arrival for such a reconfiguration of places on egalitarian line? Does one require modernity to release dynamic spaces that then can effectively attack the constraining logic that tends to fragment the places? I , in this essay, would like to interrogate the modernity thesis and argue that even before the arrival of modernity in India, certain humanitarian tradition did generate spaces which were accommodative of associational aspirations of different social groups. For example the heterodox tradition of WARI (the pilgrimage), which has its origin in 13th century Maharashtra continues to exist even today with the same dynamism of social inclusiveness. I, in this essay, would discuss the emergence of WARI as a dynamic space particularly in the context of the limits of place which is constitutive of water tight compartmentalization. Conversely, it would also be imperative to discuss the limits of WARI in terms of its inability to reproduce dynamic spaces in differentially structured social places. In short, the focus of the essay would on the tension between the place whose logic is to fold people in the rigid hole and the spaces whose dynamism is to free people from this hole and make them flow freely. GUZOWSKA, Joanna (University of Warsaw, Poland) “Speech in the Realm of Teeming Life: An Exploration of the Hengxian and the Qiwulun” The Hengxian paints an intriguing picture of human speech. Words (言) and names (名) are like all other phenomena in the realm of teeming life (茲生). They too follow the threefold logic of spontaneous emergence, reproduction, and gradual entrenchment. As is implied throughout the text, no particular name (no doctrine, innovation, affair, action, etc.) enjoys any special cosmic or natural warrant. Cosmically speaking, each actual name is allowed for with equal indifference. Naming is simply one more process of life. A similar insight can be found in the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, the (in)famous Qiwulun, although there the view of speech (言) as yet another life phenomenon is entertained as an open question rather than stated with certainty. 64 However, speech is not only natural but also normative and both texts recognize it. The Hengxian notes that human activity is the source of disorder in the world (亂), and the Qiwulun explores the problem of inter–school conflict that is predicated on the distinction between right and wrong (是非). The goal of my presentation is to explore how the Hengxian and the Qiwulun construe speech as both spontaneous and normative, both natural and human, with an eye to formulating an account of how speaking both partakes in and transforms the realm of teeming life. HALL, Gerard (Australian Catholic University, Australia) "The Pertinence of Panikkar's Diatopical Hermeneutics for Intercultural Dialogue with Aboriginal Australians XXXXX HAQ, Sara (University of Maryland) “’My Place is the Placeless:’ A-Duality and Homeless Sexualities in Mystical Thought” What do Rumi’s metaphysics of placelessness/tracelessness and Jennifer Purvis’ notion of a “homeless sexuality” have to say to each other? How are Sufis “queer” in embodying the vulnerability that comes with owning one’s homelessness? Using Raimon Panikkar’s notion of advaita (a-duality), and the Sufi concept of zaat (identity/essence/being), I make the case that our identity politics are always-already intertwined with our ontological being. The Sufi is that which is always-already queer; the queer-of-color is that which is alwaysalready fueled by the spiritual. Given that much work has already been done on the latter by womanists, feminists, and queer activists of color, rooting their theorizing in religio- spirituality far more than white feminists, this paper will focus on the former statement: the Sufi is that which is always-already queer. In this paper, I will do the following. 1) In the first section, I present two poems, one written by Rumi, the other by me, illustrating an example of how both Sufi thought and queer theory study the underlying instability of categories. Queer theory primarily works to destabilize gender binaries; Sufi philosophy destabilizes self/Other, human/Divine binaries by using the destabilization of gender binaries as one of its many metaphorical lenses. I use Raimon Panikkar’s notion of aduality, Rumi’s poetry, and Layli Maparyan’s womanist philosophy to make the case for a love-based feminist/queer method that Orientalism look like today? What does disorienting neo- compartmentalized, otherized sexuality that is defined by xenophobic/xenophilic orientations? These are a few of the questions that are both performed and analyzed in this paper. 65 2) In the second section, I use Panikkar’s advaitic philosophical notion of a lovingknowledge and a knowing-love to reflect upon the beloved Punjabi folk-tale of HeerRanjha. Drawing on the poem “Chanting Ranjha,” in which the male poet is masquerading in the female voice of Heer, I make the case for a Sufi linguistic and poetic style that is always-already queer. I also conduct an in-depth analysis of Persian and Punjabi terms kardan/kardi (to chant, to do) and zaat (identity, being), to make the case for the inextricable intertwining of identity politics with the ontological, the doing with the being. 3) In the third section, I switch focus to the male character of the epic, Ranjha, discussing the theme of homelessness and connecting this with Jennifer Purvis’ notion of a homeless sexuality. What feminist/queer scholars have identified as disidentification in the context of queer hermeneutics – challenging straight/gay binaries via hybridized positionality, and calling for a post-binary approach to sex, sexuality, gender, and race – is symbolized in the theme of homelessness found in Ranjha’s story. I employ Panikkar’s ideas on the contradictory nature of aduality to frame this trope of owning one’s homelessness as a new home. 4) In my last section, I use AnaLouise Keating’s notion of threshold theorizing to reflect on how this paper has been an exercise of this methodology, and looking forward, how we must move past an interrelatedness and call for a radical intra-relatedness. HeerRanjha’s epic is simply one representation of what such a radical intra-relatedness looks like, a learning to let the Other speak from within the self, rather than simply speaking on behalf of the Other. HARRINGTON, Michael (Duquesne University) “Neo-Confucian Reflections on Being Out of Place” In a world where human desire and heavenly principle matched up precisely, there would be no need for anyone to be out of place. The Song dynasty Confucians have a robust vocabulary to describe the proper placement of things, employing terms like “principle” (li 理), “pattern” (wen 文), and “position” (wei 位), among others. Effective action requires that the position of the agent match up with his or her disposition, as well as with the positions of other people and things involved in the action, and more broadly with the pattern of heaven and earth. The world we live in is not one where this is always or often possible. It is important, then, for the student of government to consider not only how to put everything in its place, but how to be effectively out of place. The Song dynasty commentaries on the Yijing provide a useful starting point for such a consideration. The Symbol commentary frequently makes the claim that a line’s “position is not proper for it” (weibudang 位不當). This claim serves as a starting point for Confucian reflections on when it is good or bad to be out of place. The initial and top lines of the hexagrams also occasionally provoke a commentator to give advice on how to be effectively out of place, since these lines are often understood as referring to 66 people who ought to be serving in government, but for one reason or another remain in seclusion. Finally, the entirety of the March (lü 旅) hexagram is understood by several Song Confucians as providing advice for those who are out of place. From these scattered reflections, it is possible to develop an attitude toward being out of place that is more than mere resignation, and that reflects an appreciation for its personal and political significance. HARRIS, Stephen (Leiden University, The Netherlands) “Samsara is Nirvana: Locating the kleśas in Buddhist Cosmic Psychology” A startling feature of Buddhist psychology, cosmology and meditational theory is the correlation of saṃsāric mental states with cosmological realms of rebirth. According to Abhidharmic categorizations of mental states, this correlation is quite literal: anger is the state of mind that predominates in a hell realm, and when I lose my temper I share the mental experience of a hell being. These same claims apply for the other realms of rebirth, with craving predominating in the realm of hungry ghosts, ignorance in the realm of animals and so on. There is a sense, then, in which the negative mental states (kleśas) are physically located, as (predominantly) arising in a given realm. I argue that this early cosmological picture hints at the rejection of dualisms in later Mahāyāna metaphysics. I begin by emphasizing the distinction in Buddhist psychology between pleasure and pain (vedanā) which are karmically and soteriologically neutral, and the negative mental states (kleśas) like anger and craving. I use The Simile of the Saw from the Pali Canon as illustrating the limit case in which terrible physical pain is experienced with complete emotional equilibrium. Theoretically, this same distinction should apply in the negative realms as well, and this is what we find in Śāntideva’s description of the bodhisattva’s complete immunity to distress in the hell realms. Nirvana with remainder, therefore, has no physical location within the realms of existence, but instead is a skillful (kuśala) mode of interacting with any external phenomena whatsoever. All of this hints at the radical rejection of dualisms we find in later Mādhyamika and Yogācāra metaphysics. Here the dichotomy between virtuous (kuśala) and negative (kleśa) mental states is itself destabilized, but the basic soteriological movement we find in the spatialization of the kleśas repeats within the psychological domain. Nirvana with remainder is no longer merely constituted by a subset of virtuous qualities, but is now a mode of experiencing all phenomena whatsoever as empty of intrinsic existence (svabhāva) or of subject object duality. HARRIS, Thorian R. (University of Maryland Baltimore County) “Confucius and the Confederacy: What Early China Can Teach us About the Ethics of Memorials” 67 Memorials have many social functions, but perhaps the most definitive is to transcribe, transmit, and trigger the memory of the subject—whether it is a specific person, group, event, and action. Memorials that are dedicated to specific persons can express love, grief, thanksgiving—yet, regardless of the specific intentions of those who establish them, many such memorials also take on the function of commending the memorialized person to our attention, encouraging us to regard the person as exemplary, even if only in a limited capacity. As recent debate in the United States over the memorials dedicated to figures of the Confederacy demonstrates, the normative force of memorials and the moral significance of putative exemplars are rightfully subject to critique. But what are the proper terms and goals of such criticisms? Must those whom we memorialize be wholly free from moral flaws? If we are critical of monuments dedicated to militant defenders of the institution of slavery, must we also be critical of monuments dedicated to slave-owning presidents? Can monuments focus on specific aspects of a person, and not require approbation of everything about the person? Can memorials function to open up critical discussions and sustain conflicting moral evaluations, or is a dominant moral interpretation always implied? Is it possible that we might memorialize cautionary, and not simply exemplary, figures? Drawing upon the discussions on exemplars, both terrible and excellent, in the early Confucian literature, as well as the critical engagement, on the part of Confucians, in the practices of memorialization— burial mounds, ancestor tablets, historical records—I will define and defend a Confucian program for critically assessing the normative force and moral significance of exemplars and the places and objects we use to memorialize them. HAVLICK, David (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) “Re-Placing Memory: Total War, Commemoration, and Reuse of Militarized Sites in Japan” The 1931 to 1945 Asia Pacific war created an array of specific militarized places and more generalized militarized landscapes. These latter, the product of a commitment to total warfare pursued especially by the US starting in 1944, present a challenge to subsequent efforts at commemoration. It can be a relatively straightforward task to commemorate a particular site of military impact, but when warfare has broadly impacted entire cities or regions it introduces a problem of scale. Total warfare also creates a distinctive and more diffused post-war politics of memory that raises ethical concerns for land redevelopment, commemoration, or obliteration. Paradoxically, the turn to total war may actually make it less likely that we will later memorialize and learn from the horrors of war. As the survivors of total war in Japan become fewer and fewer, the task of translating direct experiences into a broader memory of cultural trauma also becomes both more difficult and more important. This paper examines the irony of total warfare diminishing the cultural significance of particular places, and asks in turn to what degree current efforts to revise history and social studies texts, and to remilitarize Japan, might be a reflection of the Asia-Pacific War fading from view. Are there ways to better cultivate an ethic of memory that is grounded in physical places, and to elevate the meaning of the past so it can more clearly inform the present and the future? 68 HE, Jinli (Trinity University) “Spatiality and Location in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi” Zhuangzi’s interest in spatiality and location constitutes important features of his philosophy. In this aspect, several questions can be explored: Why it is necessary for occupying huge space and changing locations (the image of Kun in the Xiaoyaoyou [Free and Easy Wandering])? Why there has to be a specific location (for example, Kuse Mountain)? What is the significance of spatiality (occupying big space vs. occupying small space)? How is spatiality expressed in the concept of you 有 and its relationship with wu 無 ? How to read the dislocation of the body? How and what does it for losing/forgetting oneself (losing your spatiality and your location), etc..? In my discussion of those questions, I also intend to explain Zhuangzi’s possible contribution to our contemporary social space. HEINE, Steven (Florida International University) “Utopian Space and Institutional Place in Classical Chan Buddhism” This paper examines the distinction between two seemingly contradictory yet complementary views of the sacred habitat for monks evident in classical Chinese Chan Buddhist writings and forms of practice: one based on a utopian sense of mystical immersion in an unregulated and unfettered natural setting; and the other based on the institutional construction of a strictly regulated and highly disciplined monastic training regimen. The utopian view is primarily evoked in Tang dynasty legends of monks who lived exclusively or with preference for a natural state unfettered by the encumbrances of society. Some of the main examples include the Bird’s Nest Monk who resided at the top of a tree, from which perch he instructed Bai Juyi among many others; the Boat Monk who floated on a lake for thirty years until he found a fitting disciple and deliberately capsized; and Baizhang’s Peak, where the prominent master known for his monastic rules and devotion to laboring in the fields, escaped for solitary contemplation which he referred to as the “most extraordinary matter of Chan.” The institutional view is mainly demonstrated by the Song dynasty’s uniform pattern of Chan temple construction, which contained seven main buildings, including the Dharma Hall for preaching and the Monks Hall for meditation. Ideally, based on Baizhang’s Rules a temple would not need to house a Buddha Hall since the Abbot who resided in a special quarters was considered a manifestation of the Living Buddha, but that was aim was rarely practiced. In any case, each and every aspect of the monastic life was carefully regulated on a 24/7 basis, in contrast to the independent wanderings of Tang recluses. A famous verse about an all-night vigil while gazing at the mountains and waters after hearing an inspirational sermon at a temple by the eminent Song lay poet Su Dongpo provides an intriguing bridge linking the utopian and institutional impulses in Chan. 69 HEITZ, Marty (Oklahoma State University) “I Am Here Now”—A Finger Pointing at the Moon” Given that the best we can do, when speaking of ultimate truth, is offer a “finger pointing to the moon,” I have developed my own “pointer,” and it expresses what I take to be the fundamental, existential fact: I Am Here Now. That may not sound like much, but as I understand it each word in this statement is a synonym for every other word, such that any single word directly implies the other three. Also, while this is a statement of absolute or “transcendent” truth, it has a relative and “contingent” corollary: i am here now. That is, we live our lives in the contingent realm of specific places and times, as this specific person with a specific, relative history, yet wherever I am, whatever the clock time or whoever I am, “I Am Here Now.” So in the deepest sense, I can never be “there” or “then,” for I can only ever be Here and Now. I use this, of course, to help express and explain the non-duality of Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Daoism. HEMMINGSEN, Michael (McMaster University, Canada) “Place-Based Reasons in Non-Western Thought” In this paper I describe a place-based kind of validity claim that I refer to as “ecological truth”, and suggest that it shows up the limitations of Jurgen Habermas’ ontology of reasons. Habermas suggests that there are three kinds of reasons that are able to be offered in discourse: claims of fact, claims of normative validity and claims of honest self-expression. These three kinds of reason constitute, he thinks, the full range of validity claims available to us, and he identifies the ability to clearly distinguish between them as a specifically modern accomplishment. He holds that non-modern societies, many indigenous ones among them, blur the lines between these three categories and hence fall short of the ideal practices of discourse. Ecological truth, I suggest, is a kind of reason available in discourse that is rooted in a close intertwining of practices and communities with particular ecologies and environments that cannot be subsumed into the categories of fact, norm and selfexpression. As such, I question Habermas’ certainty that he has charted the full extent of the kinds of reasons available to human beings. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos argues, “there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice.” I ask, therefore, why the three kinds of reasons used by “modern” Westerners should constitute the basic set, deviation from which equates to a failure of understanding. Using the example of “ecological truth” as an alternative kind of reason, I argue that, rather than being a confused blurring of the lines of the ideal set of reasons, expressions on the part of indigenous and “traditional” societies that do not conform to Habermas’ categories of fact, norm or self-expression are just as likely to be instances of an expanded ontology of reasons that are equally legitimate. HENKEL, Jeremy (Wofford College) 70 “The Inescapable Contingency of the Dhamma: Applying the Buddhist Critique of Essences to Buddhism” If the Buddhist critique of essences is correct, it follows that there is no essence of Buddhism. But if this is the case, then what if any criterion can we use to determine whether any particular thinker or school of thought can appropriately be called Buddhist? If no objective criterion can be identified, then self-attribution risks becoming immune to error: Dōgen is a Buddhist because he says he is, and Śāṃkara is not a Buddhist because he says he’s not, and there’s no more to the issue than each individual’s claims. But, as Wittgenstein teaches us, if there is no way to be incorrect, then both correctness and incorrectness are rendered senseless. If this analysis is correct, then the Buddhist critique of essences seems to collapse under its own weight. But this conclusion need not be understood as a reductio of the Buddhist denial of essences. My thesis in this presentation is that we can identify an objective criterion for identifying a school as Buddhist while embracing the Buddhist denial of essences. We can do this by looking not for some one thing that all forms of Buddhism are, but rather for something that all forms of Buddhism do. Buddhism is not, fundamentally, any particular teaching, practice, or doctrine, nor some set thereof. Rather, Buddhism is an approach, a methodology. Specifically, Buddhism is a methodology for responding to a dominant ideology. This feature of Buddhism, I contend, explains why Buddhism can manifest in such varied ways and still be recognizable as Buddhism. Buddhism is inescapably contingent and hybridized—always existing in dependence on and in response to a dominant cultural milieu. HEPACH, Maximilian Gregor (University of Freiburg, Germany) “Attempting a ‘Philosophy of Climate” The places we find ourselves in everyday are themselves always in some sort of climate. We may first think of the climate zone we live in, or of the current season that has been influencing our mood. But even our indoor spaces are ‘well tempered’: Most of us spend our days feeling the constant climate of a warm Central European day in May year-round, literally conditioning the air to our needs. In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger dedicates most of his book to understanding the structure of our everyday existence in the world, yet the spatial dimension of our existence seems to fall short. As Watsuji Tetsuro points out eloquently in “Climate and Culture”, Heidegger neglects to emphasize that our being-in-the-world is always attuned to a certain climate. For Watsuji climate does not just describe ‘long-term weather’, but also the topography we find ourselves in. We may think of fertile soil as a good example for the complexity of climate: The fertility of soil is dependent not only on a certain amount of rain and suitable temperatures, but also on the right physical properties and nutrients of/in the ground. Furthermore, soil is only fertile insofar as it is fertile for something, for certain plants to grow, or for people to be able to live off of the land. Yet climate is not only experienced as something seemingly ‘objective’ in the world; our own emotions may very well be experienced as a form of climate or weather, as 71 Hermann Schmitz points out. We may be swept up by a mood that fills the air, or be aware of the tense atmosphere in the room we are in. In a more general sense we also speak of intellectual or political climates that determine what can be thought, done and said. What all these aspects of climate show, is that climate is not a single observable phenomena, but rather something of which we are both a part and which determines who we are in existential ways. Aspects of what I have here called ‘climate’ seem to turn up in terms such as the between, which Heidegger develops in his later work, or the Chinese/Japanese term ki,2 which may come closest to describing what I am after here: something in which everything is, and which is seemingly between everything. The place in which everything takes place? To think about climate means to reflect upon all the different ways we influence the world around us, and how our environment in turn influences us. Difficulties begin to arise when we begin to ask even the simplest questions, such as what is cold when we feel cold: is it the air, or us? In the following I hope to illuminate this fabric of climate, of place, we are woven into. HEYD, Thomas (University of Victoria, Canada) “Pilgrimage journeying in Bashō and Alexander von Humboldt” In this presentation I argue for the place-making power of pilgrimage journeying by comparing the travel accounts of Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) in Oku no hosomichi and Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) in Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. I propose that both Bashō’s fictionalised account of his travel to remote regions of Japan, climaxing in his visit to Dewa Sanzan, and von Humboldt’s walk to the summit of the Teide volcano on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Isles, constitute pilgrimages, albeit not religious. I argue that their journeys both reinforce and reconstitute their destinations as places, carving them out of the surrounding space. As a result of their respective journeys their destinations stand out as infused with particular meaning, which later visitors may seek to reconstruct and reaffirm through their own journeys. HIGGINS, Kathleen (University of Texas at Austin) “Putting the Dead in their Place” Place seems to be a notion that is inapplicable to the dead, for in a straightforward way they are no longer situated within our time-space continuum. Yet in part for this reason, their living survivors struggle to find a place for them. Whether or not this struggle plays out in the appropriation of literal places varies with cultures. Some, such as those that have a tradition of sky burial, eschew associating terrestrial places with particular dead individuals. But in many societies, living people create and mark sites for relating to the deceased in the form of burial and reburial sites, memorials, shrines, altars, dedicated 72 spaces, and images that symbolically revive the dead (such as paintings, photographs, and sculptures). The practice of dedicating literal places to the dead serves a number of functions that benefit bereaved people (whether considered individually or as groups). The very gesture of marking a place for the dead helps to restore a sense of normalcy to our world after the presumption of continuity in space and time has been disrupted by a cherished person’s death. Such places also enable the living to act on behalf of the dead in a context in which one’s efforts seem otherwise ineffectual and one’s sense of failing the deceased may be acute. As sites of action for sheltering the dead (tending to their remains and honoring them and their legacies), such places help the living to reassert relationships of caring and close connection with the deceased. By providing a space in which the person’s absence can be felt as present, they provide the living with a focus for communicative gestures directed toward the deceased person, satisfying a desire that may otherwise be frustrated. Such places can also reassure the living that a beloved individual will not be forgotten, for they are often marked by some announcement that reminds the world of what it has lost with this person’s death. However, literal places for the dead have their ironies. Robert Musil argues that memorials erected to preserve people and events in our memories are especially ineffective for this purpose, for they become part of the landscape that we typically ignore as we pass by. Moreover, even though the places deliberately associated with a deceased person can help to summon up a sense of that person’s presence for the living, they draw attention to the person’s absence. That absence can be a real presence, but the memory can be at least as painful as reassuring. Such places are also potential sites of collision between our memories of the deceased and the imaginings we have of the person as now having an alien status or lacking existence entirely. One might see the effort to find a literal place for the dead as ill-conceived, if understandable. It might seem a gesture of denial in the face of reality, a fetishizing of the remains of the person, or a form of concretizing of wishes that cannot be fulfilled. But the possibility of maintaining a meaningful place for the dead in the sense of having a degree of a “live” relationship with them is not delusory. A living person can do this by placing the relationship with a deceased person on a new footing, now in the role of a guide and perhaps an ancestor. While this involves considerable work of creative imagination on the part of the living person, such active relating can involve honoring, deferring to, and even negotiate with someone who is dead. It can result in finding new meanings in the relationship. While literal places and spaces can serve facilitative roles, they do not on their own ensure a place for the dead in our lives. But to the extent that the living person remains open and responsive, relationships with the dead can continue to develop. We cannot know what we are to the dead, if such a notion is even coherent. But we can keep learning and cherishing what they are to us, and in doing so we make and maintain a place for the dead. 73 HOWARD, Veena (California State University, Fresno) “Queen Gāndhārī’s Mapping the Battlefield: Reversing the Gaze from Detached Dispassion to Dynamic Interplay of Emotions” Within the epic poem Mahābhārata, the “Book of the Women,” Queen Gāndhārī laments the “Great War,” in which all of her heroic sons and allies are killed and their wives remain widowed. The Queen surveys the battlefield, showing Lord Kṛṣṇa decapitated bodies and scattered limbs of the warriors while describing their heroic traits and the glorious lives they once lived. Gāndhārī’s mapping of the post-war battlefield of loss and lamentation is in stark contrast to Krishna’s pre-war mapping of the battlefield arrayed with warriors seeking glory of Kṣatriya dharma. Her graphic tale, recounting the loss experienced by women as the result of this war, invokes strong feelings of grief, disgust, and compassion on the part of listeners. Set on the field of Kurukṣetra, the “Book of Women” acts as a cautionary tale questioning the virtues of impervious machismo and stoic asceticism. The religious value of the transcendence of emotions — “detached quietism” —is challenged through display of raw emotions. Making powerful use of bodily metaphor, severed heads show mind and body are literally at a disconnect. The supposedly heroic male form, now shattered throughout the battlefield, is juxtaposed with the open vulnerability, empathy and compassion as articulated in the bodies of the grieving widows— revealing true strength and resilience. Finally, the lament incites a dispelling of grief, and thus, as a form of catharsis marks the beginning of a healing process. This paper examines the power of dynamic interplay of emotions, extolled in the “Book of the Women,” in opposition with the lauded detachment from emotions championed in numerous Indian philosophical texts, including the Bhagavad-Gītā. Through this investigation, it explores the transformative and liberating power of emotions, specifically of sorrow and compassion (karuṇa), through literary and philosophical approaches to aesthetic concept of rasa (“aesthetic delight”). HUANG, Yong (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) “Environmental Virtue Ethics: Contributions from the Confucian Tradition” Environmental ethics has been dominated by utilitarianism and deontology. However, in recent years, dissatisfied with these two approaches, a number of scholars, such as Thomas Hill, Bill Shaw, Ronald Sandler, Philip Cafaro, and Louke van Wensveen, have developed the virtue ethics approach to the issue of environment. As impressive as their works are, this approach also has its own problem. In his influential essay, “Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half Truth but Dangerous as a Whole,” Holmes Rolston III points out that environmental virtue ethics, based in the Aristotelian tradition, is focused on the eudaimonia of the virtuous agents, thus rendering our care for the environment as merely instrumental to our own well-being and unable to recognize the inherent value 74 of the environment itself. In this paper, I shall offer a Confucian version of environmental virtue ethics, which can avoid this problem. I shall develop this Confucian version of environment virtue ethics primarily along the lines suggested by neo-Confucian Cheng Hao and Wang Yangming with their central idea of being on one body with ten thousand things. In their view, a person of ren, the most important Confucian virtue, is one who can feel the itches and pains of everything in the world and thus is naturally inclined to help them get rid of these pain and itches. In this process, the virtuous agents gradually feel that they are in one body with ten thousand things. This version of environmental virtue ethics, just like any other versions of environmental virtue ethics, indeed just like any version of virtue ethics, is also focused on the virtuous person. However, since this virtuous person considers everything in the universe to be part of his/her own body, his/her care for the environment is also for the sake of the environment itself. Indeed, the very distinction between the virtuous agent and the environment no long exists. HUFF, Benjamin (Randolph-Macon College) “Servants of Heaven: The Confucian Gentleman’s Place Within the Cosmos” The nature of the cosmos and humanity’s role within it are fundamental concerns of early Confucian thought. Confucian standards and aspirations are rooted in both an understanding of Tian or Heaven as the place in which human life unfolds, and also of the place of humanity within the cosmic system. Heaven’s mandate or ming both governs events outside of human control and provides a normative standard for human behavior. Hence understanding Tian and ming is essential to the Confucian ethos: “One who does not understand fate (ming) lacks the means to become a gentleman.” Yet recent scholarship displays deep disagreements on how Heaven and its mandate are to be understood. In some cases, scholars suggest that early Confucians themselves lack a consistent conception of what they mean by these words, or that the operative conception shifts dramatically from one reference to the next. Robert Eno goes so far as to say that for Mencius, “Tian is not a stable concept but a chameleonlike notion that resembles nothing more than a convenient rhetorical device.” In a similar spirit, CHEN Ning finds a number of different notions of ming operating in early Confucian texts, with quite different meanings for the term appearing even within the same passage. Other scholars describe a reasonably unified conception, but one whose interpretation of the texts is debatable. At the same time there is uncertainty over how humans should relate to Tian and ming. Since they are revered as the source of the moral standard, as most scholars agree, one might expect that the Confucian gentleman would see other aspects of ming in a similar light, as good or even normative, and would strive to align his life with them. Yet in recent years, several scholars have argued that the gentleman does not look for a harmony between his own goals and ming. Michael Puett, for instance, goes so far as to say that the gentleman’s relationship with ming is “potentially agonistic.” Edward 75 Slingerland takes the somewhat milder view that the gentleman should feel “indifference” toward ming. In this paper I argue, however, that the early Confucian conceptions of Tian and ming are quite consistent and unified, and that the Confucian view of how one should relate to them is similarly unified. The gentleman consistently regards Tian as a beneficent, ordering force. Moreover, he strives to harmonize with ming as manifested in outward events as well as in the moral standard it sets. Far from something distant, he regards ming as something deeply personal, the basis and content of many of his most important actions. That is to say, his relationship with Heaven is not passive but active, not distant but intimate. Kongzi and Mengzi, I argue, fundamentally understand themselves as servants of Heaven. Heaven has assigned them a task, which they regard as their ming, both in the sense of a command they have received and a mandate they bear. This task is essentially continuous with the task, or mandate, of King Wen and the Duke of Zhou. Kongzi and Mengzi endeavor to carry it out despite its loftiness and difficulty. They regard Heaven not merely with respect, but with loyalty and affection. Further, as bearers of its charge, they trust that Heaven will sustain them and open a path for them to succeed, even though they are far from certain just how this path will unfold. Finally, they urge all human beings to join them in serving Heaven by nurturing its gift of human nature (xing) and living by the virtues that are its fruits. HUNG, Ruyu (National Chiayi University, Taiwan) “Critical Trilogy of Place: A Heideggerian Reflection on the Conflict over Land Development in a Taiwanese Village” This paper explores the meaning of dwelling in terms of critical trilogy of place. The critical trilogy is a transformative framework adapted from Gruenewald’s critical pedagogy of place and Heidegger’s philosophical work on dwelling: a critical trilogy of place. The critical trilogy of place, which is composed of decentralisation, reinhabitation, and regermination, reveals the profound meaning of the relationship between human beings and place when applied to a case of land ab/use in Dapu in Taiwan. Through the lens of the critical trilogy, the deep sense of interconnectedness and multi-dimensional relationships between people and place in relation to Heidegger’s notion of dwelling is to be enfolded. This exploration concludes that to dwell in place is an unbeatable longing which sustains living and learning on earth. HUNTINGTON, Patricia (Arizona State University) “Exploring the Place of Karma in Colonial Displacements: Basho, The Western Apache, and Yocagara” The Western Apache hold that place constitutes a greater self of the people because, to borrow Keith Basso’s phrase, “memory sits in places.” In hope of balancing a 76 compassionate attitude toward colonial displacement with the Buddhist path to renunciation of attachment, I will explore the Apache sense of collective memory as located in places through a karmic lens. Places arguably hold karma and karmic streams define our sense of place at both individual and collective levels. I aim to demonstrate that a concrete and lived sense of place resides at the intersection of karma and dharma. Drawing upon Basho’s poetry and Yogacara, I first advance the claim that overcoming karmic conditioning entails a radical renunciation of the desire to inhabit a particular kind of place. The felt need for specific conditions – and by extension a sense of implacement (in Ed Casey’s sense) in a particular geography, land, people, or cultural setting – impedes awakening from attachment to the self. For the enlightened mind the quest for place must give way to journey. Nevertheless, the second claim I wish to advance reflects the paradoxical experience that spiritual renunciation of place, manifest and symbolized in Basho’s life as wandering, allows each place to grant its peculiar implacement for the temporal duration it can have and the lessons it can impart. I will link karma to longings old and new, and to the alaya-vijnana or store consciousness. Karma, I suggest, is tied distinctly to past loss or failure and this eonlong sense of loss provides a background horizon for feeling present losses, failings, atrocities and prospects of loss or tragedy. Dharma, by contrast, I will link to the boundless spatiality of mind (and Great Mirror Cognition) that exceeds time and space and thus avails people of healing and transformation but without obliterating the realities of unrecoverable loss. To the contrary, dharmic living, I hope to show, supports, rather than impedes, rejuvenated engagement with place both by enabling us to grasp the depth of loss and by accounting for how displaced peoples, as American tribes have stated in their own words, survive. Complexities arise when comparing cases of colonial displacement. In the case of Drochu-la pass in Bhutan, where a yearly festival commemorates the death of the Assan, a stolid sense of place can threaten to effectuate a second, post-conflict displacement by covering over the atrocity of massacre and reifying memory. In the case of Western Apache we witness the longstanding effects of displacement in simple erosion of memory. Yet when practices of memorialization and efforts to recover lost heritage reify memory (or objectify the alaya-vijnana), they can displace victims and perpetrators alike from their living karmic inheritance as peoples historically intertwined. Enacted instead as explorations of karmic streams and lamentable acts, festivals of memoralization can recover a genuine sense of implacement as a lived reality with collective acceptance of moral debt. Longing for a complacent, sedentary sense of peace cannot capture Buddhist dharma. Basho's mature poetics provide a lens through which to reveal the interconnected nature of karma and dharma as what grants a lived and changing sense of place. His wandering poetry avails people of a restored sense of karmic inheritance that, precisely because it resists reification, upsets an easy and comfortable home placement. By this 77 jolt, his poetics send people to wander within their histories and traditions to recover painful memories and spark change. Rest and healing arrive, arguably, through journey and by bringing karmic lines forth toward possible ripening and exhaustion. Implacement or being at home in place cannot be lived, I suggest, outside dharmic transformation. Realizing place involves loss and labored renewal, recovery of unhappy memories equally as acceptance of unnameable losses, and accountability for crimes that cannot be undone but which, when released from appropriation, can be let to work their ripening power of effect. HWANG, Eun Young (University of Chicago) “The Paradoxical Place of Self: Augustine and Zhi Yi on the Innermost Place of Nowhere in the Self” In this paper, I will engage with a comparative-philosophical inquiry on the paradoxical place of self in Augustine and Zhi Yi. There has been some history of reading Augustine and the Tendai tradition (Dogen) respectively in light of the paradoxical place of the self, as can been seen from Jean Luc Marion (Marion, the Place of Self, 2008) and Nishida Kitaro (Nishida, The logic of Place and Religious Worldview, 1947). In a similar vein to these interpretations with a comparative philosophical concern, this paper addresses how Augustine and Zhi Yi argues that the self’s experience of valuation and desire in the world is shaped and transformed by the innermost source of the self which is alien to the self but traceable to the nowhere of the religious ultimate. For Augustine, the paradoxical place of eternity, which orients one’s desire and valuation in the soul’s innermost but also above it, is recovered to be the image of God, when the self turns away from one’s disordered self-centricity toward the well-ordered love of eternity. One’s initial reorientation of faith deepens the value of what she seeks and intensifies her desire through this deepening of valuation. For Zhi Yi, the paradoxical place of Buddha-nature, which generates all mental images in its untraceable nowhere, is discovered and actualized when the self discovers the truth of the middle in the inseparability of emptiness and conditioned life, thus having her ordinary valuation, active desire, and existence to be identified with the ultimate wisdom, the ultimate liberation, and the absolute reality. One’s sudden reconfiguration of reality in light of emptiness makes any instance of valuation and desire to be saturated with this radical acceptance of all infinite viewpoints and values as well as some underlying un-defilement, leading to some paradoxical attitude of committed engagement and non-attachment. ILIEVA, Evgenia (Ithaca College) “The Place of Exile: Edward Said and Erich Auerbach in Counterpoint” For some of the most prominent thinkers of the modern period, the characteristic figure of the 20th century was the refugee and exile. Both represented the 78 underside of modernity and the failure of a discourse of human rights. For example, Hannah Arendt wrote evocatively about the experience of rootlessness and metaphysical homelessness – the loss of a sense of place or meaning in the world – and saw these as core elements in the rise of totalitarianism. Others, like Theodor Adorno, sought to transform our thinking on the question of statelessness and exile by insisting that exile was a new and better condition of being, an existence outside the reified world of modern life. Against more recent narratives of the enriching and ultimately redemptive motifs of exile, this paper returns to Edward Said’s reflections on exile as a way of rethinking the notion of place, “the notion by which during a period of displacement someone like Auerbach in Istanbul could feel himself to be out of place, exiled, alienated” (Said 1983, 8). While Said recognized the creativity of exile and brought to light the oppositional politics and secular criticism that an exilic consciousness articulates, he was keen to remind us that the aura of exile could not mask the horrors that enabled it: “that exile is irremediably secular and unbearably historical; that it is produced by human beings for other human beings; and that, like death but without death’s ultimate mercy, it has torn millions of people from the nourishment of tradition, family, and geography” (Said 2000, 174). Since Erich Auerbach is a central figure in Said’s ruminations on exile, this paper endeavors to read together these two thinkers with a view towards using their writings to rethink notions of place. More broadly, the paper seeks to situate their respective work within a broader context that saw the proliferation of discourses of world-history, world-philosophy, and world-literature in the middle decades of the 20th century. INDRACCOLO, Lisa (University of Zurich, Switzerland) “Living the Past: The Confucian Classics as ‘Place’ of Moral Cultivation in Early Imperial China” The early imperial Chinese scholarly tradition has witnessed a lively engagement with its own cultural roots, represented at best in a set of foundational texts, the five “Confucian Classics”. The teachings of the ancients as preserved in this Canon are elected as the personal inner meta-space in which cultural refinement and selfcultivation come together, and complement each other harmoniously. Such goal is proactively achieved through the assiduous, reverential frequentation of these texts, with which an intimate connection is established (Nylan 2001; Lewis 1999). Ideally, through the study of the Classics and the progressive interiorization of their teachings, the heart’s innermost intentions, pulsions, and desires are progressively tamed, and spontaneously modulated in accordance with the values embodied in the words and deeds of the sage kings of antiquity (Kern 2005; Murray 2007). Thus, unravelling the deep, subtle meaning of these texts, and disclosing the ethical teachings 79 that might have been deliberately hidden throughout them through careful exegetical and hermeneutical work are a fundamental task of a true scholar (Schaab-Hanke 2010; Zufferey 2003). However, erudition is not merely a self-referential exercise devoted to the moral and intellectual improvement of the individual. Quite the contrary, it is imbued with a deeper meaning and invested with a broader ethical scope (Knechtges 1976, 2002; Nylan 2014). As the present paper shows, such apparent detachment from the word and bookish immersion into texts is only a temporary necessity, and should be envisioned as a fundamental step in a broader humanistic enterprise involving society at large, and aiming at the establishment of a harmonious society as ultimate goal. A scholar is invested with a duty of crucial importance, since his conduct, molded by the study of the most revered texts, embodies and exudes the values promoted in them. Accordingly, his behavior sets an example for others to follow, igniting a virtuous process that reverberates through all layers of society. The present paper explores the literati’s relationship and interaction with transmitted knowledge, the classical literary tradition and the Confucian Canon in early imperial China, with a specific focus on the role and the value of the corpus of the Classics as ethical and poietico-philosophical “place”. ING, Michael D.K. (Indiana University) “Rethinking the Place of Value Conflicts in Early Confucian Thought” In this presentation I will argue that early Confucians recognized the possibility of irresolvable value conflicts. I will begin the presentation with an overview of the ways in which several contemporary scholars have described Confucianism as a worldview without irresolvable value conflicts. Value conflicts, according to these scholars, are understood as epistemic, not ontological. In other words, many contemporary scholars assert that early Confucians understood the world as a place where tensions between values can be resolved if the skills or other capacities of the moral agent are sufficient to resolve them. Failure to tend to some value signifies a shortcoming of the moral agent, not a problem with the possibilities afforded by the world. I will challenge these narratives by looking at several vignettes that depict irresolvable value conflicts. In constructing my argument I will distinguish between a strong claim and a more moderate claim; the latter of which I wish to emphasize. I will not make the strong claim that Confucians believed that values inherently conflict. Early Confucians did not believe that we live in a fractured world where values are necessarily at odds with each other. Yet they did believe in the reality of value conflicts such that tragic circumstances are possible. In other words, early Confucians recognized the complexities of life such that even the highly skilled moral agent (i.e., a sage) could encounter a situation were the values at stake were fundamentally incapable of being harmonized. As such, early Confucians could see the world as conflictual, although they did not see the world as necessitating conflict. 80 The Confucian conflictual world is one of possible incongruity, where minor value conflicts may even be inevitable given the complexities of life, but values in the abstract sense are not thought to be in conflict in and of themselves. In this light, deep value conflicts such as those I will discuss in this presentation may rarely occur, but the fact that they can occur, and that they can occur for even the most profound people is significant in forecasting the sentiments people have about the world they live in. JAIN, Pankaj (University of North Texas) “Dharma and Science are Complementary: Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization’s Experiments with Himalayan Communities” This is a paper about the dharmic-social-scientific work done by Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (hereafter HESCO) in Himalayan villages in Uttarakhand, India. In 2012, supported by the Fulbright Fellowship for Environmental Leadership, I surveyed about a dozen districts in Uttarakhand to learn about HESCO’s projects related to sustainable development and environment. HESCO arose in the 1970s as a new organization led by its founder Dr. Anil Prakash Joshi and some of his doctoral students. As botanists, as he and his students became aware of Himalayan forestry and other ecological issues, their research increasingly became sociocentric and eventually they all gave up their academic careers and became fulltime social workers. In my research, I discovered that HESCO carries out more than social work. Following Weightman and Pandey (1978), I argue that the concept of dharma can be successfully applied as an overarching term for their socio-economic work. Dharma synthesizes their way of life with social work based on dharma’s multidimensional interpretations as I show in their work with the Himalayan communities. JAKUBCZAK, Marzenna (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland) “Locating the Self: Between Memory, Attention and Discrimination” The issue of the psychophysical integrity of human beings finds several interesting articulations in the classical Indian philosophical texts, including those of SāṃkhyaYoga tradition. A highly debatable question remains, however: where the self, the subject of perception and volition is located, since the principle of consciousness is said to be embedded neither in body nor in mind. To define the epistemic status of the rudimentary self-representation I will discuss in detail how the memory traces of the past deeds (saṃskāra), focused attention (ekāgratā), and the ability to distinguish between ‘I’ and non-‘I’ (vivekakhyāti) mutually condition one another according to Sāṃkhya and Yoga thinkers. While doing so, I will also refer to some contemporary studies of the cognitive, emotional and volitional functions developed thanks to attention regulation and monitoring meditation. 81 JAMES, George Alfred (University of North Texas) "India in Comparative Environmental Philosophy" From the famous essay of 1967 entitled “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis, Lynn White Jr. is often credited with initiating the comparative study of environmental philosophy. His claim was that the dominant religious tradition of the West bears an enormous burden of guilt for the present environmental crisis for removing the sacred from nature, and thereby one of the principal constraints to its mindless exploitation. While White was dubious about the appropriation of non-Western perspectives to address environmental problems his thought did much to stimulate research and reflection upon views of nature both in Western and in non-Western traditions. In this essay I argue that J. Baird Callicott’s Earth’s Insights, represents one of the first scholarly efforts to examine nature in philosophical and religious traditions on a global scale. In terms of his treatment of the traditions of India it represents the first of three distinct phases of scholarship concerning India in this new sub-discipline. I argue that two subsequent phases of scholarship about Indian philosophical and religious attitudes to nature are indebted to his pioneering work. Such scholarship has developed and refined new insights and opened new vistas that have enriched both comparative philosophy and the comparative study of religion. JANZ, Bruce B. (University of Central Florida) “Creating and Activating Concepts in Place: The Example of African Philosophy” There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them. It therefore has a combination [chiffre*]. It is a multiplicity, although not every multiplicity is conceptual. There is no concept with only one component. Even the first concept, the one with which a philosophy "begins," has several components, because it is not obvious that philosophy must have a beginning, and if it does determine one, it must combine it with a point of view or a ground [une raison]. Not only do Descartes, Hegel, and Feuerbach not begin with the same concept, they do not have the same concept of beginning. Every concept is at least double or triple, etc. Neither is there a concept possessing every component, since this would be chaos pure and simple. Even so-called universals as ultimate concepts must escape the chaos by circumscribing a universe that explains them (contemplation, reflection, communication). Every concept has an irregular contour defined by the sum of its components, which is why, from Plato to Bergson, we find the idea of the concept being a matter of articulation, of cutting and cross-cutting. The concept is a whole because it totalizes its components, but it is a fragmentary whole. Only on this condition can it escape the mental chaos constantly threatening it, stalking it, trying to reabsorb it. (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 2004: 15-16) We tend as philosophers to first ask what something is. Definition is in our DNA, and that often takes a specific form, tending to abstraction from particular instances, formative conditions, reception conditions for those concepts by different people, and so 82 forth. We have sometimes tended to leave those other questions to other disciplines. So, psychology, we might think, is concerned with the acquisition and application of concepts rather than their intention, while anthropology might be concerned with the cultural history of concepts and literature is concerned with the rhetorical force of the concepts, and so forth. Cultural philosophy, I want to argue, makes these seemingly easy distinctions much less clear. Historically, at least in the case of Western philosophical attitudes to Africa, the default position has been that the concepts that exist there are either borrowed, unclear or immature, and the very concept of “concept” is undeveloped. This is a view I wish to reject, but not by simply arguing that there is, in fact, a robust theory of concepts in the sense that we might recognize it. I would rather like to see African (and by extension, other non-Western) theories of cognition as bound up with practice and with the creation of concepts, rather than simply the recognition of their existence as fundamental components of thinking. This may seem to simply fall into a pragmatist theory of concepts, one in which their significant lies in what they do rather than what they are, but I think things are more complex than this. And, furthermore, if this argument is successful, I think we will find links to other traditions of concepts in the west, including the phenomenological cognitive sciences and, in a different way, Deleuze and Guattari. African philosophy becomes a useful space in which to think about the creation and activation of concepts. As V. Y. Mudimbe has pointed out, Africa itself is a conceptual geography that has been created by external forces. I have argued elsewhere, though (Janz, Philosophy in an African Place) that the place of thought in Africa has a particular phenomenological character, and tracing the ways in which concepts are both created and activated can tell us much about how they become adequate to African lived reality. This paper will outlines several examples of this kind of conceptual creation in Africa, and argue that the approach that I call “philosophy-in-place” has application elsewhere as well. JEONG, Boram (Duquesne University/ Université de Paris VIII, France) “Place of the Future in the Economy of Melancholia” In antiquity, the concept of time was built around the natural motion of heavenly bodies. Then we began using time as a unit to measure movements, with the introduction of modern technologies. Today, time seems to have become something we ‘spend,’ ‘save,’ ‘waste,’ and ‘manage,’ as we do with money. In this paper I show how time under financial capitalism is largely subordinated to the movement of capital. Drawing upon Deleuze’s remarks on the condition of the contemporary subjects – “[m]an is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt,”– I focus specifically on the temporal structure under which the indebted live. What characterizes the temporality of the indebted, similarly to that of the melancholic, is the feeling of guilt that traps the subject into the circle of an irreversible past and a predetermined future. This paper also reflects on the “temporality 83 of no longer,” exemplified in the terms by which the young generation in Japan and Korea call themselves, such as ‘Three-Give-Up generation’ (or ‘Sam-Po generation’: a generation that gives up courtship, marriage and childbirth) and ‘Satori generation’ (a generation without ambition, or hope). JEONG, Sang-bong (Konkuk University, Korea) “Zhu-Xi’s Metaphysics of Tai-ji” In this paper I will show that tai-ji has several metaphysical meanings. First, tai-ji is the origin of the myriad things in the cosmological sense. Its dong jing 動靜 is not the mechanical movement and quiescence at the empirical level but the cosmological selfunfolding of tai-ji. This is one of metaphysical activities of tai-ji. Second, tai-ji is the universal principle of the myriad things in the world. All the things in the world have the same principle in themselves. It is similar to the one moon becoming the ten thousand moons when reflected in the ten thousand rivers. Finally, human innate nature (ren 仁•yi 義•li 禮•zhi 智) is the manifestation of tai-ji. This constitutes human mind and heart, and thus we can also find a moral dimension in tai-ji. JIANG, Tao (Rutgers University) "Historicist Challenges to Chinese Philosophy in the American Academy" This presentation looks into a particular aspect of Sinological challenge to the modern project of Chinese philosophy within the American academy through the lens of authorship. It explores philosophical implications for texts whose authorship is in doubt and develops a new heuristic model of authorship and textuality so that a more robust intellectual space for the philosophical discourse on Chinese classics can be carved out from the dominant historicist Sinological discourse. JOHNSON, David W. (Boston College) “Watsuji’s Topology of the Self” In this presentation I maintain that the philosophy of WATSUJI Tetsurō is an instance of a certain form of topological thinking. Thinking can be characterized as topological to the extent that it reverses the usual and taken for granted ontological primacy of discrete objects or entities over the places, contexts, structures, fields, and relations in which these are located and by which they are engulfed. Topos and entity, moreover, belong to one another in such a way that one could not exist without the other. The aims of this presentation are first, to show that the two most important philosophical concepts used in Watsuji’s analysis of the self, namely, aidagara, or being-in- relation, and fūdo, or climate, are topological notions in this sense, and second, to indicate some of the wider philosophical implications of approaching Watsuji’s work through this interpretive lens. 84 The first of the concepts in this pair is aidagara , or being-in-relation. This word captures the way in which the self finds itself related to others as a co-worker, as a student, as a member of a family, as a member of a congregation, and so forth. For Watsuji, to be completely outside of any relation to others is not to be human. We live out our lives with and among others, unavoidably and always already related to them; other people, in effect, are the primary setting of human life. The second concept is fūdo, or what we will translate here as ‘climate.’ Fūdo is a term intended to express the way in which the natural and the cultural are interwoven in a setting which is partly constitutive of and partly constituted and opened up by, a group of people inhabiting a particular place. Such metaphysical commitments will mean that we will need to somehow think nature together with culture and the self as what belongs to, emerges from, and shapes this matrix. Taken together, aidagara and fūdo provide the framework for a topological account of the self, one which moves beyond the problematic modern understanding of human beings as individual subjectivities ontologically decoupled both from the other people among whom they live and the natural environment which surrounds them. Instead, Watsuji maintains that the relational network of aidagara is itself situated in a specific fūdo, or spatio-temporal locale characterized by a particular geography, culture, and history. Hence the self also finds itself always already related to an array of meanings in a surrounding environment in which culture and nature are encountered as a unitary phenomenon. The self, in effect, is emplaced in and encompassed by a place and a space which is both geo-cultural and social. But this is not a merely passive relation; the self acts upon and so partly constitutes both other selves and a specific fūdo, on the one side, while both of these, in turn, act upon and help make the self what it is, on the other. The self, then, comes to be what it is through relational contact with others and with a particular climate, while both of these also depend on the self to be what they are. Self, others, and climate belong to one another in and through this relational exchange, with each functioning as a component of the larger experiential whole. Aidagara and fūdo are hence the place and space of the self, but not of a self which would be “in” or “on” these topoi as a cat on a mat or shoe in a box, as if each one were an absolutely distinct entity which would then come into relation with the other. Rather, aidagara and fūdo are dimensions of the basic space and place in and through which the self is able to be continuous with the wider whole to which it is related. Yet this continuity does not mean that the self is simply reducible to that which surrounds it; instead, this is a form of unity constituted by the very difference and distance between self, other, and climate. One difficulty that arises here, and one which we will need to face, is the question of how transcendence, the distance and difference that makes possible freedom and individuation, can be convincingly and rigorously accounted for if the self is so completely identified with its insertion into the topoi of aidagara and fūdo. 85 With this topological understanding of the self not only does Watsuji break convincingly with dualistic accounts of a self detached from, and facing, the world and its places, people, and objects; in the concepts of aidagara and fūdo he explores concrete and quotidian structures of experience which, while neither originating nor culminating in an obviously religious standpoint, nevertheless exemplify the profoundly nondual nature of the self. Furthermore, this close and concrete description of ordinary yet essential features of our nondual way of being in the world also allows Watsuji’s views to be related quite readily to the work of thinkers in the tradition of existential phenomenology such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty; moreover, there is little doubt that he has something singular and significant to contribute to the project of overcoming of dualism in this tradition. Here we find another ontology in which consciousness and thing, self and world, intertwine and mutually determine one another. Yet what thinkers in this tradition have overlooked, to varying degrees, is the manner in which both other people and the specific locale we find ourselves in are constitutive of the self even as they are also determined or shaped by it. In looking beyond Japanese philosophy to the wider philosophical world in these ways, Watsuji’s work expands and opens up our sense of what being-in-the-world, which has been a phenomenon of the greatest significance for contemporary phenomenology, and nondualism, which has been a concept of the first importance in East Asian philosophy, are and can be. Watsuji’s topological understanding of the human person thus offers a novel, wideranging, and complex view of how the self comes to be what it is—one far removed from the naiveté and abstractions required to view the human person in purely individualistic terms. In this vision, we find instead that the self and its consciousness are rooted in a source far greater and more profound than the awareness of a single individual: we are immersed in, and emerge from, the depths of the historical and social world and our lives both shape, and flow from, the vast life of nature. JOHNSON, Joe (XXXXX) “Nakamoto Tominaga and the De-exoticizing of Cultural Comparisons” The general thesis of this paper is that when philosophers and cultural theorists characterize foreign societies, they tend to focus on that which is ‘other’ than their own tradition, and in doing so they often leave out significant commonalities with the foreign tradition. That is to say, there is a bias to highlight elements that are esoteric or different relative to their own tradition, and to ignore and downplay elements that resonate well. This tendency may serve to generate more interesting theses, discussions, and books, but it is something regarding which everyone involved in crosscultural philosophy or cultural theory must at least be aware, and possibly take corrective steps. This thesis also has a counterpart—namely, that foreign traditions and cultures tend to 86 characterize themselves in this same way. That is to say that in their own selfawareness and critique, they tend to stress elements which are ‘other than the other.’ The present paper is a very modest step toward the above-stated general thesis, and proceeds by 1) reviewing the rational secularism of Tominaga NAKAMOTO (1715– 1746; Japan) in which he greatly precedes the varieties of Critical Buddhism that have arisen in both western and eastern scholarship since the 19th and 20th centuries (—not to mention NAKAMOTO’S critiques of Confucianism and Shinto), 2) contrasting that with esoteric fascination with eastern ideas by prominent western philosophers of the same period, and 3) examining the relatively slight treatment NAKAMOTO still receives in characterizations of the Japanese philosophical tradition KABELEK, Kobi (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) “The Experience of Movement in Holocaust Testimonies” Kobi Kabalek (History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will discuss “The Experience of Movement in Holocaust Testimonies.” Scholars of the Holocaust assign only limited importance to phenomena that exceed clearly drawn boundaries of ghettos, camps, towns, and shtetls, thus testifying to the lingering focus on bounded locations in this field of study. However, the Holocaust did not only take place only within fixed containers of violence, but also beyond them and in the movement between them. The journeys to and from ghettos and camps introduced the Jews to new landscapes and populations, stirred different feelings among the deportees, and changed their understanding of what was taking place. These assessments and expectations, in turn, played a role in the ways in which subsequent occurrences were perceived and influenced the decision making process upon arrival to the sites of persecution. The paper will examine depictions of movement as constituting temporary, yet significant, spaces of meaning and point to the functions of these movements in structuring survivors’ postwar narrations of the Holocaust. KALMANSON, Leah (Drake University) "'Be the Change You Want to See in the World?' Qi-Cosmology and Structural Change" Discourses on social justice rightly tend to focus on structural causes of oppression. Indeed, teaching social justice at the undergraduate level usually involves coaxing students away from the naive belief that personal self-development can effectively change society for the better. Although I do not mean to suggest a return to a naive focus on personal change, I do wish to reconsider the meaning of "structural change" with resources from qi-cosmology, and from that perspective consider the relation between people and the places they inhabit. In neo-Confucian writings on the relation between li and qi, li is the principle that structures and expresses order in qi. Achieving optional order in the cosmos is often 87 seen as an outgrowth of personal qi-cultivation practices. What is the relation between a well-structured heart-mind, a well-structured society, a well-structured world, and a wellstructured cosmos? How might this qi-cosmology help us rethink how best to envision and enact a "better world"? This presentation is a preliminary exploration of these questions. KANG, Kyung Hyun (Yonsei University, Korea) “Diagram of the Ethical Ideal: Centering on T'oegye Yi Hwang (退溪李滉, 1501~1570)'s Modification of the Existing the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate” Many Confucian scholars of the Joseon Dynasty(1392-1910) draw various diagrams that represent their ethical ideals. T'oegye Yi Hwang (退溪李滉, 1501-1570), the leading Confucian of the Joseon Dynasty in the 16th century, also creates several diagrams: the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate and The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning. Actually, The Diagram of Heavenly Mandate is originally created by Chuman Jung Ji Un (秋巒鄭之雲, 1509-1561) and revised by T'oegye. I attempt to analyze T'oegye's ethical ideal through the examination of his modification of the existing the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate. T'oegye made a few core modifications to the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate. Specifically, he expresses his view on the Heavenly Mandate through repositioning the circle of Heavenly Mandate (天命圈). The circle of Heavenly Mandate obtains the meaning of the Lord on High (上天·上帝)'s mandate by taking a higher position in the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate. T'oegye thinks that the circle of Heavenly Mandate on the top of the diagram represents the Lord on High's mandate which is a foundation of ethical practices and a ground for ethical duties. Therefore, T'oegye lays emphasis on Oe-gyeong (畏敬, awe and reverence) towards Heavenly Mandate. And Hak-mun (學問, learning) for T'oegye’s ethical pursuit is to clearly understand the life's duties given by Heavenly Mandate. KARNA, Bishal (The Ohio State University) “A Place for Mindfulness and Awakening: Sōtō Zen Monasteries in the Rural U.S. Midwest” Dainin Katagiri roshi (1928-90) was a Japanese Sōtō Zen master who came to the U.S. in 1963 to establish monastic communities on the model of Dōgen’s Eihei-ji. In planning his monastery he spoke of “molding an environment” so that “when you are right in the middle of a monastery, even though your life is like a snake, that snake is in a bamboo stick and very naturally you straighten out.” My presentation will explore how Japanese philosophical assumptions and cultural values were adapted to the American context in establishing the monastic centers in Etizen, Minnesota, and Dorchester, Iowa. In doing do, I will reference the ideas of Zen Master Dōgen (1200-53) and the cultural philosophy of place developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960) KAWASAKI, Soichi (Miyagi University of Education, Japan) 88 “’Being-here’, ‘Being-with:’ On What Makes Students Form a Community” In p4c activities, teachers, as facilitators, try to encourage children to form a “community of inquiry.” When teachers start p4c in classrooms, they have to explain the importance of “safety” to children many times. Does this mean that “safety” in a classroom is a kind of “minimum rule” of p4c which teachers must train students repeatedly to keep? However, in reality, teachers soon realize that children do not resist this “safety” and that, on the contrary, they even need it. So we can say that “children already know what they really need, even when they do not realize it”. In this sense, p4c activity can be regarded as a practice of Socratic maieutics. KEATING, Malcolm (Yale-NUS College, Singapore) “Putting Words in their Place: Elliptical Completion through Postulation” Classical Indian philosophers, although committed to the compositionality thesis, gave varying accounts of how interpretive practices allowed for ellipsis completion. The philosophers known as the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā argued that an interpretive process, which they called arthāpatti or “postulation,” could yield certain knowledge of how to complete ellipses. For instance, since the Sanskrit language is highly inflected, someone who hears a speaker say “Door, door!” can rely on syntactically-encoded information to recover a complete sen- tence, “Close the door, close the door!” In the 16th century, Narayaṇabhaṭṭa discusses this process in the Mānameyodaya, arguing that postulation requires the positing of words in order for there to be anvaya or “connection” within the expression. This argument is posed in response to opponents who argue that only the word meanings, and not the words themselves, must be posited. The term for “connection” in Sanskrit could be understood as syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic connection. I show that all three kinds of connection may be the subject of postulation, although the distinctions between them are only implicit in the Mānameyodaya. I then discuss connections between Narayaṇabhaṭṭa and contempo- rary Anglophone literature on the topic. In particular, I argue that due to the ambiguity in the notion of connection, Indian proposals may be consistent with multiple contemporary formal analyses. Ultimately, I conclude that the crucial implication to draw from their dialectic is the claim that ellipsis completion rises to the level of knowledge, and that it does so through a rational process grounded in the principle of compositionality. KEENAN, Barry C. (Denison University) “Locality and Reverence” Environmental ethics has challenged the anthropocentrism embedded in traditional western moral philosophy. Neo-Confucian philosophers in the Song period would have understood this argument. Cheng Yi and Chen Chun elaborated the vocabulary of classical Confucianism that assumed productive continuities between oneself and one’s 89 world tianren heyi (天人合一). The prerequisite in the Cheng-Zhu school for understanding this continuity was cultivating a reverent attitude jing (敬). Philosophers and poets of that same reverence who are alive today define the attitude as a felt recognition of human limitations (Paul Woodruff), and define living according to reverence as adopting one’s own locality as a place to live while fully accepting the conjoined interdependence of oneself and one’s world (Wendell Berry). KELBESSA, Workineh (Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia) “The Place of Africa in the Current World Order” This paper examines the place of Africa in the current world order, and shows the importance of developing more inclusive ethical and epistemological foundations that are required to reconceptualise and remap our current situation and contribute to the emergence of a more prosperous, just and peaceful world in the 21st century. Africa and other ‘developing’ countries have very little influence and voice in today’s global policymaking forums. This paper stresses that the voices of ‘developing’ countries have important contributions to local, national and international development and environmental agendas, and can help us to remap the world in a way that makes sense to ‘us’. Thus, what are needed are fundamental changes in the structures of global power such that the 'weaker' countries that represent the vast majority of humanity are no longer weak and the 'powerful' countries that represent a tiny minority of humanity are no longer powerful. The paper suggests that humanity as a whole must develop alternative attitudes towards the current world order. Thus, instead of searching for short-term profits or looking only for immediate gratification, TNCs and other powerful players in the current world order should respect the knowledge, need, aspiration and voice of ‘developing’ countries. KENNEY, Rick (Georgia Regents University) and Kimiko AKITA (Aichi Prefectural University) “Yasukuni: A Place for Pacification or a Problem, Still?” “Yasukuni” was established as a Shinto shrine in 1869 as Tokyo Shokonsha, shortly after the restoration of the Meiji Empire, to honor the spirits of people who had died fighting for the emperor. In prewar Japan, jurisdiction over Yasukuni belonged to the Ministry of the Military, whereas other shrines were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Home Affairs. After the war, Yasukuni was given the status of a private corporation. Although Allied rulers during the Occupation insisted that the Japanese separate the sacred (Shinto) from the secular (government), effectively dismantling the bastard religion and many of its manifestations, Yasukuni Shrine has remained under the aegis of an individual religious corporation, independent of an association formed by more than 80,000 other shrines. Recent visits to Yasukuni, which honors 2.5 million war dead, including 14 top war criminals from the War in the Pacific, by Japan’s prime ministers are viewed by Asian 90 neighbors as a symbol of the country’s past militarism and as encouragement for its growing nationalism. Media coverage last month of lawmakers’ pilgrimmage to the autumn festival at the shrine noted that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stayed away— though members of his cabinet visited Yasukuni—in advance of a meeting among leaders from Japan, China, and South Korea planned for this month in Seoul. Abe has stayed away since his 2013 visit drew rebukes from China and Korea and, for the first time publicly, the United States. The name Yasukuni itself means, ironically, “Pacifying the Nation.” This paper would use the lens of Japanese religious belief systems to examine the competing tensions represented by the Yasukuni Shrine and those leaders whose very publicly massmediated political attitudes and activities threaten not only peace in the nation, but throughout East Asia and all the way to Washington. KOČNOVAITÉ, Liuda (University of Iceland) “Where Are You (From)?: Locating Persons in Moral Theories” Person’s position entails significant ethical dimensions, thus inquiries ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘What do you do?’ are common means for assigning a certain status to the new acquaintances in the moral framework. For example, Confucian role ethics asserts that we have to contextualize a person as a bearer of the unique set of roles, in order to interact with her in the most appropriate way. However, the acclaimed (Western) principles of individualism, universalism, and equality would seem to contradict such practices. So where is an autonomous individual situated and where do the equal individuals meet? This paper presents a brief overview of the presumed location of human beings, according to the moral theories of Confucius, Aristotle, Kant, and Mill. The process of creation of moral places between interactors is also outlined, following the aforementioned thinkers. KOCZMAN, Joshua J. (Hillsdale College) “Where I Am Not: Heidegger’s Gelassenhiet, Dōgen’s Genjōkōan and the Discovery of Place” Martin Heidegger’s Gelassenheit and Dōgen’s 現成公按 [genjōkōan] do not name or categorize but rather describe, as though narratively, the discovery—the dis-covery—of place. They do not detail a discovering of place, but rather the presencing of place unconcealed. Gelassenheit, borrowed as it is from Meister Eckhart, and 現成公按 [genjōkōan]—in its originary spelling, 現成公案 [genjōkōan]—arrives from the Buddhist tradition of China. What Heidegger offers to the tradition of Eckhart—the Christian tradition—and what Dōgen offers to the Buddhist tradition is a re-location of the starting point of 91 understanding: I must begin where I am and progress from there to where I am not. What is most near to me of where I am not is what stands in my vicinity, what stands most near. For Heidegger, what stands most near are things. Things are what is most readily present. For Dōgen, what is most present, what is most near, is the interplay of delusion and enlightenment. For Heidegger, things, and for Dōgen, this interplay, are so readily near that they are often overlooked. Gelassenheit and 現成公按 [genjōkōan] describe a turning away from over-looking towards under-standing. Where I am not is where my own place becomes present to me, becomes even a possibility. My own place is always my own, because where I am not is only ever my own. Arriving at place is thus always personal, always my arrival at my place. On the other hand, however, that there is a my own is universal. What is my own place is part of where an other is not, and so there is something universal at play in the discovery of place. The “releasement” of Gelassenheit and the “presencing” of 現成公按 [genjōkōan] are not affirmations of “a self” apart from what it is not. Rather, they affirm “a self” as a part of what it is not by first approaching there issue of “where.” I am always first amid where I am not, and from this, place becomes present, first in dichotomies of self and other—what Dōgen would call “delusion” and Heidegger would call “distancelessness”—and then as differences—the very possibility of enlightenment and identity. Such movement always happens first and most primarily as personal, as my own and my own where I am not are mine until place arrives and I and they are released and become present at where I am and not what I am. The discovery of place happens only where “a self” is no longer a “what” which covers it, but rather a “where” standing in relation to where it is not. KIM, David (University of San Francisco) “What is the Place of Radical Occidentalism in Contemporary Asian Philosophy? The Case of He-Yin Zhen and Feminist Confucianism.” In the history of modern Asia (especially the 20th century), there are many examples of Asian thinkers who explicitly hybridized their native traditions with Western perspectives, and their work has been addressed as Asian or comparative philosophy. There are also many examples of Asian thinkers who explicitly displaced their native traditions and endorsed Western perspectives. Many of these latter thinkers, motivated by liberatory aims, opted for radical Western thought (like Marxism, anarchism, feminism, etc.), e.g. He-Yin Zhen, Lu Xun, M.N. Roy, etc. Arguably, many contemporary theorists in postcolonial studies, Asian American studies, and Asian Studies, especially Critical Asian Studies, can be positioned within this fairly long trajectory. Radical occidentalism raises questions about the place of such theories in contemporary Asian and comparative philosophy. It also raises questions about the role of place for a philosopher’s theorizing: Should Asian philosophers retain ties to the philosophies of their homeland? The former question will be addressed through consideration of the latter. To focus the discussion, the paper discusses the work of He-Yin Zhen, an early 92 20th century Chinese anarcho-feminist, and the normative issue of whether she should have pursued a more hybridist strategy to retain links to place and to avoid Eurocentrism. Specifically, the paper considers her concept of nannu in the context of recent efforts at formulating feminist Confucianism, and its ramifications for the role of place in philosophizing. KIM, Hyeongseok (Gyeongsang National University, Korea) “‘Sewer’ of World History: Ham Seok-heon’s Place in his Background of Eastern Thought and Christianity” Ham Seok-heon (13 March 1901 – 4 February 1989) was a civil rights activist committed to human rights and non-violence during the period of Japanese colonial rule, Soviet military government, and Korean military dictatorship. His commitment to human rights, democracy, non-violence, and pacifism earned him the name, ‘the Gandhi of Korea,’ and the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and 1985. Ham was also a Korean liberal thinker who tried to combine Christianity with various Eastern philosophical perspectives in order to find Korea’s spiritual identity and produce new values. He considered Japanese imperialism and Korean dictatorship as a product of modern totalitarianism, and he found and developed important ideas to overcome totalitarianism and keep pacifism among East Asian thoughts, especially in Daoism, although his ideological foundation was Christianity. This paper mainly analyzes this point with its influence on later activists in Korea. For example, Ham produced a concept of Ssial (seed grains), which means ‘the people’ as the historical subject, who keep fundamental life in themselves like seed grains. At the same time, he matched it with some concepts of ‘weakness’ ‘humbleness’ ‘benevolence’ in Laozi. Ham believed only suffering people can sympathize with other people’s suffering, and that is why God gave the Korean people lots of adversities in their history. Therefore, ‘weak’ and ‘humble’ Korean people, groaned under despotism and totalitarianism, could carry their cross, ‘love’ other people, and so achieve world peace in the truest sense. Ham was also an inspiration to many various antiauthoritarianism or pro-democracy movements in Korea, in terms of suggesting various approaches including ecology, syncretism, liberation theology, and so on. KIM, Jongmyung Kim (The Academy of Korean Studies, Korea) “Place and Culture: Royal Palaces and Buddhist Rituals in Medieval Korea” The purpose of this paper is to examine how Buddhist rituals in medieval Korea (9181392) were shaped by relationship with their ritual places, royal palaces, which has been heretofore largely and unduly ignored. Buddhist rituals flourished in medieval Korea. More Buddhist rituals were held at that time than at any other time in Korean history, a frequency also unsurpassed in China or Japan. In this paper special emphasis will be given to the Assembly of Eight Prohibitions (P’algwan hoe) and the Lantern 93 Festival (Yŏndŭng hoe), the two most important Buddhist rituals, which were the Buddhist expression of medieval Korean beliefs such as ancestor worship and were performed in royal palaces. In particular, in his To Take Place, Jonathan Z. Smith stresses the importance of place to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. This paper will focus on identifying the nature of royal palaces as ritual places in relation to the major Buddhist rituals in medieval Korea, examining how the royal palaces contributed to shaping the Buddhist rituals as state rituals in relation to the idea of ancestor worship, an important part of the Confucian tradition, and understanding the ways in which the royal palaces are perceived, marked, and utilized religiously. KIM, Jung-Yeup (Kent State University) “The Daxue 大學 and the Zhongyong 中庸: Texts about Transforming Ordinary Places into Extraordinary Ones” In this paper, I show that there is a common theme of transforming ordinary places into extraordinary ones in the Daxue 大學 (Great Learning) and the Zhongyong 中庸 (Focusing the Familiar). First, based upon the commentaries on these classical Confucian texts from Chinese and Korean neo-Confucian philosophers of vital energy 氣 (qi), I argue that this theme can be understood in terms of vital synergy. That is, the ordinary place is where vital synergy amongst ourselves exists minimally, the extraordinary place is where vital synergy amongst ourselves is maximally realized, and a central motif underlying both texts is the emphasis on transforming the former into the latter. Second, drawing upon insights from Confucian Role Ethics articulated by Roger T. Ames and Deweyian aesthetics, I show how this project of transforming place can be understood as an aesthetic one. Finally, I demonstrate how the Confucian insights investigated thus far can theoretically and practically contribute to how place is understood in contemporary discourse on everyday aesthetics. KIM, Youngmin (Seoul National University, Korea) “Space and Political Imaginaries: Philosophical Reflections on the eight steps in the Great Learning” Philosophical reflection is dependent upon certain formal conditions of discourse. The eight-steps in the Great Learning represent such conditions for political philosophers in late imperial China. For example, Ming (Chinese dynasty, 1368 ~ 1644) thinkers took seriously the chain of causality linking the individual, the family, the state, and the world. It was the eight steps that set the spatial parameters of their philosophical discourse of politics. Yet we should find expect to find tensions and instabilities in the interpretations of the eight steps, since it spanned roughly a few centuries and was used in a great variety of intellectual contexts. While philosophical discourses surrounding the eight 94 steps are too amorphous to allow for unitary conception, they instead provide framework of comparative analysis. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate that there were sufficiently philosophical discourses going on in late imperial China to merit comparative studies of the Ming theories of the Chinese state. To round out the picture, I propose to take midMing philosophy seriously and consider political philosophies of Qiu Jun (1421-1495), Wang Yangming (1472~1528) and Zhan Ruoshui (1466~1560) as examples. With any luck, we will be able to philosophically repudiate the existing views of Ming Chinese state as the despotic nature of rule, which can be traced back to as early as the 18th century European scholars who often contrasted Europe and China. KOHL, Christian (University of Education, Freiburg, Germany) “Are Ideas Bound by Places?” There is a central idea in Eastern and Western philosophies that is not properly Eastern and not properly Western. It is the idea of dependence or connection or mean or bondage. We have not a single word for this idea. In the first place dependence or pratityasamutpada is an indication of dependence. Dependent bodies are in an intermediate state, they are not properly separated and they are not one entity. Secondly, they rely on each other and are influenced or determined by something else. Thirdly, their behaviour is influenced by something in-between, for example a mover is attracted by gravitational force, a viewer is dependent on rays of light between his eyes and the object, a piano player’s action is determined by the fine motor skills of his fingers, an agent is dependent on his act. Pratityasamutpada is an indication of dependence and of something that happens between the objects. One object is bound to the other without being identical to it. The implicit interpretations of pratityasamutpada, are in terms of time, structure and space. The following citations and references illustrate the term pratityasamutpada. Pratityasamutpada is used: 1. as Dependence in Nagarjuna’s Hymn to the Buddha: “ Dialecticians maintain that suffering is created by itself, created by (someone) else, created by both (or) without a cause, but You have stated that it is dependently born”. 2. as an intermediate state by Nagarjuna: Objects are neither together nor separated. 3. as bondage in the Hevajra Tantra: “Men are bound by the bondage of existence and are liberated by understanding the nature of existence”. 4. as an intermediate state by Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other”. 95 5. as something between bodies by Albert Einstein: “A courageous scientific imagination was needed to realize fully that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them, that is, the field, may be essential for ordering and understanding events”. 6. as the mean between things in modern history of mathematics: to quote Gioberti again: “The mean between two or more things, their juncture, union, transit, passage, crossing, interval, distance, bond and contact – all these are mysterious, for they are rooted in the continuum, in the infinite. The interval that runs between one idea and another, one thing and another, is infinite, and can only be surpassed by the creative act. This is why the dynamic moment and dialectic concept of the mean are no less mysterious than those of the beginning and the end. The mean is a union of two diverse and opposite things in a unity. It is an essentially dialectic concept, and involves an apparent contradiction, namely, the identity of the one and the many, of the same and the diverse. This unity is simple and composite; it is unity and synthesis and harmony. It shares in two extremes without being one or the other. It is the continuum, and therefore the infinite. Now, the infinite identically uniting contraries, clarifies the nature of the interval. In motion, in time, in space, in concepts, the discrete is easy to grasp, because it is finite. The continuum and the interval are mysterious, because they are infinite”. 7. as a central point in Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy. KRUMMEL, John W.M. (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) “Place and Horizon” The paper presents a phenomenological ontology of place that synthesizes the results of my investigations over the past ten or so years on related themes in Heidegger, Nishida, Ueda, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Bollnow, and others, involving the notions of world, horizon, and the abyssal nature of place that unfolds in myriad determinations. Wherever we are we are implaced, delimited in our being-in-the-world constituted by a horizon that implaces us, not only literally but semantically and ontologically. Whether we take place in its semantic sense or as ontological, I underscore its duplicity—taking off from Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of two-fold being-in-the-world—as on the one hand demarcating a realm of determinacy, our ontological finitude or our social imaginary world, and on the other hand through its horizonal nature as pointing to an indeterminacy or exteriority that demarcates or delimits that realm, finitizing us. That latter may be characterized as an excess irreducible to semantic or ontological determination or as a nothing or a-meaning. Hence place with its horizon implies the interface of meaning and a-meaning, nomos and anomy, principles and anarché, in Nishidian terms being and the nothing (mu), in Heideggerian terms unconcealment and concealment or world and earth. Thus the horizon that constitutes place entails both 96 finitude and openness, allowing for alterity and alteration, whereby the determinations within place are never fixed, secure, or guaranteed. In demarcating a place, the horizon always points to a yonder beyond the place, its other. In its very contact with the unassmilable or irreducible, the line of demarcation is itself thus unpredictable in its fluctuations. The place determined within the nothing or the clearing of unconcealment amidst the concealed will thus always be provisional despite any appearance or claims to the contrary. Its determination is indeterminate. Towards the end of this presentation I would like to discuss the ethical implications of this understanding of place, both in terms of globalism and in terms of ecology. The presentation would be relevant to the East-West Conference, not only for dealing with the theme of place but also, in terms of “East-West,” for incorporating ideas and concepts found in thinkers of both East and West and also for discussing the current globalization of our world where previously demarcated regional cultural spheres are forced to confront and deal with one another and intermingle. The alterity and alterations belonging to place are made explicit in our contemporary situation with certain existential-ethical implications that must be addressed. KUČINSKAS, Justas and Naglis KARDELIS (Vilnius University, Lithuania) “The Wisdom of Place: Lithuanian Philosophical Philotopy of Arvydas Šliogeris” In this article is presented the phenomenon of Lithuanian philosophical philotopy. Philotopy, literally meaning a love of place, is a term first defined by Simone Weil, is also found in Arvydas Šliogeris philosophy, where philotopy acquires a specifically Lithuanian dimension. Philotopy in Arvydas Šliogeris thinking refers to a type of philosophy, which is deeply rooted in individual‘s unique and finite experience of particular things found in a specially defined and very particular place, usually one‘s closest environment, where one is born or permanently settled. Philotopy is also a meta-reflection of the way of thinking about and being in the world which is defined by that particular place. Philotopy as a way of noticing the importance which the nearness and particularity of place has to one‘s thinking and being is itself, as we might say, connected and rooted in a particular place – the landscape and history of Lithuania. Arvydas Šliogeris, the founder and leader of modern Lithuanian philosophy, points to philotopical inclinations of Lithuanian culture and forsees philotopy as the probable direction of Lithuanian philosophical thought. Therefore, the phillosophical philotopy in Arvydas Šliogeris‘s sense can be summarized as “the metaphysics of the homeland.” The authors of this article suggest that Lithuanian philotopy calls for reassesment of meaning and purpose of philosophy as such in the context of the 21st century realities. The question of the very essence and purpose of philosophy is itself asked from specifically defined place. In the authors opinion, the project of Lithuanian philosophical philotopy might be viewed as a contribution of Lithuanian experience to the global debate on what philosophy is and in what ways is it relevant to the pressing issues of the world today. A way of pursuing a global issue from a deeply rooted local perspective becomes crucially important in the context of globalized science, where the demandl for 97 internationalization and diversity paradoxically dilutes the ground of diversity itself – the truly local perspective. Lithuanian philotopy invites philosophers to pursue the mission to draw people‘s attention to their specific experiences of particular things found in particular places. Philotopy is not determined to find The Truth, but only to reflect the singular truth of a very specific and defined experience of nearness of non human reality of things and place. The ability to attach to what is dear, the determination to care and nurture the particular place is also a basis of engaged and courageous thinking, which makes possible a trully authentic agency, authorship and a real meaningful dialogue. The truth of unique experience of particular things and its reflection paradoxically becomes the only way of true inter-human communication. Firstly, it is because every human existence, however different it may be, is always attached to an experience happening in particular places. Secondly, it is the experience of non human things (however different they may be), rather than the language, that gifts people with the experience of reality. The reality of things is the common ground that any further communication and being together can be built on. The authors of the article suggest that in this sense philotopy allows a possibility of authentic, locally rooted existence and thinking compatible with global awareness. In fact it is even argued that the rootedness in particular place is the necessary condition of true ecology, where the responsibility for a particular place is the only basis of consciousness of the bigger whole. The authors also note that philotopical approach is not new in the history of philosophy. The birth of philosophy is related to the very particular place and time, which is ancient Greece, and it is also related to a then more general approach that the wisdom of a finite human being in defined circumstances and places, although not equal to the wisdom of gods, has value and is worth pursuing. In terms of the evolution of philotopical thinking Arvydas Šliogeris takes a second step of philotopy by actually allowing us to see that the limits of a human being, especially the experience of the finitude and sacredness of a particular place, are actually the basis of our possibility to face the two biggest challenges of the world today: our inability to live together and the profound disconnectedness from our particular living place, manifesting itself, inter alia, in the global environmental crisis. KUPERUS, Gerald (University of San Francisco) “The Flow of the Land: Place in Dōgen and the Koyukon” In a world in which we have largely lost a sense of place and in which knowledge of the land is all but destroyed, our identities have become superficial reflections of what used to be systems deeply grounded in place. In order to understand the depth of this loss I will discuss the relationship between land and mind as we find it in the indigenous culture of the Koyukon and the place-based practice of Zen, in particular through Dōgen Zenji. The latter uses in his famous “Mountains and Waters Sutra” a human category, walking, to describe the activity of mountains. He however uses one of the most anthropomorphic categories precisely to question our anthropocentrism. By pulling our 98 category away from ourselves and giving it to the mountain instead, he, in fact, seems to set anthropomorphism up against itself. Although it, thus, might seem that Dōgen ascribes human qualities to the mountains, the opposite is true. As he writes: “If you doubt mountains’ walking, you do not know your own walking.” In other words, we should not understand the mountain as walking in a human sense, but we should understand our walking in relationship to mountains, as walking along with the mountains, i.e. as rooted in the place in which we are. To understand this rootedness in place in a more concrete way I will discus Richard Nelson’s ethnographic study and personal reflection on the Koyukon in his book Make Prayers to the Raven. In the closing chapter Nelson describes the Koyukon experience of “a different reality in the natural world” (238). This reality is a reflection of the landscape that is constantly undergoing change: “The Koyukon people live in a land where change is the norm and where stability is almost unheard of” (212). They cannot afford to try to master the land, they are mastered by the land; they do not confront but yield to nature (240). Similar to Dōgen’s understanding of walking mountains the Koyukon, in Nelson’s words, live in a reality in which “the flow of the land becomes also the flow of the mind.” (243). I argue that these insights should not be taken lightly and that a retrieval of a sense of place would first of all have to recognize that we do not simply have “an environment” as a place that we simply find ourselves in. Rather, what and moreover how we think, has to be rooted in our place. We are our places, which means that we no longer see ourselves as a stranger, but find ourselves in the mountain and rivers and we find the rivers and mountains in ourselves. In a world in which everything constantly changes and stability is rare, we need to learn how to walk, and think again. LaFLEUR, Robert André (Beloit College) “Contested Space, Conceded Place: Negotiating Political and Historical Discord on China’s Southern Sacred Mountain” It has often been said that “the winners write the history.” This is only partly true. Winners, more often than many realize, concede part of the narrative to those they defeat. From the American Civil War to World War II and beyond, field sites commemorate times and places of struggle that expand—and even challenge—the rhetoric of the victors. On China’s southern sacred peak (南嶽衡山) in Hunan Province stands a square kilometer of landscaping and elaborate buildings that is celebrated by a wide variety of Chinese travelers— the focus of outsize attention in terms of historical memory and political commemoration in today’s People’s Republic of China. The Martyr’s Shrine (忠 烈祠), about a third of the way up the slope, is the site of serious homage to the Nationalist forces who fought the Japanese in the late-1930s and 1940s, enduring withering bombing assaults even as they hid in mountain caverns and planned their own military strategy. 99 The shrine has been maintained by the People’s Republic of China, and occupies by far the largest single “politico-religious-space” on the entire mountain—larger than either the base temple or peak temple, and dwarfing the size of all others. It focuses on the very Nationalist (Guomindang; Kuomintang) forces that the Communists defeated in 1949 to take possession of the “mainland.” So why is a major commemorative space dedicated as a shrine to these very “enemy” soldiers? The southern mountain contains the seeds of communion even between viciously opposed armies that reluctantly allied to fight a common enemy. Both Communist and Nationalist forces endured dreadful attacks in different locations. In the end, the victorious Communist government has sought a kind of political and religious statement in a shrine to the Nationalist forces that is seemingly unafraid even to acknowledge its paramount leader, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). Indeed, perhaps the strangest place of commemoration is a memorial pine grove dedicated to the late, defeated general. Space and place are often contested in key historical moments. But it is also (and never more clearly than here) conceded—sometimes for uncertain political and cultural capital. This paper will examine the idea of contested space and, explore the similarities and differences between “contestation” and “concession” in modern Chinese history. Matters are further complicated by what the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu terms “strategies of condescension.” Such strategies—clearly at work in and on the Martyrs Shrine—bring added complexity to the idea of contested space and place. The theoretical implications are significant for work in many fields beyond philosophy—from history and anthropology to economics, religious studies, and education. LAMBERT, Andrew (College of Staten Island CUNY) “The Place of the Personal in Classical Confucian Ethics” There has been recent interest in Confucian ethics as a form of role ethics. In this paper, I argue that while role ethics is correct in taking the personal bonds as a basis for normative demands, the personal attachment that is strongly emphasized in texts like the Analects and Mencius can be fruitfully understood in other ways. I consider how the Confucian ethical sensibility built around personal attachment implies novel ways to substantiate the basic categories of moral life – ethical obligation, motivation and justification. That is, the Confucian emphasis on personal attachment can be developed into an ethics that is richer than the concept of role can capture. Furthermore, this way of ordering the basic elements of ethical life offers a distinctive account of the highest ethical ideal, which these elements function to realise – the creation of joyful events in the course of everyday personal encounters. This paper explores the advantages and challenges of conceiving of ethics in these terms. LAUER, Chris (University of Hawai’i—Hilo) 100 “Place as Debt and Credit” Places carry debts, and indeed places are often defined by the debts they carry and commemorate. The Temple Mount, the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor, and the Shaolin Temples are sacred because they all, in one way or another, remind their visitors of their debts. Traditional Hawaiian mana`o regards Mauna Kea as perhaps its most sacred place, and here, too, a reckoning of debts is crucial to our understanding of it as a place. Yet unlike sites such as the Temple Mount, it was not sanctified by any particular event or set of events, but stands in for the way that places in general mark us as debtors. In her translation of the Kumulipo, Queen Lili`uokolani returns again and again to the refrain, “So the gods may enter, but not man.” Though the Kumulipo tells Hawaiians of their origin, the taboo expressed in this sentence is not a prohibition against returning to the site of one’s origin, but a reminder of the respect due to place as such. This paper will contrast this traditional sense of place as debt with the impulse that arises in Locke and Fichte to transmute our debts to places into credits. Enlightenment philosophy is often criticized for effacing all determinacy of place in favor of a generalized Newtonian spatiality, but in these two thinkers we see something quite different. The conception of place as unique and determinative of human identity is retained, but places now appear as assets rather than liabilities on the ledger of selfrecognition. This paper will explore the logic of this transition and what is lost when our debts to places are expunged. LAUMAKIS, Stephen J. (University of St. Thomas) “Pope Francis’ Place” This paper has two purpose: first, to consider the place of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ in relation to the work of his immediate predecessors, Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II, as well as its place within the encyclical tradition of the Catholic Church more generally considered; second, to consider in some detail Pope Francis’ conception of place and our relation to the environment as he explains these in Laudato si’. With respect to the first task, I will be exploring the various ways he situates the document and its teachings within the social justice tradition of the Church. I will do this by focusing on the texts and authors cited within the encyclical, as well as by examining its footnotes. With respect to the second task, I will be investigating his notion of interdependence and how his conceptions of interconnectedness and relatedness help him make the case for an “integral ecology.” I will close with a philosophical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Pope’s conception of place. LEAL OLIVARES, David (University of Santiago, Chile) “Building Democracy in Cyberspace: An Approach to the Limit of Cyberspace as Communicative/Symbolic Space Configuration from a Democratic Point of View to Philosophy of Information” 101 The Philosophy of Information is a field of study to work, in especially link the work of Luciano Floridi, of revitalize of old questions, pose new problems and contributes to conceptualize our vision of world framework of the Information Society. In this process, this proposal seeks to analyze the new concept of democracy, unveiling his new nature and difference with the classical view through the new boundaries of participation, especially through the concept of transparency of information. Discover the limit of cyberspace as a place of political constitution and the values found in the virtual world. The classical concept of democracy appears to be in crisis, because the configuration of symbolic space and the limits of cyberspace create a new configuration of political space (territory) participation, national identity and participation of civil society. This proposal seek answer to questions about the nature of cyberspace from point of view of Philosophy of Information and reflexion of media after work of Marshall Mcluhan and Derrick de Kerckhove. LEBEDEVA, Kristina (DePaul University) “Places of Trauma” The aim of this project is to examine the conjunction of the ‘here’ and trauma in what I hope to be an innovative way. The predominant trauma theory is about the consequences of a traumatic event. Indeed, “despite substantial theoretical and empirical advances in the field of traumatic stress .... existing conceptualizations of traumatic stress retain the assumption that traumatic experiences have occurred in the past. This is to say, the event itself is over. More precisely, it is now transformed into a hauntingly persistent anguish. In Jean Amery’s words, “whoever was tortured, stays tortured.” The paradigm of this vision of trauma is a soldier returning from war. However, what I want to do here is to examine the conception of ongoing traumatization. This is the event that is still happening and whose nature cannot be understood with a reference to the past. The examples of such continuous traumatization would be life in warzones, domestic abuse, ongoing persecution, etc. in other words, they involve “threat to life and bodily integrity.” What is at stake here is then not a single-trauma event, but rather traumatic experience indissolubly tied to what might be called ‘hereness’ or specific situation. I will submit that the response to ongoing traumatization must be articulated on its own terms. Having elucidated the differences between two conceptualizations of trauma, I will conclude by suggesting that the therapeutic response demanded by continuous traumatization is the practice of interruption. It is forcefully fragmenting and fracturing temporality itself so as to interrupt someone’s suffering. Barring the complete removal of traumatic situation, the suffering is always there. Interrupting it as often as possible makes it a little closer to bearable. Thus, the new moral imperative, stemming from the conjunction of radical hereness and trauma, assumes the form of interruption. LEE, Cheongho (Southern Illinois University) 102 “Semiotic Place and Personality in Charles Peirce’s Theory of Determination” My main attempt in this paper is to scrutinize “semiotic place” and “personality” with special regard to Charles Peirce’s “theory of determination.” In his theory of determination, Peirce considered two processes of determination, one from object to interpretant, and the other from idea to mind. A successful occasion of semiotics proceeds from object to interpretant. Semiotics is a place of an extensional process that consists of an infinite chain of references. While semiotic determination is reversible in terms of references, the epistemological process of determination is temporal and irreversible. In this intensional process, the idea grows into the individual mind, as the universe is unfolded by the agency of mind. Based on these two processes of determination, personality, which Peirce calls mind, on one hand, is “objectified” as “sign” or “interpretant” in the place of semiotics through communicational inference that enables us to realize the particular in the realm of becoming. Mind, on the other hand, “subjectifies” the most primitive real, which Peirce calls idea, into this temporal world. This process of “subjectification” enables the continuity of ideas, through which idiosyncratic person as idea produces the generalized mind as idea in the particularized place of “here-and-now.” LEE, Hyun-sun (Seoul National University, Korea) “What is the Particular ‘Place’ of Zhu Xi’s Philosophy in the Tradition of Korean Confucianism?” Toegye Yi Hwang (1501-70) and Yulgok Yi Yi (1536-1584), the two great thinkers of Korean Confucianism, both assert that their ideas are derived from Zhu Xi’s philosophy, in spite of their conflicting philosophical positions. Two scholars’ divergent philosophical ideas are closely related to their dissimilar regional and social ‘place’ as well as different circumstances of their time. Nevertheless, they equally attach legitimacy to Zhu Xi’s philosophy while rejecting Yangmingism which emerged as a major philosophical school of Confucianism of the time. These two thinkers demonstrate that Confucian thinkers of the Chosun Dynasty, on the one hand, struggled to solve social and political problems of the time in terms of Zhu Xi’s philosophy; on the other hand, they offered new interpretations of Zhu Xi’s philosophy reflecting their own particular ‘place’. This is where we can indicate the particular place of Zhu Xi’s philosophy in Korean Confucianism. The investigation into this particular ‘place’ will elucidate why Confucianism chose a different path in Korea, drawing a stark contrast to Confucianism in China. LEE, Janghee (Gyeongin National University of Education, Korea) “The Place of De” 103 Recent studies in characterizing Confucian ethics as virtue ethics seem to miss a very important aspect in Confucian ethics, namely its ethio-political dimension in early Confucianism and its ethico-politico-metaphysical dimension in neo-Confucianism. De, not like virtue, does not just reside in one’s personal boundary; it reaches out toward public sphere. In neo-Confucianism the expansion of de encompasses the whole universe. Thus, justice is also a cosmic virtue not confined just to the social, political one. I will explore this aspect of de through the contrast between private vs. public and humankind vs. nature. The pair of early Confucians, Mencius and Xunzi, and of Korean neo-Confucians, Yi Yi and Chong Dasan, will provide ample resources for us to investigate this aspect of Confucian de in contrast to virtue in Western ethical tradition. LENG, Lu (Guangzhou University, China) “The Multicultural Synergy in Dunhuang” The discussion will focus on the multicultural synergy and practice in Dunhuang, and its implications for the education today, in China, Asia, the world, and beyond. Dunhuang as an important stop in the Silk Road became a transition zone of Central Asia, West Asia, India, Persia and more distant Byzantine Empire (Fan & Wu, 2004; Rong, 2001). The collision and fusion of multiculturalism promoted the formation of Dunhuang civilization and its unique culture and products. The discussion will examine the successful interaction and convergence of multiculturalism (Banks, 2010) in Dunhuang and its manifestations in Dunhuang Grottos. LI, Puqun (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada) “The Length of Mourning versus the Nature of Mourning—A Critical Analysis of the Analects 17:21” On the surface the debate between Confucius and Zaiwo at Analects 17:21 is about what would be the proper length of a mourning ritual for departed parents. But I think the core of the debate is actually about the nature of mourning for parents. In particular, it is about the connection and tension between feelings (spontaneous and reflective) that are associated with mourning for parents and the seemingly complete arbitrariness in the length of such mourning. With this understanding of the debate, I argue: (1) that although Zaiwo seems to have appealing, practical reasons to challenge the practice of three-year mourning, his reasons, seen from Confucius’ perspective, severely deviate from the true root of mourning—one’s genuine appreciative feelings toward parents, and thus Zaiwo’s reasoning is morally misleading. (2) that, contrary to prevalent readings of 17:21, Confucius’ connecting the rite of threeyear mourning with one’s early childhood experience of being taken care of by one’s parents for three years should be better (or more charitably) read as an illustration of the importance of reflecting on moral feelings for the purpose of moral cultivation than 104 as a justification (or proof) for the idea that the number of years of being taken care of by one’s parents in early childhood must match the number of years of mourning for one’s parents. (3) that in Confucius’ vision the three-year mourning rite, exemplified by junzi (君子) and established by the sage kings can serve as a regulative and uplifting moral ideal for common people. However, this is not to deny that three-year mourning, if taken as a heterogeneous (‘moral’) demand, can be too high for many people and its actual implementation may lead to ritual formalism and hypocrisy. LIPMAN, Jonathan (Maharishi University of Management), and Anne MELFI (Georgia State University) “Vedic Vastu Vidya—the Science of Place to Design Buildings that Create Holistic Health and Enlightenment” The Vedic philosophy and technology of Vastu Vidya (science of place) holds that the physicality of a work of architecture can make or break the quality of life within and around it. Temples, homes, civic forums, and places of business were, and in many instances still are, designed to optimize the life and purposes that the buildings are meant to house. The design of place must take into account the laws of nature, both objective and subjective—orientation of the building in relation to the sun as well as lunar and planetary influences on earth, with respect to the North Pole, South Pole, and equator. These must be customized for the particular persons who are to occupy the place so as to align individual intelligence comfortably with cosmic intelligence. This science of place is a physical practice with a holistic objective to create not only pleasant, successful, and fulfilling life in health and prosperity, but also the superlative degree of that, moksha, enlightenment. It provides the fundamentals of temple architecture in India, including the performance stage for sacred dance, but also is the traditional method for building homes. This presentation will discuss the philosophy and principles behind this traditional Vedic practice of creating place and also its application worldwide. Architect Jonathan Lipman will present a show sampling how the principles have been applied to create hundreds of fortune-creating homes and office buildings in the US, which he has been doing for the past seventeen years. Anne Melfi will discuss how Kenneth Burke’s theory of terministic screens offers a practical tool for appreciating the holistic Vedic approach to place, which leverages physicality and the impalpable Vedic principle of bandhu to produce happy, enlightened existence in the places we inhabit. LITTLEJOHN, Ronnie (Belmont University) “Visiting the Dark Places of Wisdom” The real origins of Western philosophy, of so many ideas that shaped the world we live in are associated with activities and philosophers that we know comparatively very little 105 about: Epimenides, Parmenides, Empedocles. Likewise, the beginnings of Chinese Daoism can be traced to the masters of dao who were the sources of the edited anthologies of their teachings and the accounts of their deeds collected in the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. In this paper, I consider the importance of the place and space of the cave, literally and metaphorically, to the consciousness, teaching, and philosophical projects embraced by those iatroi (healer-seer) known as “lords of the lair” (pholarchos) in the pre-Socratic period and as “perfected persons” (zhenren) or immortals (xian) in early Daoism. LIU, JeeLoo (California State University, Fullerton) “The Loss of Personal Place: Late-Ming Neo-Confucians’ Sense of Self and Politics” According to Yi-Fu Tuan, “Place exists at different scales,” and among which, “homeland is an important type of place at the medium scale. It is a region large enough to support a person’s livelihood. Attachment to the homeland can be intense.” He further asks, “What is the character of this sentiment? What experiences and conditions promote it?” (Space and Place, 149) This paper will attempt to address these questions from the experiential perspectives of three late-Ming Neo-Confucians: Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692), Gu Yanwu (1613-1882) and Huang Zongxi (1610-1695). The Manchus invaded their homeland in 1644, and their political allegiance, the Ming dynasty, officially collapsed in 1662. For the rest of their lives, all three philosophers had to deal with the loss of their personal place. Wang Fuzhi felt that there was no place in the world for him after the Manchus took over China. He wrote about his choice for the final isolated abode of seventeen years: “Crouching under the collapsed heaven and being confined on the earth that has split open, I simply could not believe that even the tiniest piece of land could be mine.” After the fall of Ming, Gu Yanwu changed his name to ‘Yanwu’ (meaning a valiant descendent of the genuine Chinese heritage). For the last twenty-some years of his life, Gu lived as a nomad, finding no place to be his own. After realizing the futility of the effort to reinstate the Ming dynasty, Huang Zongxi devoted his remaining years to scholarly and educational activities. Even though he often had hundreds of students gathering to listen to his lectures, he always saw himself as an “abandoned,” “lone statesman.” Before his death, he instructed his children not to use a casket for burial, but to put his body on a stone slab, so that “his body will decay faster.” All three philosophers spent their early days dedicated to the Ming loyalists’ attempt to restore the homeland to Ming’s dominance, and all three spent their later lives in eremitic seclusion, self-imposed exile and self-depreciation. In Chinese history, these three Neo-Confucians are revered as the “three leading Confucians in early Qing dynasty,” but they never felt that they were entitled to any place under the reign of Qing. This paper will analyze their sense of self-identity and national identity revealed in their loss of personal place from the usurpation of their homeland. 106 LIU, Jing (University of Hawai’i) “The Ziran of Dao: Persistence and Transience” The entanglement of permanence and transience is a recurring theme that has fascinated lots of important philosophers throughout history. Heng 恒 (persistence), the Chinese character that is usually translated as “permanence”, is also a prominent topic in early Daoist texts. In this essay I’ll explore how the persistence (heng 恒) of the dao is articulated through the transience of life in early Daoism. As a character that implies both space and temporality, heng designates the consistent unfolding of dao. Unlike the metaphysical “permanence” that is deprived of any place in reality, the persistence of dao (heng) abides in ordinary life. This is perfectly captured by chang 常 (consistency, persistence, originally means “skirts and clothes”), a character that is interchangeable and interexplainable with heng. All of this offers us a different view of place wherein space and temporality cannot be separately comprehended. A place is not merely an abstract spatial concept as conceived in Newtonian physics. – We should not forget, it is exactly with this modern view of place that nature has been captured as a machine, a dead material at disposal of humans. Place in Daoism marks out completely contextual situations. A place is always a world. A world is always worlding. Such is the ziran of dao. I will begin my paper by distinguishing heng from “permanence” in Plato’s works, then moving onto a close look at heng in Laozi to elaborate how it is pondered through transience. The thinking on heng was well developed later in the article of hengxian that is collected in Shanghai Museum bamboo slips. It is here that heng was considered together with place, i.e., yu 或/域. I will have a close reading of this precious and profound text. Place in this sense should be considered as nature, which still awaits to be realized as a home, the only home that we dwell in. LIU, Yunhua (Shanghai Normal University, China) “A Comparative Study of Sino-Western Original Differences: Under the Perspective of Division of Horizons” The Sino-western original differences formed in the original period of their cultures are deeply explored from the perspective of “division of horizons” in this paper. The author thinks that the basic differences are firstly represented in the cognition and representational system of “tian” (天 or cosmos). As the main origin of western culture, mainstream thinkers in ancient Greek perceive “tian” as an isolated (beyond specific time and space or form and quality) substance (atom, element, the One, “form”, “essence” and so on) with invariability, motionlessness, and intangibility. They believe 107 this “intangible world” which can be understood by reasoning but cannot be felt, is the “noumenal” or “real” world with transcendence. It is quite different in Chinese culture. From Qin dynasty, in any period the highest principles such as dao 道, qi 气, xin 心, li 理 or even kong 空 in Buddhism are quite different. On the contrary, the foundation is harmonious “unity”: the unity of dao and qi, li and xin, tong 通 and bian 变, ben 本 and mo 末. Tai xu ji qi 太虚即气 proposed by Zhangzai (1020-1077), ren ren yi tai ji 人人一太极,and wu wu yi tai ji 物物一太极 proposed by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) are the typical examples to express Chinese traditional theory of Being and beings, i.e.,the highest principle of “invariability”is contained in “variability”without isolated existence. Secondly, there isn’t a counterpart in Chinese culture for “atomistic individual” which is constructed on the basis of reflecting on the nature of universe in western culture. As is pointed out by some scholars,based on family and blood relations, Chinese culture constructs“relational individuals”which compose a“hierarchical structure”差序结构 between closeness and distance, highness and lowness. Each “small individual” occupies a single but dependent position in “big individual”. Thirdly, basically speaking, there is binary opposition between “tian” and human in western culture. The task for human is to master the real knowledge by grasping the essence of “tian”through“wisdom”. Because of the diversity in cognitive ability, there is diversity for “souls” to master the “ knowledge ” by contacting “ tian ” (object world) as well. Therefore, for quite a long time, western culture has built a system of epistemology with complex hierarchy and clear distinction via basic methodology such as geometry, syllogism, and dialectics. Overall, causal link (sequent relation in diachronic dimension) is emphasized in this big system. In Chinese culture, there isn’t binary relation between views of truth on the basis of entity theory, and views of individuals on the basis of atomism. Instead, the unity of “ tian” and human is emphasized, which implies that every being is qi so it is in perpetual variation and interaction. Moreover, qi is of vigorousness, hence the theory of interaction between tian and human is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. The relations (parallel relation in synchronic dimension) among those factors of tian and human are usually constructed via analogies. LOCKE, Patricia M. (St. John’s College) “Constitution of Place through the Body: Throat-singing the World” Central Asian throat singers are very attuned to the natural sounds of the animal life around them, but also the sounds of the terrain, winds, and weather. They imitate and evoke the living world in song. Yet I would argue that throat singers go farther: they actually generate physical places through their vocal agency. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, especially The Visible and the Invisible and “Eye and 108 Mind,” this paper will investigate the contours of sonic places. Merleau-Ponty makes much of Cézanne’s painterly observation that a mountain thinks through him, though his brush inscribes the mountain’s meaning with his own expressive style. Throat-singing offers a test of this way of thinking about aesthetic relations with the natural world. To create a soundscape, Tuvan throat singers of central Asia establish a fundamental tone, akin to the base of a mountain range that rings the horizon, and simultaneously sing prominent overtones above that base. The higher tones with clear, bell-like clarity rise and fall in a melodic line, which is a silhouette like those that mountains display against the setting sun. Several voices may support one another in the making, giving a three-dimensional aspect to the pitch and register height variations. Yet the language of analogy or metaphor is insufficient to fully articulate the discovery or creation of new sonically-contoured places. My paper will apply Merleau-Ponty’s descriptive phenomenology to Tuvan throat singing as it exists today, framing human expression as singing the melody of the world. How does the human voice make place? How do we come to dwell there? These are my fundamental questions. LONG, William J. (Georgia State University) “Tantric State: Dharma, Democracy and Development” Today, the majority of sovereign states can fairly be described as “democracies” characterized by elected political leadership and some measure of individual rights and liberties. Likewise, most states have economies where the marketplace is the chief arbiter of economic exchange. Virtually all these polities and economies have as their underlying “operating system” Western liberal principles and values. There is one place that stands as an exception to this model, the small remote country of Bhutan. Because of its Himalayan location, its centuries of closure, and the good fortune of having avoided conquest and colonization, when Bhutan emerged as a democratic state with a relatively free internal market in the 21st century, it did so with its 1300-year-old belief and value system intact. Its philosophical beliefs and mores are overwhelming Buddhist, not Western and liberal in character. Contemporary Bhutan, the country that seeks Gross National Happiness as its fundamental goal, is the only democratic, market-based state in the world constitutionally and culturally rooted in Buddhist principles and ethics. This exceptionality matters because it provides and authentic basis for theoretical comparison between two distinct models of democracy and development. Here, the comparison is between two autonomous, identifiable traditions of thought (liberalism and Buddhism) that differ on important first-order philosophical principles. Such comparisons can bring to light new questions, frames of inquiry and alternative approaches to our understanding of democracy and development. This paper will compare the differences and similarities between Buddhist and liberal philosophy that lie at the core of two different approaches to democracy and 109 development. To illustrate, Bhutanese Buddhist and Western liberal conceptualizations of the nature of the individual “self,” “human nature,” and “the pursuit of happiness”—the building blocks of social theory—are profoundly different. Because of their distinctive ontological and ethical stances, what constitutes “good government” and “appropriate economic development” differs in critical ways, even though both Bhutan and Western nations can be described as “democratic” and “market-based.” By understanding better a Buddhist approach to democracy and development, those of us in the West can develop a realistic and relativistic view of our own political principles and values and, perhaps, discover novel ideas useful in addressing contemporary political and economic challenges such as ideological polarization, income inequality, and sustainable economic development. LoPRESTI, Matt (Hawai’i Pacific University) “Speculative Metaphysics from Trans-cultural perspectives: Traversing Boundaries and Self-Transformation without moving or changing” As a professor who introduces Western students to non-Western worldviews, at times I find myself essentially describing to them an entirely new world, not just different views of it. As a realist, however, I say it is the same world, but our placement in it and what I call “stance” towards it is often quite different. A tradition’s perspectival “stance” towards the world cannot be encountered or understood unless one re-orients oneself to the world as the sort of place that the Other feels that they inhabit. The very beginnings of intercultural dialogue, interreligious understanding, and cross-cultural or comparative philosophical discourse involves this disorienting action of establishing a previously unexperienced vantage point from which to view the world anew – as a “Hindu”, as a “Confucian, or as a “Hawaiian.” Successful reorientation into the world qua Hawaiian for example, is not just intellectually abstract exercise; the successful reorientation of the self into the world anew qua Hawaiian (or any other tradition for that matter) must be an experience of the lived-body. As we encounter and engage this world as embodied persons, we cannot but begin to understand the world from different perspectives other than as embodied perspectives in new places. Interestingly, this can mean not just viewing ourselves as inhabiting a new place (a new way of viewing the cosmos itself) but it can also mean viewing our self, i.e., viewing our very embodied existence, as radically different too (i.e., as with or without a soul or Atman, as a primarily relational being, or as a discrete individual). The competent comparative philosopher (and student) must therefore not only be able to imagine, inhabit, or impart to his students a view of the cosmos as various places, but must also be able to be chamilion-like in seeing the self as fundamentally different in various scenarios as well. This paper expands on previous work that I have done on the philosophy of place by Edward Casey and the psychology of perception by J.J. Gibson by applying my developed concept of “stance” to doing and teaching comparative philosophy. 110 LOTT, Greige (University of North Florida) “Good Odds and Odd Goods: Ugliness and Authenticity in Daoist Zhuangzi and American Hip Hop” “If you look at them from the viewpoint of their differences, from liver to gall is as far as from Ch 'u to Yüeh; if you look at them from the viewpoint of their sameness, the myriad things are all one.” This excerpt is often used to demonstrate the breadth of Zhuangzi’s relativistic worldview. Even so, it may still seem a stretch to take seriously connections drawn between Chinese philosophy and American Hip Hop. But, in the work of celebrated contemporary Hip Hop artist Brother Ali,—who is both blind and albino, and who describes his physique as “depending on the day and depending on what I ate…anywhere from twenty to thirty-five pounds overweight,”— a curious resemblance to characters in Zhuangzi’s 德充符 (“Signs of the Fullness of Power”) emerges. Both Ali and Zhuangzi use expressive discourse on the body to dismiss negative appraisals of unconventional appearance. In Ali’s case, this occurs as recourse to a type of charisma he repeatedly refers to as “the fire in the eye,” and a state of authenticity labeled “real as can be.” Similarly, Zhuangzi employs characters who are either “ugly” or “crippled” to show that one’s virtue (de 德) is, if not independent of outward appearance, not negatively impacted by it. While differences in temporal, linguistic, and spatial contexts are obvious, the shared perspective opens Ali’s work to further philosophical analysis. In turn, mapping the extension of Ali’s self-image into his core message of social justice and inequality allows a fresh sociological perspective when applied to Zhuangzi. In keeping with the conference’s theme of place, this study examines the overlap in two places that, in their respective native contexts, fall outside of mainstream normative borders. The project also challenges academic philosophy as a place, asking if Zhuangzi’s relativism is taken seriously enough to allow a comparative study with something as far afield as American Hip Hop. LOWMAN, Samantha (Boise State University) “Wandering towards Dwelling: Opening the Xin for a Renewed Receptivity towards Places” Previous scholarship has uncovered certain resonances in ancient Daoist and Zen Buddhist texts and the works of Martin Heidegger, suggesting that he was influenced by their thought. With this possible influence in mind, I will explore a connection concerning human orientation (ways of thinking and acting) towards places in Heidegger’s works A Question Concerning Technology and Building, Thinking, Dwelling, and the early Daoist text Zhuangzi. Heidegger’s concepts of poeisis - “bringing-forth” existing potential into presence - and dwelling -“the fundamental human activity” - are both associated with an orientation of active care towards the world. 111 In contrast, the “deficient mode of care” of modern society adheres to a certain set of distinctions which tie the value of nature and humanity itself to being-at-disposal seeing the world as a “standing reserve” (Heidegger), with an eye only towards “usefulness” (Zhuangzi). In Zhuangzi’s stories, wandering is presented as a freeing of the xin (mind/heart) from these distinctions, an escape from the enslaving “static conformity of language” which blinds humanity to the wealth of possibility which is constantly unfolding in Nature. I contrast Heidegger’s enframing orientation (in which we enclose the living world in static categories of language) with one that allows nature and humanity to be and become as good-in-themselves, linking Zhuangzi’s idea of wandering with Heidegger’s concept of dwelling through their mutual foundation in concern for the essences of all beings. These two human activities may then be understood as antidotes to the deficient mode of care which allows desacralization of human places through tourism and thoughtless residing, healing practices that will aid us in re-establishing an orientation of creative receptivity towards nature and ourselves. LUKEY, Benjamin (University of Hawai’i) “Helping Philosophy Flourish: The Need for Intellectually Safe Places to Encourage the Pluralism of Philosophy” This presentation examines modes of philosophical inquiry and suggests philosophy for children (p4c) as an exemplar of inquiry, roughly understood as the search for greater understanding, rather than debate, roughly understood as a formal exercise of winning arguments. While critical thinking and argumentation are necessary skills in seeking clarity, I suggest that as skills in themselves, they can be counterproductive for inquiry. Too often critical thinking and argumentation reduce inquiry to debate wherein each side must attack and defend positions rather than search for greater understanding. Even more pernicious is the stifling of inquiry due to either perceived relativism or perceived incommensurability, when participants don’t feel that they can communicate across modes of argumentation. Drawing upon the facilitation of inquiries with a range of participants, including kindergarteners, undergrads, and professionals, I address the importance of creating an “intellectually safe” community of inquiry and discuss the fine balance of an intellectually safe critical community. I share examples of how critical thinking and argumentation can genuinely contribute to a deeper understanding for all participants. Finally, I share examples of how intellectually safety enables a pluralism of views and beliefs in a productive inquiry, even when the inquiry challenges deeply held beliefs important to participants’ identities. MACBETH, Danielle (Haverford College) “The Place of Philosophy” 112 My focus is the practice of philosophy, in particular, how it is (or should be) done and what it does (or can) achieve. Like mathematics, philosophy is an a priori discipline: it does not involve testimony, either the testimony of one’s senses or the testimony of others, but is instead selfstanding; in principle one can see everything for oneself. But unlike mathematics, the practice of philosophy seems essentially, constitutively dialectical. The first task is to try to resolve this tension at the heart of philosophy, and also to clarify the sense in which the dialogue of philosophy is a human conversation, a conversation among all rational beings with our sort of body as contrasted both with a conversation amongst all rational beings, whatever their biological form of life, and with a conversation amongst humans with, say, one’s own history and culture. But philosophy is not only a priori and dialectical. It is also intrinsically temporal and historicist insofar as the nature of the practice changes over the course of history, sometimes radically. We see this most obviously in the West with Kant and Hegel. Following in the wake of Descartes’ profound advances in mathematics and metaphysics, Kant showed that traditional metaphysics was no longer possible, that the a priori science of metaphysics must give way to critique, an a priori investigation into the conditions of possibility of knowing. What Hegel then saw is that this showing on Kant’s part was not, as Kant thought, a discovery of philosophy but instead an enactment, the creation of a radically new mode of intentional directedness on reality. But if that is so then, Hegel argues, the form of philosophy cannot in fact be, as Kant thought, the practice of critique, but must instead be narrative, the telling of a phenomenology of Geist: if we are to understand ourselves in the world, our being as human, we need a story of our becoming. Defending this claim is my second task. The third task is to explore two consequences of such a narrative understanding. The first is the idea that space in fact has the status of a place insofar as for something to be a space is for it to have a very distinctive significance for us, one that came fully into view only with the rise of modern science in the West in the seventeenth century. The second is the idea that the notion of place has after all a deep commonality with the notion of space insofar as even our understandings of the places within which we dwell can and in certain cases should be subjected to the sort of critically reflective scrutiny that has traditionally been associated exclusively with the concept of space. By examining these various theses and their interrelations I hope at once to shed light on the character of philosophy as a discipline and a practice, and to develop and defend the idea that philosophy is and must be a conversation of all human beings, that is, of all rational beings with our kind of body, whatever their historical and cultural circumstances. MAHOOTIAN, Farzad (New York University) “Alam al-Mithal: Geographies of Speculative Experience” The 12th and 13th century Sufi masters, Suhrawardi and ibn Arabi, conceived alam almithal, the imaginal world, as the world of real possibilities. They considered this to be 113 an intermediate world less material than the actual world, but more material than the world of ideas: the real interface between the actual and the ideal. Otherworldly realities that shape spiritual striving (prophecy, grace, miracles, etc.) were thought to be located in the magnificent cities of alam al-mithal, accessible by active imagination and nonliteral thinking. The actual world has changed radically since the 13th century, thus changing alam almithal with it. My thesis is that the imaginal world is metaphysically congruent with the world of models and theoretical entities, including prana, qi, entropy, subprime mortgage derivatives, ideal gases and other entities that shape our intentions and actions upon the actual world. Furthermore, I suppose that the denizens of alam almithal are metaphysical cognates of Whitehead’s “propositions,” what he called “lures for feeling,” and, specifically, “intellectual feelings” arising from the integration of physical and conceptual feelings. While propositions are typically judged as true or false, Whitehead maintained that the mode of “suspended” intuitive judgment is best suited to intellectual discovery and invention. Modern thought has populated the imaginal world with many entities whose purposes are sometimes questionable. These run the gamut from the more empirical to the more ideal, the wondrous to the quotidian, and all of them capable of materializing and feeding our noblest and basest aspirations. For millennia, religion supplied map, compass and guidance to the imaginal world, but that world is now populated by previously unimagined entities. Furthermore, the tough-minded realism of modern thought has largely driven imagination into the shadow world of entertainment and intensely subjective diversions. Rehabilitation of the status of the imaginal could have fruitful impact on a more informed and intentional grasp of the power of imagination to shape individual and collective futures. MAJOR, Philippe (National University of Singapore) “Rethinking the Temporalization of Space in Early Republican China: Liang Shuming’s Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies” One of the most fundamental aspects of the conception of space within the intellectual scheme of Western modernity, especially from the Enlightenment on, has been a gradual temporalization of space, in the sense that different locales have been accommodated within a unilinear meta-narrative of a human evolution perceived as emancipatory. Within this conceptual scheme, the spatial other becomes a temporal other as well, so that a European traveller to China could observe the indigenous population not only from a cultural (spatial) distance, but also from the vanguard of history. To observe the other from the future, as it were, meant that various dichotomies could secure a distance between self and other: agent vs subject of history, rational vs superstitious, autonomous vs heteronomous, etc. This temporalization of space, in Fabien’s terminology, meant a “denial of coevalness;” that is, an impossibility to dialogue with the other as a contemporary. Interestingly, this denial of coevalness could also be related to a desire to uproot Europe and its others from their geographical and historical settings, and transplant 114 them within a universal, abstract, imagined, and hierarchical meta-narrative. The modern narrative told of primitive people determined by their geographical locations (warm climate = laziness, etc.), but also of a path which could enable them to gradually free themselves from this determinism through a process of modernization, conceptualized as a disembodiment, an uprooting from local cultures equated with an entering into the universal culture of modernity. In practical terms, this temporal narrative made possible a discursive universalization of a spatially limited culture: that of modern Europe. While the European philosophical critique of both the denial of coevalness and the meta-narrative of uprootedness (notably in Heidegger) has attracted quite a lot of attention, it remains little known that before the publication of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit; 1927), Liang Shuming (梁漱溟; 1893-1988) was already providing a critique of at least some aspects of the modern narrative touched upon above, a narrative which became pervasive in China during the New Culture Movement (新文化運動; 19151927). In his classic work Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (東西文 化及其哲學; 1921), Liang provided both a critique and a reworking of the European meta-narrative of modernity. While opposing the idea that China could be temporally behind the West, notably by re-establishing coevalness through a cultural relativism which would allow different locales and cultures to be on a historical path autonomous from that of Europe, Liang nevertheless adopted the framework of the European metanarrative of modernity. However, this framework was emptied of its Eurocentric content in Liang, and modern European culture, as the universal future of humankind, was replaced by Eastern cultures (that of China and India). In this essay, I will first outline Liang’s critique and reshaping of the modern metanarrative, before discussing the many tensions within his discourse, between space and time, localism and universalism, and tradition and modernity. Particularly, I will draw attention to the tension between his goal, which is to highlight the value of the local cultures of China and India, and the tool provided by modernity in order to achieve this goal: a meta-narrative which abstracts cultures from their locale in order to universalize them. This tension, I will argue, meant that the Eastern cultures Liang wished to revalue could not but be de-historicized, abstracted, and fetishized. The traditions upheld by Liang were thus uprooted from their spatio-temporal locales in a manner that cannot but remind us of the status of European culture within the Eurocentric meta-narrative of modernity Liang wished to criticize. MAKAIAU, Amber (University of Hawai’i) “The Intellectually Safe Ethnic Studies Classroom: A Space for Cultivating and Nurturing Civic Relationships” The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate how the philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) approach to deliberative pedagogy can assist educators in creating intellectually safe democratic schooling spaces for students and teachers in diverse cultural contexts. It is organized into three main parts. 115 (1) At the opening of the presentation I describe how p4cHI, as both an educational theory and a set of classroom practices, is a deliberative pedagogy that carries out Dewey’s (1916) assertion that in order for democracy to function as it should, students and teachers must have opportunities to experience democracy in schools. (2) Second, I share about the opportunity I was given to experiment with using the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy to teach Ethnic Studies at a small public high school on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. This includes an explanation of how I used one of the defining features of the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy, “intellectually safety” (Jackson, 2001, p. 460), to cultivate and nurture a collaborative civic space in our classroom community of inquiry. (3) Third, I describe the large-scale qualitative study that I designed to investigate the impact of the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy on student learning. Eighty-nine of my Ethnic Studies students participated in the research project. Data came from transcripts of our videotaped class sessions and my students’ coursework (e.g. written reflections, formal essays, out of class assignments, and inquiry projects). To analyze the data I used the method of constant comparison. From this research, three important findings emerged. The p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy: (a) creates norms for respectful and ethical civic relationships, (b) fundamentally shifts the distribution of power in the classroom and opens up access to multiple perspectives, and (c) facilitates the development of dialogue, deliberation, and civic action. At the presentation’s conclusion I call on educators to use deliberative pedagogies like p4cHI to form intellectually safe philosophical communities of action (Popp 1981) in which students gain the experiences they need for turning our democratic ideals into reality. MAKEHAM, John (Australian National University) "Siting Chinese Philosophy in the Chinese Academy" Against the historical background of Chinese philosophy's formation as an academic discipline in modern China, this paper seeks to highlight some of 'internal' challenges confronting the identity of Chinese philosophy today, including the question of just what it is that makes Chinese philosophy "Chinese". MALHOTRA, Ashok Kumar (SUNY at Oneonta) “Space as Sacred Place in Major Religions and Inner Sanctum in Yoga and Meditation” The topic of "Space and Place" in terms of how they are connected and yet different from each other is an intriguing one. An insightful philosophical discussion of this experience of how these concepts are treated in the various philosophies and religions of the world requires a comprehensive approach involving the philosophical, contemplative, literary, mythological and scientific perspectives. How spaces become places of sacred worship? How cities such as 116 Varanasi, Gaya, Jerusalem, Mecca etc., mountains such as Mt. Kailash, Mt. Meru; Mt. Sinai and Mt. Hira as well as an entire country of India or Israel or Thailand etc. move from spaces to sacred places of worship on this earth? How inhabitants of these countries and cities find their identity by populating it? What is it that is added morally, ethically, economically, educationally, geographically, aesthetically and spiritually to transform spaces into places which become so sacred that people are ready to fight to sacrifice their lives to secure them their status. I will discuss how these external spaces are converted into sacred places of worship through the injecting of ethical, moral, religious, spiritual and mythical values. On the other hand, a similar kind of imposition or assigning of values, meaning and significance happens in the diverse systems of Yoga and Meditation where the emphasis is on the inner space and how this is converted into a place where the real self or divine spark resides. Similar to the church, mosque or temple situated in the physical place that is constructed in the outer space, this inner space is converted into the sacred place or temple within. The Tantric Yoga system is an excellent example where this space is understood in terms of seven places called chakras where the universal consciousness resides or reveals itself. These chakras, which are located in the special space of the body, become seven distinct places to deliver the universal consciousness within the person. Yoga and meditation provide methodically the art and technology of getting in touch with these chakras, which are called the energy centers or sacred places thus leading to the experience of the real self of the person. My paper will delve into the discussion of external space and how it is converted into a sacred place in various religions and their everlasting impact on the people who believe in them as places of worship. Moreover, I would discuss and delve into the space within a person that becomes a place of sacred worship to be explored and experienced through a dedicated meditative effort on the part of the initiate. Furthermore, I will discuss how the external space that becomes the place of worship in the outside world might be similar to the internal space in the body that becomes the inner place or the temple within the body to be experienced through the technology provided by the diverse systems of yoga and meditation. MAN, Eva Kit Wah (Hong Kong Baptist University) “Notes on a Chinese Garden: Comparative Response to Arnold Berleant’s Environmental Aesthetics” This presentation is a philosophical reflection on and a comparative study of Arnold Berleant’s recent work, “Nature and Habitation in a Chinese Garden”, included in his book Aesthetics beyond the Arts. It reviews Berleant’s notes on the subject and the object relation, the bodily reaction, and the aesthetic experience evolved when situated 117 in the environment of a Chinese garden. His reading of the nature and habitation in a Chinese garden is examined, and compared with the related comprehension of contemporary Confucian scholar Tang Junyi. Tang proposes a metaphysical manifestation in the design of traditional Chinese architectures and gardens and the interactive relation between man and Nature in his influential work, The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture. The comparative notes expand the reading of Berleant on the subject, which is suggested by Tang 's discussion of "hiding" (藏), "cultivating" (修), "resting" (息)and "wandering" (游) in a Chinese garden. Parallel correspondence is reviewed between the two writings, which invites comparative aesthetics and critical responses. MANDELSTAM, Joshua (University Hawai'i) “Where Do We 'Belong'? The Relation between Personal Identity and Location” When discussing notion of 'belonging', two interpretations come to mind: one of the individual or culture belonging to a place, and another of the 'place' belonging to a particular person or group. This paper will then examine the difference between these two very different ideas of belonging, and how each may effect one's idea of personal identity - the interplay of how the relationship to the environment effects the sense of self, and of culture. Many tribal communities, including those of he Hawaiians, Native Americans, etc., defined themselves by the land they lived on. The traditional Western conception of 'owning' land led to many wars over territory, and some attempts to continually acquire more. Other peoples have illustrated nomadic tendencies, carrying their culture with them wherever they go, as evidenced by the Bedouin Tribes, and the Judaic culture after the diaspora. In looking at the these concepts, thinkers on the notions of land and belonging will be brought up – the Existentialists feeling of 'Throwness' (Heidegger), or 'Alienation' (Camus), Thoreau's idea of how the right place can change the person on it, Locke's idea of mixing one's toil with the land to make it one's own. In addition, other perspectives will be considered such as the Iroquois idea of the land belonging to the next of 7 generations, or that we are part of the land, as according to Gaia Theory. In conclusion, the paper will examine how each interpretation of belonging may effect ethical actions, having ramifications on how people treat the land and each other. MARTIN, Andre (McGill University, Canada) “Methodological and Ontological Individualism” Loosely put, methodological individualism (MI) is the view that explanations in the social sciences essentially involve explanations in terms of individual-level phenomena (people, their thoughts, acts, etc.). MI is a view that has historically been subject to much criticism, e.g. early on by Emile Durkheim (1895) and later by Steven Lukes (1968), and yet it is taken to be a rather modest view by its proponents, e.g. J.W.N. 118 Watkins (1957). In this paper I attempt to clear the debate about MI, defend MI’s plausibility, and point to where further discussion would be needed to conclusively deny or prove MI; in general, what I argue is central for all of these tasks is to see MI’s essential connection to ontological concerns about the individual/social. In the first part of my paper I set-up what the debate over ontological individualism (OI) should look like by drawing from more cemented debates in philosophy over metaphysical emergence and physicalism. In short, I define what possible views one can have over the ontology of the individual and put them, in part, in terms of whether the social does or doesn’t bring any radically new causal force into the world. In the second part of my paper I connect the methodological and ontological concerns by pointing out how methodological individualists (like Watkins) have based the former on the latter. This move shows where objections (e.g.by Lukes) that MI is either trivial or simply implausible have misconstrued MI, missing MI’s motivation from the non-trivial and prima facie plausible OI (loosely put, the view that the social doesn’t bring any radically new causal force into the world). Finally, in the third part of my paper I respond to some more focused objections to MI and point to other areas of philosophy that can help decide matters. For example, I present what is arguably Durkheim’s argument against OI and MI alike that social phenomena like fashion trends and social contagion are examples of new, “sui-generis”, causal forces in the world and so one can’t simply appeal to the individual level for an explanation, I respond with how OI and MI can account for these examples in a reasonable way, and finally I point to concerns in the philosophy of language that might prove to give stronger objections or more evidence in favour of OI and MI. MASON, Joshua (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) “The Right Road and the Proper Path: Metaphors of Navigating the Moral Landscape” The commonplace physical experience of walking on a narrow path provides a crosscultural metaphor of morality. In English we say that to be “walking the line,” “on the straight and narrow” while “taking the high road” is to be moral. Failing morally is “deviant” behavior that “strays” “out of bounds.” Likewise in Chinese, “dao 道” has the mundane meaning of traveling a path or road, and is also the foundational moral concept. As walking on a path is as near to a universal human experience as we are likely to find, it seems that this embodied source of moral metaphors is available across cultures. However, there is more than one way to conceive of the path and how to stay centered and maintain one’s place upon it. One is to see the path as a fixed and universal route that all people must discover and conform to. Another is to see paths as steadily extending, spontaneously emerging, and meandering across a dynamic landscape. The first conception gives rise to an idea of a moral journey that is clearly defined, rigid, and eternal. Theories of teleology, divine command, and universal reason seem to accord with this kind of path. The second gives rise to an idea of a moral journey that is 119 underdetermined, flexible, and contextual. Theories rooted in the Chinese tradition of the Yijing (Book of Changes), in which the landscape is always transforming, accord with this second conception. Hence, while it may seem at first as if a universal feature of human embodiment gives us a universal vocabulary of morality, the cultural assumptions built into these metaphors force us to remain attentive to the particular connotations that these concepts carry. This paper describes two ways of understanding the moral journey – the right road and the proper path – and the different strategies required for staying on each. MATTICE, Sarah (University of North Florida) “The Place of China in Translating the Heart Sutra” In this presentation I explore a re-translation of the classic Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramitā hṛdaya). The Heart Sutra is part of the larger Perfection of Wisdom category of Mahayana Buddhist texts, and is one of the most popular sutras in daily practice around the world. It is also one of the shortest sutras, and is understood to fulfill roles as both a text and a dharani. There are more than twenty translations and commentaries on the text in English; it does not suffer from a lack of translation or scholarly attention. However, in some sense its popularity also covers over certain philosophical issues, especially when translated in order to be most accessible to a large audience. I argue that there are several respects in which current translations do a disservice to some of the more subtle philosophical points made by this text. I begin with a brief overview of the controversial position put forward by Jan Nattier that the Heart Sutra is in fact originally a Chinese text that was only later translated back into Sanskrit to secure its authenticity. In her 1992 article, “The Heart Sutra: An Apocryphal Text?”, she argues for the hypothesis that the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is a back-translation from the Chinese, basing this in part on the explanatory power of the hypothesis for accounting for differences in the core passages between the versions of the text. While others, notably John McRae, have argued for the “Chinese-ness” of the text based on its importance in Chinese Buddhism, Nattier makes the more literal argument for the text having its origins in China and Chinese language. She concludes her piece by stating, “The Heart Sutra is indeed—in every sense of the word—a Chinese text” (199). Although the purpose of this presentation is not to argue for or against the literal “Chinese-ness” of the sutra, I start from the imaginative question, “What if the sutra were Chinese?” What impact would that have on how we, as scholars, approach the translation of the text? Because Sanskrit and Chinese are very different languages, I argue that taking the imaginative position of the text as Chinese does have important consequences for its translation into English—translating from Sanskrit or Tibetan into English is a very different process than starting with Chinese. I draw on the work of two figures, philosopher, sinologist, and translator Roger T. Ames, and translation theorist 120 Lawrence Venuti, in order to argue for a particular re-translation of the text that is sensitive to concerns arising from the Chinese language. MAYMIND, Ilana (Visiting Scholar UC/Irvine and Adjunct Faculty, Chapman University) “Exile as a Place of Empathy: Maimonides and Shinran Compared” Historically, exile has been a political act with various philosophical and psychological ramifications. My presentation briefly focuses on the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides and his Japanese contemporary Shinran. In both cases their exile experience—an act of enforced displacement and change in community status—led them to rethink their personal identities and relations to tradition. By using exile as a heuristic device, I will point out some psychological, emotive, and ethical similarities between the two thinkers without overlooking their fundamental differences in religious worldview. Specifically, I will argue that their capacity for empathy was heightened by recognizing that, placed in unfavorable conditions, people may adopt a philosophical perspective and lifestyle they might have rejected in less contentious circumstances. McCRAW, David (University of Hawai’i) “Metaphors of Place in Pre-Han Chinese Thinking” Ancient Chinese texts, like the Lunyu, Mengzi, the Laozi and Zhuangzi, inscribed quite distinctive notions about place. Their notions about place involve metaphors that would prove central to their explorations of philosophy, social structure, and political organization. A careful (textual) archaeology can uncover some salient metaphorical foundations for much that still seems distinctive about old Chinese thought. A full account of these must await completion of our "excavation"; however, we can sketch a few preliminary observations: *These texts do not support a hard-fast distinction between time and space; instead, you find a continuum. *They do not support a hard-fast distinction between dwelling-in and movementbetween; action and rest got conceived off as mutually entailing. *As a result, the metaphorical uses of place get bound up with those of moving along a way, so that place becomes an essential part of the central Chinese preoccupation with ways and waymaking. In a seminal phrase like the beginning of the crucial text "Way of Higher Learning," we read: 大學之道在...止於至善. The process of learning, then, "comes to lie in alighting upon highest good." While the ways of cultivation have no endpoint, they will necessarily involve resting-places, and ancient texts quite often depend on visualizing progress as developing gradually through a series of stages, which they conceived of as places, or, roughly, "sites of instruction." Unearthing these sites will help us retrace and 121 better understand the intellectual journeys they undertook, despite the vast gulfs of time-and-space that seemingly separate them from us. McKERRACHER, David (Boise State University) “Virtual Enframing: Social Media’s Subsumption of the Other into Theyness” Human places are undergoing rapid and never before imagined transformations. Not only does this change the landscape of our environments, but it also has ramifications on how we relate to the Other, oneself, and the Earth as a whole. As habitats go virtual, so our habits develop new tendencies. Just as we have ordered the world as standing reserve to bend to our will (enframing), so we ourselves are continuously challenged forth. What are the effects of this enframing on human relationships, considering the rise of social media in the 21st century? This question will be explored primarily using Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology, Levinas’ founding of ethics on the faceto-face encounter, and H. Dreyfus’ critique of the internet (using Kierkegaard). Not only has the shared vulnerability and call of conscience instigated by the transcendence of the face-to-face encounter been enframed by social media, but the defining characteristics of individuals and human relationships are being misconstrued and leveled by over saturation, ease of access, ambiguity and anonymity. My thesis is that social media is not a neutral presence in our lives, but is rather a powerful force with insidious tendencies if not compensated for deliberately. For support I draw on conclusions from studies in sociology, psychology, and experimental philosophy. McKINNEY, Jonathan (University of Hawai’i) “Zen, Beauty, and Living with the Planet” The environment (Earth) is as dynamic and complex as any system that can be conceptualized. Nature has a long history of fluctuation and balance, both serving to promote the conditions of growth of new species and collapsing such conditions, annihilating whole species. Harmony and balance with nature comes at the cost of being vulnerable to its fluctuations and temperament. Humanity, having learned through many years of struggle, has made it a priority to master its local surroundings, controlling or consolidating the effects of storms, droughts, and cycles of predation. We self-identify as intellectual champions and pioneers of a conquered planet. The two primary foci of this paper will be to challenge these projections and to establish the place of humanity within nature rather than above it. To do so, I will introduce the works of Fritjof Capra, James Lovelock, and Lynn Margulis which establish the existence of a dynamic world of life. A key feature of such a world is autopoiesis, or the capacity to create and shape the world and oneself, or the world as oneself in this case. Once established, I will argue that humanity’s capacity to shape the world and itself comes from the Earth, rather than being uniquely human. In so doing, the human will fall from the throne of the Enlightenment, and finally find its place as a part of the living world. Such a shift 122 necessitates a monumental change in how environmental ethics are conceived and practiced. To address such a challenge, I will introduce the polarizing voices of Zen Master Dōgen and Alfred North Whitehead. Each will provide a framework that relies upon similar notions of interdependence while promoting theories of action that support the opposing values of conservative meditation (zazen) and projective expression. My subsequent analysis will explore the intricacies of both, highlighting the important roles each play within a responsible environmental ethic. Ultimately, when living as parts in a vast interconnected system of life, humanity role changes from that of a monarch to that of a single cell within the body of the planet. Combining our efforts, as the human cells of the world, have the capacity to organ-ize, shaping the world and ourselves. It is through the delicate balance of our capacity for creative beauty and our diligent practice of humility that empowers us to live with the Earth responsibly. Our environment, and where humanity stands within it, are changing as a result of our current conceptions of global ethics; we should be mindful of our role within the world to reduce the malignance of our cancerous tendencies. McRAE, James (Westminster College) “The Earth Ethic and Comparative Environmental Philosophy” J. Baird Callicott is renowned as the leading interpreter of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. Callicott’s early work provided a normative foundation for Leopold’s environmental ethic, while his subsequent work has drawn from comparative philosophy, ecology, and contemporary moral psychology to generate a new earth ethic that can offer viable solutions to our contemporary environmental crisis. This paper explores the core tenets of Callicott’s work from the perspective of comparative philosophy, particularly with regard to environmental conceptions of the self. With the earth ethic, “self” becomes radically contextualized and “place” becomes a normatively charged space that defines both who we are and how we ought to act. MEISTER, Chad (Bethel College) “Vishishtadvaita Vedanta” In the writings of the twelfth-century Vedantin philosopher Ramanuja (c.1017-c.1137 C.E.), an influential interpretation of the Vendatin writings was generated that later came to be called Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) Vedanta. An important aspect of this interpretation is that Brahman, the Ultimate Reality [God] has two essential aspects, conscious (cit) and non-conscious (acit), such that the entire aggregate of things—the world in totality—has, as its true inner Self, Brahman insofar as it constitutes the body of Brahman. In the Sanskrit writings of his Sri Bhasya (commentary on the BrahmaSutras) and Vedartha-Sangraha, Ramanuja carefully develops what he means by the terms “world,” “body,” and “Brahman.” 123 In examining the Sanskrit texts of Ramanuja, I will unpack these terms as utilized by him. As it turns out, the analogy of the world as the body of Brahman (God) as proffered by Ramanuja furnishes a deep integrative connection between, and unified space of, the world and the divine reality. This connection provides rich and relevant insights for both eastern and western approaches to the nature of the divine, to the God-World relation, and to the role of the human being—insights that are especially relevant to certain contemporary ecological and social concerns. MENDELSON-MOAZ, Aida (Open University of Israel) “Land, Territory and Border: Space and Ethics in Contemporary Israeli Literature” Borders and identity are fundamental elements of the modern nation-state. In the Israeli context, land is both a motherland and an historical home. After the 1948 war, Israel applied the principle of territorial sovereignty on its land and employed rhetorical and institutional mechanisms that generated commitment to guarding the border and tightening bonds with the land. The Six Day War in 1967 introduced a new concept – the Green Line – which is the border line between the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories. A border presumably signifies the separation between the “here” and the “there,” between “my country” and a foreign country. And yet, in the context of the Occupied Territories, the borders become blurred, creating a twilight zone, a liminal region, which is simultaneously internal and external, apparently temporary but in fact permanent. Whereas previously, territory justified the national struggle, which elicited solidarity, the liminal region of the Occupied Territories violated the clear connection between the nation-state and the territory, implicating and complicating the national identity. Following the wake of the first Intifada in the late 1980's, which brought this twilight zone into the attention of wider Israeli society, in a traumatic and tangible way, Hebrew literature became engaged with the question of borders and identity. In Hebrew literary works from the 1990'a to the 2000's whether focusing principally on Israeli soldiers’ experiences across the Green Line, or exploring Israeli society itself, the theme of space is tied to the concept of borders. In many of these works, the border implies a transition from one moral and psychological existence to another, creating a physical, psychological and moral rift. In this liminal zone, the civil identity is frozen, and another identity is resuscitated – one that obeys other laws, that accord with male stereotypes projecting roughness and aggression, often on the verge of emotional dissonance and madness. Most interestingly, the question of border and national space is illustrated aesthetically. The literary works offer poetic alternatives of presenting and dismantling the borders, often creating deterritorialization – not just of the liminal space of the Occupied Territories, but also of the entire national space and sovereignty. In my paper, I aim to analyze the concept of borders, space and ethics in the Hebrew literature of the Intifada era, revealing powerful thematic and poetic strategies of 124 confronting these issues. I will elaborate on the works of Itzhak Ben-Ner, Orly CastelBloom and Michal Govrin. MICEL, THOMAS (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) “Textures of Spatial Alterity” This lo-fi architectural and urban design research contests the claims of the universal quantifiable spatial continuum of homogenous modernity, by proposing speculative urban scans and analysis to identify conditions of otherness, of micro-alterity, including the unusual and unexpected, as sources of spatial and individual meaning and value. The condition of urban alterity (interiority and exteriority in exchanges) is offered as the source of innovation in the hypermodern condition. Witness the spatial turn in the humanities of the 1990s, which resulted in a grounding of theoretical propositions and historical analysis mapped onto territories or locations, both physical and social, as a means of embedding and fine tuning research though spatial locations and spatial movements. The discourse of space is the discourse of the performativity of space – beyond functionalism into personal aberrant customization – habitus, misrecognition, formality, honestly, decisiveness, imagination, sense, and suspense are all necessary conditions produced though space and bodily discourse, and are inextricably bound to both. It is an advantage to architectural thought that the spatial turn tended to locate invisible or abstract processes in physical space. We can now see processes in space, on location as it were, and modulate them to some greater degree by attention to what is often overlooked, minimally present, or disappearing. Today now space is now increasingly in play – space is in play is an activation of codes of space in discourse – and this is aggravated by border conflicts, homelands, identity formation and insurgencies – all of which are produced in the rhetorical space of stabilized identities. From human geography to landscape practices to politics of dwelling, the mutability of identity is in play in the porosity of spatial condition. This paper seeks to activate aspects of alterity theory to open up an unexpected line through urbanism, one privileging creativity and innovation – and asking what can be done to make the increasingly diminishing spaces at the architectural-urban interface exceptional in their otherness? MILLS, Ethan (University of Tennessee Chattanooga) “The Place of Logic in Classical Indian Philosophy” I use the word ‘place’ in two senses: in the sense of the pakṣa (place, subject) within a formal Nyāya inference (anumāna), but also in the sense of the importance of logic and argumentation more generally within the classical Indian tradition. After looking at the inclusion of place in the first sense in the discussion of inference as a means of 125 knowledge, I argue that this first sense reveals an important feature about place in the second sense, which touches on what one might call the architecture and ethics of debate. Logic arose in the classical Indian tradition as rules for formal debate in particular and norms for rational discourse more generally. The pakṣa is an essential part of these rules and norms insofar as it grounds discussion in a mutually agreed upon subject/place, which allows for a more fruitful and virtuous debate. My discussion draws on classical sources such as the Nyāya Sūtra (1.1.32-39 and 1.2.1-9) and Dignāga’s Hetucakraḍamaru as well as contemporary sources such as Matilal’s The Character of Logic in India. I then discuss two places in the Indian tradition where the pakṣa exemplifies its function: debates about the status of the external world and about the existence of a creator deity. I end with a contemporary reflection: given the tendency of discussants in many contemporary political and philosophical disputes to talk past one other (e.g., US Presidential Debates, analytic- continental disputes, etc.), the place of logic in classical India encourages reflection on ways in which we might keep our debates grounded, rational, and respectful. MITCHELL, Ryan (Yale University) “The ‘Heart of Things’ in a Heartless World? Representation and Spatial Imagination in Han Fei’s Disenchantment of the Sovereign’s Charisma” While Han Fei has often been characterized, in both China and the West, as a protototalitarian thinker, competing interpretations of his oeuvre are gaining increasing prominence. Notable in such efforts is the attempt to discern the extent to which the Han Feizi operates as a descriptive theoretical critique of its contemporary politics rather than only as a normative or practical intervention therein. Indeed, the ultimate recommendation that Han Fei develops for the all-powerful sovereign developed in his writing is, paradoxically, to assume a position of quiescent passivity, refraining from any unnecessary use of his authority and choosing instead to “suffuse” the political system as a legitimating figure who operates only through objective, neutral standards—the law, or fa (法). Han Fei thus problematizes the figure of the sovereign in a way that has proved theoretically productive (albeit polemical) for the Chinese tradition much as Thomas Hobbes or Carl Schmitt have in Western political philosophy. Accordingly, this paper argues that a fuller understanding of the critical dimension of Han Fei’s account of sovereignty can be obtained by comparative reference to the latter figures. While all three theorists take the subject of sovereign power as their main area of focus, they adopt three very different argumentative strategies for portraying (in an “immanent” fashion) the actual operation of that power. Adapting Clifford Geertz’s notion of the “thick description” of social practices and definition of political charisma as the “sense of being near the heart of things,” I argue that the Han Feizi deploys a spatial idiom of critique, centered on access to the sovereign, that at times surpasses in verisimilitude the approaches of later Western realist political philosophers. 126 MITIAS, Lara (Antioch College) XXXXX MOELLER, Hans-Georg (University of Macau) “Exiles Since Childhood: On the Contingency of Place in Daoist Philosophy” This paper reflects on a rarely discussed “character” in the philosophically central second chapter of the Zhuangzi (Qiwulun): the “exile since childhood” (ruo sang 弱喪). As Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE), the editor of the standard version of the text, explains, a ruo sang is someone who lost their home at an early age. Such exiles will not even know if they return to their hometown; they have no sense of home and can consequently be content wherever they are. The figure of the ruo sang playfully challenges the demarcation of places according to a home/away-from-home distinction which figures prominently not only in the Confucian tradition. It suggests a conception of place as radically transient and contingent and thereby desists the idea of an ownership of space with all its potential emotional and socio-political hazards. MOHANTA, Dilipkumar (University of Calcutta, India) “Reflections on the Cognitivist-Skeptic Debate in Indian Philosophy and Pyrrhonism” In this presentation I will endeavor to demonstrate the unique 'space' in which the Pyrrhonian Skeptics and the Indian Skeptics can meet for dialogue. The skeptic who uses an attitude of doubt is a seeker of truth. S/he is a wise person who goes on questioning or raising doubt about cognitive claims on the basis of beliefs. In Indian philosophy, the attitude of doubt is accepted as an indispensable precondition for initiating any fruitful philosophical investigation. In the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy, we see that philosophical investigation begins with an ipso-facto doubt. Through the application of causal instruments of knowing (pramana) for eradicating doubt, they argue, we can arrive at right cognition / knowledge (which is free from doubt and error) about an object. However, the primary concern of philosophical skepticism is cognitive. It is critical about any kind of cognitive guarantee or certitude. It questions the veracity of the necessary tie that is claimed to exist between the truth of any cognitive position and how we arrive at it. No knowledge-claim can be accepted as absolutely indubitable or certain. Our judgments are never free from obscurity and uncertainty. Had it been so, questions like ‘Is the judgment true?’ could not be raised. This indicates that there always remains an epistemic gap between our available evidence and the asserted content. The no certainty position is followed from the no criterion argument. For the Skeptic, in this strict sense, certainty here means absolute certainty and this is next to impossible. S/he questions the assumption that the Law of Excluded Middle cannot be doubted. The claimer of the possibility of knowledge relies on the assumption that the judgment about the world of fact is either true or false. You are to accept either ‘p or not-p’; there is no 127 other alternative. But the Skeptic finds no sufficient rational ground to accept either of the two. To the skeptic, to any pro-argument for a thesis there is an equally strong counter-argument and, therefore, s/he cannot have any thesis (pratijna in Sanskrit) to put forward or a thesis of her/his own. This is known as no thesis argument. The Cognitivist-Skeptic debate is an important aspect of India's Argumentative Culture and this fact is very often ignored by scholars. But a close re-reading of the development of philosophical thought in India will show that this debate tradition enriches India's cultural heritage by giving space and respect to the views of others as an alternative to one's own. I propose to examine two important charges usually brought against the skeptic’s position in Indian Philosophy. The first section contains a brief presentation of the position of philosophical Skeptic. The second section has two subsections -- the first explicates two objections raised against the Skeptic by the Cognitivist and the second contains a possible rejoinder to these objections. The third section is an attempt to show some common sharable arguments between Indian Skeptics and Pyrrhonian Skeptics. Any discussion regarding how the Cognitivist position can be defended in the face of skeptical challenges is left outside the scope of this paper. Here the Nyāya position from classical Indian Philosophy and its Greek counterpart regarding the possibility of knowledge are represented by the term Cognitivism. The positions of Pyrrho (4th Century B. C. E.) in the Greek philosophical tradition and the Sanjaya-Nagarjuna-Jayarasi line of philosophizing in ancient India are conjoined by the term Cognitive Skepticism. The paper concludes with a note that the Skeptic does not leave the arena of knowledge empty-handed. However, Pyrrho refers to his philosophical opponents as a dogmatist whereas Nagarjuna calls them dristivādins (in Sanskrit). Pyrrho's senior contemporary SanjayaBelattiputra (5th century B.C.E.) and his disciple Supriya (4th C.B.E.) used to teach the method of philosophizing with four-cornered negation. In Sanskrit it is known as Amaravikshepavada, the method of escaping like the movement of an eel fish. There is much similarity between the arguments developed by Sanjya-Nagarjuna-Jayarasi type skeptical arguments and Pyrrhonian arguments against the absolute claims to the possibility of knowledge. So it is wise to doubt everything and to abstain from advancing any thesis with absolute knowledge-claims. This abstention is called epoche in Greek. Nagarjuna calls it prasanga in Sanskrit. As all attempts to attain truth with certitude are doomed to failure, this abstention acts as the root of cultivating imperturbability, ataraxia. However, there are differences too between Indian Skeptics and Pyrrhonian Skeptics. In our elaboration of the arguments we will take care of this 'space'. It will be shown how the Skeptics can escape the charge of self-contradiction with their special use of 'negation'. This is called prasajya pratisedhah in Sanskrit, which is pure negation, to distinguish it from relational / propositional negation, which is prajudasa pratisedhah in Sanskrit. The Indian Skeptics would find the charge of contradiction as non-sensical. The charge rests upon the assumption that nothing is equal to something. Nobody does not mean 128 somebody in any communicable sense. Again, the Skeptics would say that the Cognitivists have failed to understand the object-level and the meta-level difference of language and this leads them to accuse the Skeptics of self-reference. There are indistinct fuzzy areas in our actual state of knowability and we cannot make exclusive truth-claim about anything. The claim of the Cognitivists suffers not only significant flaws but the very assumption upon which it is founded is dogmatically accepted and therefore questionable. Being the worshippers of free enquiry the Skeptics are against any kind of rigid and dogmatic belief. The paper is an attempt to develop the arguments step by step. MORGAN Julia (Kaua'i Community College), and Kuan-Hung CHEN (University of Hawai’i) “Knowing and Places in Hawaiian and Chinese Traditions: A Possible Construction of ‘Āina (or River Hao) Epistemology” While the notion of a decontextualized disembodied knower is the ideal knower in an Enlightenment context, such an ideal is neither not the only way to know but, potentially, not the most useful in a contemporary world that may very well demand that we consider place as both the locus of knowledge and the locus of ethical obligations. The following will explore this dilemma first, by discussing the difference between placebased (or rooted) knowing and the disembodied knowers by exploring Chinese and Kanaka Maoli epistemologies, on the one hand, and Cartesian and Kantian epistemologies, on the other hand. Two examples demonstrate the notion of an embodied knower. The first example is from the Chinese text of the Zhuangzi, which contains a famous debate between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi on the knowability of the happiness of the fish. Zhuangzi’s argument was based on the quality of relationality of the particular place (River Hao). Zhuangzi even invites Hui Shi to reveal his standpoint instead of hiding it. This passage demonstrates that certain kinds of knowing are not reducible to abstract conceptualization. The second example is from the Kanaka Maoli tradition, where knowing is both contextbased and relational. To that end, Kanaka Maoli gave carefully chosen personal names to places. These names, and their attendant stories, carried with them valuable accumulated knowledge about the place and its inhabitants, including soil, seasonal conditions, and other such Western-type propositional knowledge. Key to understanding the differences between these ideas of epistemology and knowledge is the recognition of a conceptual difference between place and space. While the Cartesian-Kantian-space-based knowledge has been prioritized and exceptiaonlised, this view of knowledge has some serious limitations and ignores basic facts about our world. Second, this discussion will explore how in acknowledging both the importance of and the viability of place-based knowing, we can address the 129 problems of the Cartesian-Kantian-space-based traditions and acquire improved tools to navigate a plural and diverse world, opening up the realm of potential solutions for many of our current contemporary environmental issues. MORIOTO, Bruce (Athabasca University, Canada) “Place Internality and Mind/Body Incommensurability” I want this paper to set out a way to address the subjective/objective distinction of the mind/body problem by winding my way through an analysis of place and music. Place, as it pertains to musical experience, can be described in ways that can serve to help formulate the relation between objective, physical conditions and subjective, mental conditions. Internal places where we go to find refuge or to reflect are also places where we have musical experiences. Analysis of this sense inner place indicates that the mind/body incommensurability problem is not a problem for musical experience and especially for creative performance and composition. Indeed, it is a vital tool for developing potential musical experience. I hope to disclose certain properties of musical experience that bridge the internal/subjective and external/objective conceptual gap, by show that this bridge presupposes an underlying or implicate axiological order. If successful, it may not so much solve the mind/brain incommensurability problem, but could very well advance a non-reductive approach to explaining the incommensurability as a condition for musical creativity, and in the longer run, for creativity in moral life. MOSER, Keith A. (Mississippi State University) “Biological and Semiotic Marking of Human Space in Michel Serres’s Interdisciplinary Philosophy” Throughout his extensive philosophical body of work from 1968 to the present, the French philosopher of science Michel Serres adamantly maintains that all sentient and non-sentient beings were arbitrarily tossed into the chaos of existence by indiscriminate, ecological forces that predate humankind by billions of years. From a scientific and objective standpoint, Serres explains that every living organism has the same intrinsic right to exist in a deterministic, chaotic universe. In numerous texts, Serres incorporates the principles of modern science to deconstruct unfounded notions of human ontological sovereignty that are grounded in chimerical wishful thinking rather than rigorous philosophical inquiry. This maverick thinker shares more in common with indigenous and eastern philosophers than his Western counterparts given his predilection to frame every issue from an ecocentric perspective. For Serres, understanding our connection to the myriad of threads that inextricably link us to the larger web of life is the key to comprehending our minute place in the biotic community of life. Although Serres often scoffs at pervasive anthropocentric logic that runs contrary to contemporary scientific erudition, he does recognize that homo sapiens are a different kind of animal on multiple levels. 130 Specifically, the philosopher asserts that humans delineate the boundaries of our space in both similar and in extremely divergent ways in comparison to other species. First, Serres reveals that traces of archaic, primal behavior related to the marking of one’s territory through the excretion of bodily fluids are still clearly visible in the modern world. Similar to how many other organisms such as dogs, tigers, and lions urinate or defecate in a certain spot as a form of biological marking which serves to define the parameters of their personal space or property, Serres contends that humans still engage in this kind of primordial behavior without realizing it. In his provocative essay Le Mal Propre, Serres hypothesizes that the cult of virginity in Western civilization is a vestige of this evolutionary trait. After a woman’s body has been appropriated by a given male with his semen, the phenomenon of biological marking reveals why she can never “belong” to another man. In a patriarchal society in which male aggression remains unchecked, traces of archaic behavior which links us to other animals are still present lurking beneath the surface of social conventions. According to Serres, biological marking in the human population is proof that homo sapiens are part and parcel of the biosphere that conceived them starting with the cataclysmic events commonly referred to as a big bang. Serres illustrates that the biological predisposition to leave a little of our secretions behind to indicate possession and to stake our claim to a certain space is common throughout the animal kingdom. Nonetheless, Serres also theorizes that we have an innate inclination to soil the space around us by means of “semiotic contamination” (Filippi 52). The philosopher notes that other organisms including larks and nightingales engage in this sort of soft pollution as well. Yet, he implies that humans have a heightened predisposition to appropriate everything around us through signs. In Le Mal Propre, Serres suggests that our species possesses a pathological desire to incorporate every single space within our reach into our pervasive realms of symbolic representation. Whereas many other life forms tend to remain in the confines of their ecological niches for the most part, homo sapiens never seem to be satisfied until there is nothing left outside of the operational logic of our semiotic waste. As Massimo Filippi explains, “Other animals delimit their territory by marking it with whatever their body is able to emit-urine, howls, cheerful warbles. Humans are not different […] However, unlike other animals, human beings seem to have no limits in this process of marking the existence” (51). As Filippi underscores, Serres affirms that human beings are the most extreme animals on this planet in terms of polluting the environment around us through the incessant reproduction of simulacra. MOWER, Deedee (Weber State University) “Discourses that Fragment Suburban Educational Spaces” In the spatial terms of urban, suburban, east, and west, the construction of educational boundaries has been historically used to separate and segregate particular groups of people. To understand the analysis of education through a theoretical mapping of 131 space, one needs to acknowledge that space has characteristics or manners of enhancing our understanding. The way we use language or utterances to understand spaces is not solely created or individually derived. We need to realize that the utterances themselves are historically and socially situated for that space. The interactions that take place about spaces have sociolinguistic meaning because they were socially formed to identify individual selves with communities (Bazerman, 2004). In other words, created spaces become a signifier of particular peoples and practices, or educational spaces and pedagogies and the discourse surrounding those signifiers becomes visualized, repeated, and perceived as truth (Lefebvre, 1991: Soja, 1996, Buendia & Ares, 2006) by both those within the community and those on the periphery. Historically, race and social class have been used as indictors to ascribe characteristics to people and places. Educational spaces inherit the discourses of past social interactions and either perpetuate those attributes or work to form new interactions. Community members often unconsciously contribute to the discourses about their educational spaces they are assigned to using both race and social class distinctions. There are educational inequities when race and social class are continually used as determinants for school boundaries. Research in urban areas demonstrates these educational distinctions in segregated spaces. For example, Pauline Lipman’s (2002) work in Chicago, amongst others (Noguera, P. 2003) demonstrates how segregated neighborhoods receive unequal educational practices. In Lipman’s work, she explains how schools relegate certain populations, characterized by race and class, to particular parts of the city by drawing school boundaries that reflect the segregated communities. She also demonstrates how existing race inequalities are not only maintained by geographical boundaries, but inequitable educational opportunities and experiences increase. I argue that what has not been researched is how spaces perpetuate normalized discourses or the regularity of statements that provide “verbal performances that are identical from the point of view of grammar, that are also identical from the point of view of logic,” (Foucault, 1972, p 145) for dividing particular suburban educational spaces. Educational suburban spaces are juxtaposed to urban spaces but not to similar spaces within the suburbs. Cultural relationship gaps within suburban educational spaces may be between real and imagined spaces of difference. This paper reviews the local statements that form a regularity of thought or limitedness of ideas for separation among certain suburban educational spaces south of Salt Lake City, Utah to determine how points of logic through discourse historically maintain divided educational spaces based upon perceived and sometimes imagined differences in race and socioeconomic status. MOWER, Gordy (Brigham Young University) “Property as Place, East and West” 132 One way among many by which the raw materials of earthly space can be transformed into place infused with human significance is through the enclosure of that space under a regime of private real property. This essay will explore two versions of property practices, one Western and one Eastern. In some ways the Western model has become a dominant approach to ownership in the modern world, but it is also controversial and carries with it intimations of humanity’s worst characteristics. The justifications for it coming out of the early modern period, however, sought to base property ownership on noble features of human beings. To begin with, then, property’s justification is deeply personal and formative, but the introduction of money and its commodification ultimately undercut the personal nature of place. As money itself becomes commodified, so does human labor, and so in turn do the spaces designated as property. The Eastern model is different in that it grants property title to families rather than individuals. There is an enlightened recognition here that it is not just the individual qua individual that needs place. There must also be place that is reflective of our social natures and most fundamentally of our personal identities as formulated through our family relations. This arrangement makes clear the place of and for an individual in the family, the community, and the state. The individual finds a place by working together with family and members of the community. I will argue that both models have their defects, but they can perhaps usefully learn from each other. The Western model has a myriad of faults foremost of which perhaps is the cult of the individual that cannot help but promote a destructive selfishness. As labor becomes a commodity, isolated individuals leave their families to go to their “places” of work. The attachments there must overwhelmingly be to the firm in isolation, not to the community, not to the state. The individual truly recognizes that her time is not really even her own while she is at work. Mencius’ well-field system belongs to a bygone era and it is unlikely to find much place in the modern world. It is inefficient in comparison with modern farming methods. Nor is it feasible in its land distribution requirement given the constraints of modern populations. Nevertheless, the Eastern view of place might be made to complement the Western view. Every individual needs a place for productive effort. The Western model has successfully transferred this place from the farm plot to the workplace. The workplace, however, might not be very satisfying. If our identities are constituted in part by our relations, we will want a place for them where we work. We will want our workplaces to become broader communities, where, as in the well-field system, families interact, and they are connected to the larger community and even to the political community. MURATA-SORACI, Kimiyo (Belmont University) “On the Matter of Hospitality” Being in place, not as subjects stationed in an objective world-space but as mortals inhabiting with others in a proper abode, matters to everyone’s heart and mind. Our 133 poignant desire for a proper implacement in the world hence the need of orientation calls us to heed the present ēthos and calls us to engage in the issue of how we are to rightly belong to the tradition by receiving, witnessing, and transferring the common memory of the past ways to be. The question of place, that is the general topic of the Conference, turns our gaze to a matter of reception and of the ethos. This paper will take up the current Japanese phenomena of (a) the World Heritage tourisms, (b) localization through a community’s consorted effort to economize for revenue and care for local landscapes of uncanny beauty, ancient architectures of temples and shrines, and historic sites of great importance for politics and narratives, and (c) identifying Japan as a culture of hospitality so as to reformulate a narrative of “we.” We will compare the current ways of recollection and appropriation of the past with those of Saigyō (1118-1190), Ippen (1239-1289) and Bashō (1644-1694) who traveled extensively Japan and mapped out, to use a Bachelardian term, the new “poetics of space” by virtue of their alertness to the essential emptiness (śūnya 空 ) of self-existence (muga 無我 ) in all phenomena. In reading appropriate passages from their texts, we shall highlight that the concurrence of being and language, which the three poets share in common, sets “place” free from an ordinary understanding of place as a sector of the universal space and enables all things, including the poets themselves, to show what they are truly in a “no-form” of reciprocal intertwining. By stepping into a foreign terrain of the past poets and by recollecting the uncanny happening of the gift of the place, we will think anew the current mode of consecrating Japanese community as well as the familiar pattern of reception of life within an economy of negotiation and reconciliation for the sake of a common good. MURRAY, Judson (Wright State University) “Chinese and Japanese Views on an Ethics of Place Situated at the Homestead” My presentation will examine the use of place in efforts to criticize sociopolitically both intellectual elitism and moral degeneration. The specific places that serve as the inspirations for such criticisms are the farm and the hearth of the homestead, because they exemplify values and activities that are antithetical to hypocritical and parasitical intellectualizing and to the intrigues and moral compromises that often accompany social relations and affairs of state. My methodological approach is both cross-cultural and comparative, as the places and periods of interest are early China—both in its preand early imperial contexts--and Tokugawa Japan. What emerges from these populist ancient Chinese and medieval Japanese critical discourses is an ethics of place predicated on the assumption that where people locate themselves and what they do therein formatively influences who they are and how they conduct themselves morally. Together the farm and the hearth offer a particular kind of moral education. Proponents of it argue that it is the average and the lowborn who are best suited to moral cultivation, and the simpler and natural conditions and activities 134 associated with these places cultivate a brand of virtuosity that is adaptive and practical, and that accords properly with, and thereby reinforces, nature’s generative and lifesustaining processes. MYERS, Michael (Washington State University) “Place and Space in Israel/Palestine” Palestinians maintain that Israeli Jews have mythologized the places mentioned in the Bible and have assumed those places as their own, to the exclusion of Palestinian aspirations and legal right to the land. Jews argue that Palestinians do not recognize that Israel constitutes the only space in the world that can provide a safe haven specifically for Jews, a haven necessary to protect the Jewish people in the wake of the Holocaust. Proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend to involve concepts of space alone. Two-state solutions, for example, draw and redraw boundaries in an attempt to provide space for both peoples. Meanwhile, the places where Palestinians live become more dangerous, isolated, and squeezed smaller and smaller, while the places in which Israeli Jews live become increasingly militarized, unsafe, and threatened by attack from hostile neighboring countries. This paper seeks a way out of the conflict through an examination of the concepts of place and space in the unique context of Israel/Palestine. While Israeli/Palestinian space is confined, contested and finite, it might be possible to construct a place that is plural, peaceful and conceptually without limit. The beginning of such a project would bring together Palestinian memory and conceptions of the land such as found in Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks: Forays into A Vanishing Landscape with Israeli aspirations for a post-Holocaust world as found in Emil Fackenheim’s To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought. NABOR, Maria (Aklan State University, Philipines) “Kalibo Sto. Nino Atiatihan Festival and The Cultural Heritage of the Atis of Boracay” The province of Aklan in the Philippines, (is packed with interesting places, from scenic beaches, captivating waterfalls, and vast caves), one of the top tourist destination of the Philipines. Boracay island is voted as the best beaches in the world. Aklan comprises 17 municipalities, one of which is known as “Kalibo”. The month of January is devoted to the various festivals honoring the image of Santo Nino. The most popular celebration is the Kalibo Santo Nino Ati-atihan Festival that is replicated throughout the country since 13th century. 135 This cultural festival has become a social movement – an expressive behavior pattern where people collectively adapt to change and individuals find emotional release and an expression of their beliefs. It is a movement where people from all walks of life join and unite in traditional ways of celebrating. It is the blending of religious festivities of yesteryears with the present generation’s lifestyle and the manifestation of this in the individual as his way of life, his attitudes and his practices (such as the way he dresses entertains guests or shows friendship and hospitality) developed from childhood to adulthood. The Ati-atihan is a gladsome confluence of hope and faith, philosophy, religion, enjoyment, prayer and merry-making, charity and generosity, thanksgiving and ritual, atonement and adventure, history and legend, hope and well-wishing, concord and creativity-all happily blended, in the merry sound of beating drums. The festival will continue to stay among the Aklanons as a most valued tradition, a unique legacy that will be handed on and treasured from generation to generation. During the 12th to 13th century, the Ati’s trusted the Malays for governance. The Malays, in return, valued their spirit of paternalism, friendship, camaraderie and brotherhood. This is the very reason why their cultural heritage survived for many centuries and has been reknowned worldwide. NAGATOMO, Shigenori (Temple University) “Holistic Non-Dualism: A Sketch for a Philosophy of Place” This paper is an attempt to construct a philosophy of place so as to demand a perspectival shift from “either-or egological dualism” to “holistic non-dualism.” The latter phrase designates an epistemological conceptual framework that is contrasted with an epistemological paradigm that is based on “either-or egological dualism”—the stance which has been used as the predominant paradigm since the age of enlightenment in the Western philosophical tradition. “Either-or egological dualism” can be explained by breaking down into the following segments: “either-or” “egological” and dualism. Dualism is a conceptual stance that divides the whole in two opposing pairs such as mind and body, I and others, and the host of other pairs. It promotes an oppositional thinking and ontology. Either-or logic justifies this division, a consequence of which is a prioritization of one segment or part over the other segment or part. This promotes onesidedness as standard and normal. An agent which performs this prioritization is an ego that is divorced from the body, i.e., ego as a thinking being wherein rationality is singled out as the essential defining feature of what it means to be human. This creates a split and conflict within the human psychē, and a distance between humans and the place e.g., nature. When the ego engages in thinking, it objectifies the things of its thinking. This objectification is made possible by accepting the human being as a “being-outsideof-nature.” This definition gives us an image that the human being stands outside of nature, i.e., a human being as a thinking being is situated outside of [and possibly 136 above] nature as an observer. This creates a contradiction namely that while he/she stands outside of nature, his/her body is anchored in nature as a material being. Unlike “either-or egological dualism,” “holistic non-dualism” does not promote an epistemological paradigm in which the whole is broken down into two opposites. Rather, the whole is understood as the whole, more specifically, a thinker doesn’t stand outside of the whole, because it understands the human being as “being-in-nature.” Instead of mind-body dualism, holistic non-dualism accepts the idea of mind-body correlativity, and to expand it to a larger dimension, it recognizes a micromacrocosmic correlativity between the human being and nature. Nor does it engage in oppositional thinking that creates distance between the human being and the whole (or nature). Moreover, it doesn’t create a split or conflict within the human being. To advance the above idea, it explicates Nishida’s logic of “absolutely contradictory selfidentity.” Nishida’s logic of “absolutely contradictory self-identity” states that the logical structure of the world is both “contradictory” and “self-identical” at the same time, where the adjective “absolutely” indicates that this structure cannot be resolved into a higher synthesis. This structure is used to account for how change occurs in the world, i.e., his “place dialectic” in terms of a dialectical change from “that which creates” to “that which is created” and from “that which is created” to “that which creates.” In this dialectical change, the paper also examines the human role in terms of Nishida’s theory of “actingintuition.” NAKAJIMA Takahiro (University of Tokyo, Japan) “Seeking for Place of Earthly Universality in Modern Japan: Suzuki Daisetz, Chikazumi Jōkan, and Miyazawa Kenji” When confronting European modernity, the universality represented in Chinese philosophy got lost its overwhelming power in East Asia. In contrast with the universality shown through modern science and philosophy in Europe, the traditional universality in China turned to be “Chinese universality.” In this turnover of values, how could Japanese intellectuals imagine the universality? It was not a simple prolongation of modern universality into East Asia, but a transformed one. We might call it “Earthly Universality.” In my presentation, I will first talk about “Earthly Universality” in modern Japan, focusing on Buddhist Thinkers such as Suzuki Daisetz (1870-1966), Chikazumi Jōkan (18701941), and Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933). Suzuki defended Pure Land Buddhism to find a possibility of “Earthly Spirituality.” By referring to local saints called as “Myōkōnin,” he elaborated the dimension of the mysterious in the midst of modernized Japan and regarded it as a place of resistance to the extreme nationalism. He said that “regardless of the East or the West, Political system should be mainly based on liberty which derives from spiritual liberty.” (1947) As for religion, he preferred religion existing in the earth. He said, “Though religion is said 137 to come from heaven, its essence exists in the earth.” (1944) As a modern intellectual, Suzuki knew the power of Christianity that had a notion of heavenly “transcendence,” but he tried to find an earthly universality in Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhism was drastically transformed in modern Japan. Chikazumi Jōkan, a contemporary with Suzuki, tried to reform it along with Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903). By paying attention to Christianity, he constituted modern Pure Land Buddhism based upon new belief “kyūdō.” Miyazawa Masajirō (1874-1957) and his family devoted in the direction Chikazumi proposed. However, Miyazawa Kenji, son of Masajirō, was dissatisfied with it. Kenji left Pure Land Buddhism of Chikazumi, and converted into Kokuchūkai (国柱会 National Pillar Society) based upon Nichiren sect. He hoped to realize social welfare as Buddhist utopia in this world. However, he became suspicious of Kokuchūkai and tried to establish a new community for “Earthly Men.” It was called as “Rasu Earthly Men Association” (1926.8-1927.3) in which Miyazawa challenged to combine natural science and religion redefined in Genius Loci. By thinking that “religion gets tired and is substituted by science, and science is cold and dark” (1926), Miyazawa needed to build a bridge between the universality of natural science and the locality of religion. Here we come to understand an encounter between Daisetz and Kenji over a detour. Both of them seriously thought of alternative social imaginary based upon “Earthly Universality” in modern Japan. NEVILLE, Robert C. (Boston University) “On the Confucian Virtue of Shallow Roots” The conventional belief is that Confucianism fosters the cultivation of deep roots in a place with family orientations and deep history. But Confucius himself, by legend, wandered all over China looking for a tenured position. His philosophy expanded to the very foreign soil, in a cultural sense, of Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. The most creative Confucian thinkers of the last century or so lived in self-conscious diaspora away from China. Nowadays, people with no ethnic roots in China are advancing the participation of the Confucian traditions in global philosophical conversation outside even the diaspora of East Asian intellectuals. So there must be something in Confucianism that allows it to disengage from its roots in one place and set down sufficient roots in another. The Confucian virtues of humaneness and individuated ritual virtuosity, or role ethics, must be able to adapt themselves to multiple places, allowing Confucianism to be in dialectical critical relation to the culture at hand so as to push back against the instincts of ingroup self-defense that are so hurtful in a global situation. The paper presents a theory of Confucian transportability. NGUYEN, Ngoc Tho (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City) 138 “Traditional Vietnamese Village Space and its Reaction to Confucianism” Traditional Vietnam, an inland Southeast Asian nation getting engaged with East Asian Confucianism, has shown the conrete space culture that are naturally shaped and promoted by the villagers as means to survive in the local environmental and social contexts. Being threathened by annual flood and the external expansions, villages in North Vietnam has been tightly enclosed and internalized to construct the autonomous style of living units. Such a kind of rural village organizing has built up Vietnamese cosmology and concepts of human beings and society, regulated the foundation of Vietnamese identities, personality and communication. Under Vietnamese’s eyes, village is also considered as “house”, “home” and “state”, village unwritten rules as “family principles”, “community conventions” and “state law”. Village’s enclosure has also enclosed villagers’ destiny, eyesight and capacity. One’s life is complicatedly interfered by and engaged with many village’s components and relations; therefore, dealing with village also means dealing with each individual. On the other hand, the enclosed village space has defined the way of dealing with external sources (cultural exchanges, cultural influences). Confucianism in the early periods as well as Western philosophies and concepts in the recent centuries all have been looked, absorbed and reconstructed through different village prisms. This paper is to discuss on the concept, the construction and the nature of traditional Vietnamese “village” as well as its impacts on villagers’ social life, cosmology and viewpoints from which the reaction over the arrival and absorption of Confucianism has been shaped. NUSSEIBEH, Sari (Alquds University Jerusalem, Palestine) HENDLER, Micah (Director, YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus) “Noise and Sound: A Space to Call ‘Home’” I will be developing this presentation with a colleague, Micah Hendel, who leads a 'mixed' youth chorus here at the YMCA, the main idea being that mental space -where or what one feels at home (occupying)- is significantly a space of sounds, the one often being exclusive of the other (turning what sounds like a harmonious melody for one into a jarring noise for the other). Sounds are of different sorts, and these include thoughts and prejudices. Music as instrument and practice can help expand one's 'home space', allowing it to become inclusive. It offers a paradigm for how space/home can be shared. OH, Jea Sophia (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) "In the Beginning was the Place…": An East-West Dialogue of Creatio ex Profundis" This study will compare Neo-Confucian Zhang Zai (張載)'s taixu (太虛, the vast vacuity) and process ecotheologian Catherine Keller's tehom (the chaotic depth in Hebrew) as the ultimate spatio-temporal place of creation, using the Korean term teum (in- 139 betweenness) to connect these two resonant ideas. Both Keller and Zhang developed a nondualistic cosmology as opposed to the Augustinian doctrine of creation ex nihilo (the creation out of nothingness). As Keller rejects the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo which was inherited by Augustine where God is the unilateral agent of creation while the multitudes (萬物, wanwu) are subalternized, for Zhang, taixu is the ultimate place where cosmos and the multitude are born from the same fluid vital force (氣, qi) resonant with Keller's creatio ex profundis (creation out of the deep). The great vacuity is not nothingness but the fullness of vital force (氣, qi). The creation is the manifestation of the endless becoming(s) of taixu that becomes myriad things by convergence of qi while myriad things become taixu by diffusion of qi. Both Keller and Zhang Zai's harmonious cosmology is a new paradigm of creation that this planet is one organic body of the myriad thing events in which we are all interconnected of which nothing is left out. OLBERDING, Amy (University of Oklahoma) “Philosophical Exclusion and Conversational Practices” In this essay, I seek to assess and analyze the ways in which informal modes of talk regarding “inclusivity” in philosophy can, even where well-disposed and –intentioned, act like philosophical gatekeeping, frustrating efforts to devise genuinely hybrid philosophical efforts that would fully enfold and incorporate philosophical traditions beyond the west. “Boundary policing” within philosophy is often most apparent where the discipline’s intellectual territories are explicitly mapped in ways that exclude traditions beyond the west. However, focusing on intellectually ambitious and explicit attempts to conceptually define philosophy obscures the ways philosophy is already functionally defined by our practices. For many philosophers, philosophy just is what they read in professional journals, what they teach and write, and what they discuss with colleagues – that is, philosophy is an object of experience, a phenomenon and lived activity. In this regard, boundaries are more often felt than explicitly announced or plainly posted, as informal modes of talk signal barriers and thereby functionally patrol the discipline’s outer edges. Such is to say that even where philosophers are generally well disposed toward inclusivity, they may nonetheless participate in intellectual and conversational practices that act like gatekeeping. Indeed, as I argue in this essay, the way the profession talks about whether or not to find greater place for Asian philosophy often already contains the negative answer. The dialogue, even where ostensibly open and interested, is itself shaped as a no. Olberding, Garret (University of Oklahoma) “Shadows in the Mirror: Reflective Representation of Physical Space in Early China” The compositional norms with which early Chinese geographic maps were designed remain little understood. Similar to other ancient maps, all are rough diagrams of uncertain geographic area and indefinite purpose. In my paper, using comparisons with pre- and post-Renaissance European maps, as well as statements relating to the visual 140 organization of space found in early texts, such as the later Mohist canons, the Huainanzi, and the Guanzi, I will analyze what early Chinese maps reveal about the standards of reflective signification and epistemic positioning involved in their creation; for instance, their employment of perspective and contrast. Juxtaposed against what one might call the Renaissance’s “geometry of sight,” I also wish to highlight the employment of certain related aesthetic sensibilities, such as the regular use of linear definition and empty space. Through such analysis, I aim to demonstrate certain definitive aspects of their logic and organization, and offer some additional insight into early Chinese representations of cartographic space, and thus how visual perception shaped the understanding of em/placement. OLSON, Carl (Allegheny College) “Place and Play: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Rāmānuja and Zhuangzi” The notion of play assumes an important place in the philosophical works of the Indian thinker Rāmānuja and the Chinese Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. After comparing their positions on play and looking at its features (e.g., its risky nature, its freedom, becoming lost in play, its effortlessness, and its self-representative nature), this essay examines the relationship between play and place in these two philosophers. Play necessarily occurs within some type of context or place that can assume God’s body or the Dao, according to the respective positions of Rāmānuja and Zhuangzi. Finally, this essay turns to consider the chosen thinkers conceptions of the relationship between play and place and the way that it compares to the thought of Yi-fu Tuan in order to suggest any changes that he might make to satisfy the Indian and Daoist thinkers. OPPEGAARD, Brett (University of Hawai’i) “How Media Lost its Place and Found It Again: Proximity Issues from the Penny Press to the Smartphone” Our places can be conceptualized as our information interfaces, increasingly integrated with overlapping digital worlds through mobile technologies. These juxtapositions of digital media and physical environments can generate deep, complex, and personal meanings to us, and consumers suddenly can’t get enough of mobile news and geolocated content that enrich our places. Media organizations, though, generally have been befuddled and unable to align the potential of locative and contextual information much with their current business models. Academics meanwhile have been struggling to find ways to empirically study the related emerging media forms, with their complex dynamics. Through medium theory and historical perspectives, this presentation will describe how journalistic media lost its connections to place during the time of the telegraph and railroad – when Marx and Heidegger warned of ramifications caused by the annihilation of time and space – and recently has been reconnecting to place again through experimental prototypes using geolocation technologies, such as smartphones and tablet computers. To illustrate the 141 increasingly important intersection of technology and place, several field studies and case studies will be shown, focused upon the growing importance in media today of tailoring information by proximity and the emerging genres. OZBEY, Sonya (University of Michigan) “The Outside Generated from the Inside: Xunzi on the ‘Petty Person’” Integral to the classical Ru imagery of the “civilized world” was the trope of the “barbarian,” which defined both the territorial and conceptual limits of it. Although the socalled barbarians were often referred to with territorial or directional word compounds, their perceived inferiority was due to their ritual deficiency—which means although the lands from where they come shaped the way they are, they were not destined to be that way. Being born human, they were considered to share similar dispositions with other humans, although their ritual deficiency took away from the obviousness of their humanity. The cultivated, exemplary people, by contrast, typically belonged to central plains, although no matter what kind of conditions in which they found themselves, they succeeded in following the tradition that is passed down from Xia to Zhou—which, in a way, amounts to living in the same “cultural universe” regardless of where they actually end up. As for the other dwellers of the central states, the masses, they too were thought to be at the mercy of the conditions in which they found themselves, which were, during the Zhanguo period, far from ideal. Thus, they, naturally, too fell short of the human ideal, which makes it harder to employ a neat inside/outside dichotomy to delineate the limits of the civilized human world (the borders of which were already unclear to begin with, due to the shifting political climate). This paper focuses on the descriptions of “petty people” in the Xunzi and examines them in relation to bestiality metaphors, descriptions of the commoners, as well as descriptions of the barbarian people. My goal is not to locate the exact place of them in the symbolic ladder of propriety and humanity, but to use various descriptions of petty people as vantage points to examine the unstable nature of the symbolic field within which different imageries of the ‘inhuman’ finds expression. PAOLILLO, Maurizio Paolillo (Università del Salento, Italy) “The Quality of Space in Traditional Chinese Aesthetics: ‘Real Place’ and Affinities with the Western Tradition” With the help of Chinese sources, most of which belonging to painting theory, and ranging from 5th to 11th century, this contribution aims to show the affinities between ancient China aesthetic principles and an important part of Western aesthetics, which from Plato arrives to Middle Age and beyond. During this long historical phase, a vision of “real place” (Chinese zhenjing 真景), based on the assumption that every landscape representation must not be limited to a quantitative reduction, takes place among the élite of the literati. The writer hopes to contribute to the dismantling of some visions, like the popular vulgata about the “peculiarity” and the relativism of traditional Chinese thought. 142 PARK, Bradley (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) “Opening the Space Place of Disclosure: Subjectivity, Reflexivity, and the Poise of Presence” This paper builds upon traditional phenomenological accounts of embodied space in relation to neurophysiological accounts of movement; mindfulness and attention research; contemporary debates about reflexivity; and classical Sino-Japanese approaches to embodiment organized by the three “dynamic fields” of the dantian (J. tandens). The aim of the paper is to clarify core aspects of the first-person perspectival dimension of world disclosure and to shed light on the East-Asian cultivational practices that are attentive to the dantian. PARK, Jin Y. (American University) “Place and Violence, or the Venerability of Philosophy” Is “place” a source of violence or space for living together? A “place” is a tamed space, through which humans create meaning. A place is related to identity, and violence, as Jacques Derrida stated, is the condition of identity, since identity requires a placing of the self in concrete reality. The place is also related to con-textuality of our existence in the sense that one cannot think of concrete reality without placing the subject in the context of the life-world. Philosophy’s relation to place—individual identity, identity of the ethnic group, geographical identity, and nationalism—is double-edged. The changing imagination about place changes the nature of philosophy and philosophers sometimes contradict the fundamental tenets of their philosophy when place-as-identity is introduced in the philosophizing as opposed to place-as-context. This paper explores the contradicting functions of the imagination about “place” and examines how the place-as-identity and the place-as-context can explain gaps and conflicts in a philosophy. I will focus my discussion on Jacques Derrida’s works on politics including Specters of Marx (Spectres de Marx, 1993) and The Beast and the Sovereign I & II (Séminaire La bête et le souverain 2008-2010) and Nishida Kitarō ’s essays including “The Standpoint of Active Intuition (行爲的直観の立場 1935), Human Existence (人間的存在 1938), and “The National Polity (国体 1944). Through a comparative philosophy of Derrida and Nishida, the paper examines the interaction between these two concepts of place: place as a locus of violence and place as space to live together. In doing so, the paper also aims to consider the fallibility of human thinking and thus of our philosophizing. The pitfall of philosophizing might be more real than we have admitted, and the venerability of philosophy might demand us to consider different ways to approach the nature of philosophizing. PARKER, Kirsty (University of Hawai’i—Hilo) 143 “The TMT debate and Mauna Kea: A look at Sacred Places and Indigenous Epistemologies” Recently, the TMT debate has revealed the conflict between modern scientific efforts and alternative indigenous epistemologies. The Thirty Meter Telescope project (TMT) is a multinational scientific effort to build the world’s largest telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawai’i. Underlying this effort is a particular set of philosophical assumptions about nature as ascribed by the Western scientific tradition. Where Westernized scientists see easily accessible terrain and superb atmospheric conditions, the Hawaiian people see a spirited and potent ancestor. For Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is sacred; the mountain is considered mother of the people and that active force upon which all Hawaiian life is forged. The Hawaiian protest is not against science, but rather, against the pending annihilation of a once potent sense of place upon which the Hawaiian identity had been critically formed. For the Hawaiian people, Mauna Kea is deserving of unconditional respect, preservation, and kapu (limits) in its own right. As the community has protested against the TMT development, a serious fault between the epistemological assumptions of modern science and indigenous peoples has been illuminated. This paper will address the need for a re-evaluation of sense of place and indigenous perspectives within the aims of modern science. Through the TMT debate, we can understand how development of the mountain serves to evince a Hawaiian sense of place and spirit from the landscape and that this has political, social and cultural consequences stretching beyond the mountain. The development serves to confirm that alternate philosophies of being in the world do not have legitimate claims within the process of modern advancement. Through the implantation of Western scientific developments upon indigenous places, indigenous cultures have become polarized against progress and wrongly associated with irrationality. The global scientific community should use the TMT debate as a platform for developing a more holistic and inclusive modern science. PARKES, Graham, and Helen PARKES (Vienna) “Being in Place — There’s no App for That!” A distinctive feature of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is his emphasis on the human body, and a corresponding concern with its relations to the various places it inhabits. Whether the place he was in was urban or rural, Nietzsche insisted that the immediate environment has a profound effect on one’s physical and mental health. Although such ideas may not be so popular these days, they are borne out by recent discoveries in ‘context-based medicine’ in the West and a 2500- year tradition of philosophy and medical practice in China. Another way of putting this is to say that if we’re interested in flourishing, we had better pay attention to our being here. But aren’t we always here in any case, in the particular place where our bodies are? No, because when we’re distracted—as in day- dreaming, for example—we aren’t here in any robust sense, but are rather absent. And indeed one of the major differences 144 between Nietzsche’s time and ours, some 150 years later, is that the prevalence of modern information and communications technology has enormous power to distract us from being here. Nowadays television, computers, videogame consoles, tablets, i- gadgets, mobile phones—all these devices, while purporting to connect us with other people and things (not to mention with more information than anyone could assimilate in several lifetimes), serve to distract us from being here by exporting our attention elsewhere. Most of us accept this situation without question, assuming that all these gadgets are enhancing rather than diminishing our lives. A consideration of Nietzsche’s ideas about the importance of place and the nature of our being here allows us to question the value of our communications technologies and their role in the good human life. Taking the form of a dialogue between representatives of two generations (one from the old guard ignorant with respect to social media etc., and one from the tech-savvy avantgarde), this multi-media presentation affords a broader perspective on the question of how much the advantages of these technologies may be outweighed by the way so many of them diminish our ability to actually be here. PAVAN, Milena Carrara (Vivarium, Spain) “A Pilgrimage to the Sacred Place of Kailash” XXXXX PERKINS, Franklin (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) “Affect, Responsiveness, and Place in the Xing Zi Ming Chu” The idea of stimulation and response (ganying 感應) is well known as a key element of so-called correlative cosmology and as the dominant model for thinking the dynamic situatedness of things in the late Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty. One of the earliest expressions of this model appears in the Guodian text known as the Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出 (Dispositions Come from What Is Allotted) (XZMC). The XZMC does not present this responsiveness to place as an element of cosmology but rather as an account of basic human dispositions and affects. On this model, affects arise as spontaneous responses to the things around us. This responsiveness is unavoidable and is inherently grounded in place. The project of selfcultivation is not to eliminate this responsiveness but to make our responses more stable and appropriate. This is done through the creation of a humanized place structured according to rituals and music. Music in particular creates a space in which affective responses are evoked and thereby trained and shaped. This paper will examine the interdependence of XZMC's theory of motivation as responsiveness to our concrete place and the role of music (and ritual) in self-cultivation. It will also include 145 some discussion of how this model does and does not fit the Mengzi. PETERMAN, James, and Margo SHEA (Sewanee: The University of the South) “Merging the Private and Public in a Thirdspace: Examining the Civic Dimensions of Private Place-Making” We propose a two-person panel in which the first of us (Peterman) examines Wilfred McClay’s recent introduction to his edited volume, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America. (New Atlantis: 2014). Addressing the question of why place matters from two academic perspectives, comparative philosophy and public history, the panel addresses the tension between public and private senses of place and whether the tension between them can be resolved both conceptually and practically. Why Place Matters assembles scholarly contributions to two conferences on place at Pepperdine University in 2011 and 2012 by a range of important scholars and thinkers about place, including Roger Scruton, Yi-fu Tuan, and Ari Schulman. In this first discussant, Peterman, a philosopher, examines McClay’s enviably clear account of why place matters in the introduction to this set of essays. He argues that place matters because a sense of places, an achievement, grounds the develop of civic virtues by giving individuals something outside of themselves to care about. Despite the clarity of this account, which focuses on various ways in which place matters, Peterman argues, the account runs together different senses of place, including a role in social institutions that one can identify with and care about, a place as the bearer of personal significance due to one’s experiences their, and a place as a foundational bearer of significance within a moral or religious tradition. McClay treats the achievement of a novel personal sense of place, common in modern societies, as serving these other two roles. Peterman argues that this is a conceptual mistake, and that we need to acknowledge both why place matters in traditions because of their role in a tradition, such as the birthplace of Confucius, in families, connected to traditions or not, as well as why place matters because of a Daoist-style rambling that takes us to places where unexpected meanings arise. Peterman argues that this tension between traditionbound senses of place and emergent fluid senses of place is inescapable. This raises the question of whether and how emergent sense of place could serve the function that McClay gives them: to ground the civic virtues by offering public spaces we care about and wish to nurture. In the second discussion, Shea, a pubic historian, builds from Peterman’s efforts to draw from Wilfred McClay’s arguments for why place matters in order to situate senses of place both between and beyond traditions and personal meanings. Specifically, she picks up with Peterman’s assertion that McClay’s phenomenology of place privileges social, cultural and political underpinnings without making space for the importance 146 of “cultivating private sense(s) of place, unburdened by the goals of grafting our senses of place and places to a tradition.” This second discussion introduces an ongoing project in public history, which offers a model of how to cultivate a sense places(s) that is both fluid and can support civic virtue. That project, called, “Around Here: The Places that Shape Us” is a crowdsourced, searchable, accessible catalogue of places – large and small, private and public, personal and shared that matter to people who live, work and recreate on and around the South Cumberland Plateau, locally referred to simply as “the mountain,” in south-central Tennessee. This discussion will show how this pubic history project does three significant things in order to render place attachment, place-making and sense of place meaningful from a civic perspective. Through participation of any local residents with an interest, it invites a greater understanding of the role of place as touchstones of moral traditional processes on the mountain and explores how place matters in relation to local people’s efforts to maintain tradition, community and social order. Second, it invites individuals to share their own encounters with place and to expand place-making practice on the mountain to allow for enigmatic, unique and deeply personal experiences of place. Finally, the project itself practices pubic history, in Professor of Urban Planning Edward Soja’s term, in a thirdspace -- a conceptual space that not only mediates between individual and community, private and public, but also functions to expand the notion of public space to include the private and private space to include the public. PETERS, Jill (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) “The Place of Buddhist Ethics in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)” Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is based upon the idea that our way of relating to the world leads us to generate stress within ourselves and this relation can be transformed through Buddhist mindfulness and insight meditation. This paper enquires how Buddhist ethics can be applied in the conceptualization of MBSR. The applied Buddhist practices have emerged from a health-paradigm that defines health as an experience of wellbeing that can be reached when one is no longer attached to the manifestation of pleasure or pain. MBSR aims to change our relationship to the experience of suffering. According to the Buddhist idea of the web of interdependence, all natural historical and cultural factors are perceived as relational. In Buddhism, perceiving strain from the outside is interpreted as a lack of insight. Such a shortage in understanding can be replenished by cultivating its counterpart, virtue. This paper proposes pragmatically employing the idea of skillful means, kusala upaya, as an overarching principle to apply the elusive abstractions of ethical theories to the practice of MBSR. Kusala means right or wholesome or skillful, referring 147 to states generated by wisdom. Kusala upaya is used to indicate a perception of competent appliance to help others and oneself. Based upon the idea of kusala upaya, this paper proposes the term stress mastery. It is this ethic that gives MBSR the potential to change the clinical practice of stress treatment. The practice of MBSR offers a hermeneutics of interdependence to understand the experience of stress. Employing kusala upaya in MBSR means one can become proficient in handling stress, and in acting with great skill, one can master stress. PFISTER, Lauren F. (Hong Kong Baptist University) “Ubication: A Phenomenological Study about Making Spaces Sacred” One aspect in the general realm of the philosophy of religion that continues to spark my interest has been the delineation of particular locations as “sacred places”. While noting the seminal work on sacred spaces by Mircea Eliade and its “magnificent failure” (Roger Corless, 2001), there have been efforts to revive, revise, and extrapolate his phenomenology in general (Allan W. Larson, 2001) and his theory related to sacred spaces in particular (David Cave, 1993 and 2001). I have continued to sense that there is a theoretical gap within Eliade’s and others’ related accounts that lacks a dynamism allowing for changes or even transformations within different kinds and/or varying levels of special configuration. Eliade’s account offered an ontological claim about the sacredness of places built upon historical cases and mythical accounts that sought to underscore the perennial character of religious sites, but it remained vulnerable to criticisms that point toward the secularization or re-claiming of sacred spaces for secular purposes as counterexamples to his general position. Rather than follow Eliade’s and his co-laborers’ theoretical approach, I intend to present a phenomenological account of sacredness that could support a more dynamic account of “making places sacred”. Building upon a Tillichean account of religious experience as an expression of an ultimate concern for an ultimate subject (Lai Pan-chiu, 2015), I will present an account of multi-leveled cultural spaces that may be “made sacred” by various means as expressed in contemporary Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Muslim and Ruist contexts experienced in Hong Kong and other parts of the PRC. I intend to describe how different levels of cultural embodiment and identification – starting from one’s own body (Cave and Sachs, 2012), and then extending into personal and familial spaces, spaces created for religious communities, cultural spaces involving both the living and the dead, as well as universally extended accounts of limited and/or unlimited “space” – can bring about temporal or more enduring expressions of “ubication”, my neologism for “making spaces sacred” (Pfister, 2007). Having adopted a phenomenological approach to the set of problems that arise in accounting for ubication within the broader post-secular philosophical contexts in the PRC (Pfister, 2012), I will conclude with some critical reflections about this whole approach. First, there is a need to offer similar accounts of “making times sacred” 148 (“quandication”) to augment a phenomenological account of ubication, because the cultural time-spaces in which religious life is expressed are only analytically served by separating cultural times from cultural spaces, but actually “take place” within well-timed cultural settings. Consequently, a more precise phenomenological account of ubication should include quandication in order to stretch toward a comprehensive account of how “making spaces sacred” are also linked to sacred times and timing. Secondly, I would want to argue that the limits inherent in phenomenological methods may hinder an adequate philosophical account of cultural contexts where conflictual settings produce what appear to be anomalous situations: when religious attitudes are nevertheless expressed in secular/profane/mundane places, and also when secular or profane attitudes are expressed in what others consider to be sacred places. Thirdly, due to my reliance on a Tillich-ian account of sacredness, there will always be an elusive element in the subjective states of participants in “making spaced sacred” that can only be resolved in part by reliable first person accounts of these experiences. I will argue that these first person testimonies can still become phenomenologically constructive and theorized reflectively on the basis of a Tillich-ian understanding of religious orientation, but will make sense only within the culturally-informed contexts of the particular religious traditions being described. POLLIN-GALAY, Hannah (University of Pennsylvania) “When the Index is Wrong: Mapping Black Holes in Victim Memory” Notions of place lie at the heart of Holocaust discourse and constitute one of the central forums for debating what the event was about, how it happened and how it should be studied and remembered. On the one hand, scholars often refer to spatial dimensions when defining the event as Holocaust as trauma or transvaluation. They have enlisted images such as “an abyss,” “a black hole,” “eine andere Lokalität” (another locality),” “a primal scene,” “a blank page” and “a lost spatial center.” While not identical, these metaphors all evoke a cluster of similar qualities—emptiness, absence, foreignness—all of which create a geographic register for the Holocaust that is separate from that of normal life. To claim that the Holocaust somehow created “non-places” is to define the event as somehow unknowable, un-navigable morally, in excess of human memory and a sharp rift in its victims horizon of expectations. However, the idea of the Holocaust as a ‘non-place’—an event that stripped away cultural and aesthetic tools of spatial understanding—has frustrated other scholars, who claim that such motifs obscure the specificity of events as they happened and possibly fetishize aporia. In recent years, scholars and educational organizations have engaged in focused empirical efforts to counteract the foggy image of Holocaust geography. For example, the Shoah Foundation launched a map function in 2012, which allows the viewer to follow the precise longitude and latitude of the witness at every moment of the testimony. The Foundation has, quite literally, attempted to emplace Holocaust narratives, to convey that it happened on a real topography. What does big data mapping do to our understanding of mass violence? What are other kinds of 149 cartography that we kind draw from the sources, and what are the larger philosophical assertions undergirding them? This panel seeks to open up this tension from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Hannah Pollin-Galay (Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania) will present a paper entitled, “When the Index is Wrong: Mapping Black Holes in Victim Memory.” She explores how Holocaust victims verbally reconstruct their spatial experiences as concentration camp prisoners in first-person testimony, pointing out the cross-cultural abundance of moments in which they recall a sense of radical physical disorientation. While far from uniform, the memory of having been in a ‘non-place’ appears over and over again. She reads these moments through the semiotic terms of Charles Sanders Peirce. If a scientific map makes an assertion of indexicality—a material, physical measurement from one object to another—then these witnesses experience their oppression as a suspension of such knowledge. Pollin-Galay compares how survivor-witnesses present this physical estrangement (or indexical downfall) in various contemporary discursive settings. POWELL, John W. (Humboldt State University) “Justification of War Is Not the Issue” Why have philosophers not made more progress regarding war? In particular, in the debate between those who develop and advocate just war theory and those who advocate pacifism, why has just war theory mainly served as an enabler of war and why has pacifism’s voice been growing weaker? I blame both sides. Just war theory, though presently motivated in large part by a desire to reduce war crimes and atrocities, has suffered from an inflated notion of theory and moral authority which have proven to be largely impotent. Pacifism, even when taken narrowly as a position against war, has portrayed war as though it is an issue with clean boundaries, separable from the world’s largest and most grim issues. Both, then, have misled their audiences. Both underestimate how much war is entangled in a grim fabric of contemporary global issues regarding the relations of human beings to each other and to the natural world. Addressing war as a problem requires more than centers for study of war, or war colleges run by military authorities, or U.N. resolutions or peacekeepers. As Freud remarks about love, war is not on a separate page. Coming to terms with war will involve coming to terms with greed and bigotry and nationalism. But coming to terms with war also will require coming to terms with philosophical mistakes, including assumptions about what persons are which make empathy more remote a possibility because theoretically inexplicable. And it will have to dig more deeply than contemporary efforts to decide whether war is justifiable or not. In 1915 Bertrand Russell at 42 published a short essay entitled “The Ethics of War” which can be read now in large part as making a case that war is intolerable whether justified or not. Further, it is easy to show that the main terrible accompaniments and consequences of war are still made manifest whether just war theory guides our actions 150 or not. This calls for a cross-examination. We philosophers have concentrated on the issue of whether war is justifiable or not, with the idea that if it is then pacifism is untenable. This turns out to have been dust in our eyes. We are better off to think harder about main contributing factors to war, and to point those out to philosophers and to others who may through teaching reduce their power or influence. Justifications will show up on that list. But such things as bigotry and greed and unthinking nationalisms, racism, impaired empathy, the seductive ideologies of true believers, exaggerated individualism, utter ignorance of moral issues, ignorance indeed of the surrounding world, are also clearly and powerfully on the list. Knowledge of these factors and parents and schools and colleges who deliberately draw attention to them may have more of an effect in reducing the appeal of war that James Hillman (in The Terrible Love of War) attributes to, among other things, our lack of other resources for feeling intimately our connections with life and being. PRABHU, Joseph (California State University, Los Angeles) “The Dialectic of Topos and Universality in Panikkar’s Hermeneutics” XXXXX PRIEST, Graham (CUNY Graduate Center/University of Melbourne, Australia) “Marxism and Buddhism: Not so Strange Bedfellows” Marxism and Buddhism might seem unlikely bedfellows. However, they have at least this much in common. Both say that contemporary life is unsatisfactory. Both have a diagnosis of why this is. Both offer hope of making it better. Buddhism has always been strong on ethics, its ground and its rationale; generally speaking, it is weak on political theory. By contrast Marxism has always been strong on political theory, but weak on an articulation of ethics. In this talk, I will show how aspects of Buddhist ethics and aspects of Marx’ critique of capitalism are mutually complementary, and can be combined to produce a much more rounded picture. PURI, Bindu (Jawahrlal Nehru University, India) “Transforming Sacred Space into Shared Place: Gandhi and Ambedkar on Temple Entry” This paper looks at confrontations about sacred spaces that were open to a select, rather chosen, few. In this context it examines an issue which was one of the points of contention in the debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar-temple entry. The discussion moves from these confrontations to re-constructions of the confrontations in the memories of the excluded and oppressed. In this context the paper examines the memory and re-interpretation of arguments made by Gandhi and Ambedkar around temple entry in the work of two contemporary dalit scholars Gopal Guru and the late D. R Nagraj. 151 The paper attempts to use the debate about temple entry between Gandhi and Ambedkar and indeed, between the caste Hindu reformer, the oppressive upper caste Hindu self and the oppressed classes, to bring out the significance of transforming sacred space into shared place. This significance is philosophically unpacked in terms of the role played by such transformations in helping divided communities break out of the hermeutics of suspicion. It also brings out the importance of the significance retrospectively attached to the role played by those who attempted to recover and transform sacred space in terms of locating a moment of trust. This moment of trust is important because the hermeneutics of suspicion paralyses not only the practise of communication in politics but also the possibilities of understanding in social science theory. It is hoped that the philosophical foray into this aspect of the debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar would bring out the significance of the relationship between space, experience justice and trust. RAGHUNATH, Thill (College of Southern Nevada) “After Snowden: The US Surveillance State and the ‘Place of the Personal’” This paper draws from the work of courageous and dissident American journalists Glenn Greenwald, Robert Scheer, and Chris Hedges, who were all inspired by the heroism of Edward Snowden and his revelations on the draconian NSA methods of gathering personal data on individuals en masse , on the US surveillance state and its corporate colluders. It explores the implications of this expanding surveillance state for our constitutionally guaranteed, but severely threatened “place of the personal”, or privacy, on the internet and elsewhere. The interrelations among the triadic values of privacy, freedom, and human dignity, will be explored and the case for the view that the US surveillance state undermines these foundations of “the place of the personal” will be examined. RAJU, C. K. (Centre for Studies in Civilisations, Delhi, India) “The Place called India” For the Greeks, Inde or Hind was the land on the other side of the Indus or Sindhu river. For William Jones it was land spread up to Cambodia (Kambhoj), where the ruined temples of Angkor Wat still attract hordes of tourists. For K. M. Munshi and others it was and is Akhand Bharat, and includes all the places from Kandahar to Sri Lanka, mentioned in the epics. Which is it? The answer is important since the notion of the place called India is a potential cause of tension today. The parting blow of colonialism was to partition the former India, and two of the resulting nations are today nuclear armed and hostile to each other. 152 The concept of India is also needed to understand Indian history. We cannot just proceed with present-day political boundaries, for political boundaries are ephemeral on a historical time scale, expanding or contracting with each war. Bangladesh did not exist 50 years ago, and a 100 years ago, both Dhaka and Lahore were very much part of India. Surely, Mohenjodaro is part of Indian history? Can India then be understood in religious terms a la Toynbee? That is problematic, because a multiplicity of religions have always flourished in India. Should India, then, be understood in racial terms, as in the Aryan race thesis which sought to divide India into Aryans and Dravidians? This paper will address these questions and provide a new answer. RAUD, Rein (University of Helsinki, Finland/Tallinn University, Estonia) “Spatiality and the Praxis of Being in Dōgen’s Sansuikyō” A strong consciousness of place has been a characteristic feature of Japanese cultural practices from ancient times to the present day. Notions of embeddedness and betweenness, derived from the attitudes toward nature and the sacred of the Japanese indigenous worldview have interacted with Buddhist concepts of reality and subjectivity to form a cultural framework that has shaped both Japanese social practice and philosophical thought, in which, in modern times, “place” has even been elevated by Nishida Kitarō into one of the central categories of his system. But this move has a long history behind it. My paper will look at how the relations between spatiality/nature and the praxis of being are viewed in the thought of Dōgen (1200-1253), in particular the Sansuikyō fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō. Elsewhere in his work, Dōgen has developed a theory of Buddhanature as the fundamental characteristic of all being and in this text he conjoins this theory with a non-dualist view of nature. Sansuikyō, or “Mountains and waters sutra” also deals with the textualising of landscape — with the construction of culturally domesticated nature out of nature “out there”, resulting in the loss of an authentic view of things as they are. Antedating landscape theorists such as Dennis Cosgrove and Anne Cauquelin, Dōgen strongly articulates the view that “nature” becomes “landscape” through the assertion of a particular, personal perspective, which limits the experience of it. One way to read the text is precisely as an attempt to approximate praxis/enlightenment to a direct approach to nature and reality bypassing their conceptualisations, achieved from within, not from without the environment with which the subject interacts. The paper will present several close readings of key passages and analyse them in the broader context of Dōgen’s work. RAVEH, Daniel (Tel Aviv University, Israel) 153 “Body as Place: A Short Philosophical Improvisation” The nearest and most essential place in which we live, or dwell, or simply are, is the body, the human body, my body. The short improvisation proposed here attempts to look into selfhood, subjectivity and the body. I work with the famous hagiographic episode of Śaṅkara in the king's body (in Mādhava's 17th or even 18th century Śaṅkara-digvijaya). This captivating story (consisting of suspense, humor, and even implicit erotica) raises questions about identity and identification, embodiment and disembodiment, borders and border-crossing, knowledge of body and body of knowledge. I intend to read and think of the story through three contemporary Indian philosophical essays - Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya's chapters on the subjectivity of the body (in his acclaimed treatise "The Subject as Freedom", 1930), Badrinath Shukla's "Dehātmavāda or the Body as Soul: Exploration of a Possibility within Nyāya Thought" (1988), and Daya Krishna's "The Realms of Between" (1995). Each of these thinkers, in his own way and context, provides us with a lucid insight into what it means to be (in) a body. Finally, I will make a brief visit to Patañjali of the Yogasūtra and his commentators, to look at two sūtras which speak of the capacity of "entering" someone else's body (YS 3.39) and mind (YS 3.19). Technical as Patañjali is, speaking of these extra-ordinary capacities in the same matter-of-factness as one would currently talk about changing the bulb in the kitchen, he nevertheless provides yet another vantage point from which to reflect upon the (dis)connection of self and body. RO, Young-chan (George Mason University) “Experience of Space: Dialogical Dialogue of Cosmologies in Panikkar” Raimon Panikkar, one of the pioneers of intercultural dialogue, developed the idea of “dia-topical hermeneutics” to explore the significance of “place” (topos) in understanding and interpreting religious and cultural traditions. For Panikkar, “place” or “space” plays a critical role in “understanding” and “interpretation” by crossing different geographical boundaries, cultural contexts, and religious traditions of the world. According to Panikkar, “dia-chronical hermeneutics,” interpretation across different periods of time through history within a socio-religious and cultural tradition, is commonly practiced, however, we are now facing a new challenge to cross the cultural regions, and geographical territories and relate different cultural “places” in order to engage in intercultural dialogue. In light of Raimon Panikkar’s “dia-topical” approach, the panel will discuss the following topics: 1. The significance of “place” in “understanding” and “interpretation” of religious and cultural traditions. 2. Finding the importance of “dia-topical” approach in engaging in the interpretation of different religions, cultures, and civilizations. 3. Discovering different cosmologies found in different cultures and religions, and engaging in a cross-cultural dialogue and a “dia-topical” interpretation. One’s way of relating to “space” shapes one’s way of understanding the universe or the cosmos, beyond a mere scientific cosmology, 154 what Panikkar calls “kosmology.” 4. The panel will also explore a broader and larger implication of Panikkar’s thoughts in relating to how the idea of “space” shapes the concept of “time.” ROBBIANO, Chiara (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) “The Foregrounded Background: The Undivided Place in Parmenides, Śańkara and Contemporary Phenomenologists” A fundamental reality prior to any division, description, or opinion. Both Parmenides (5th cent. BCE) and Śaṅkara (8th cent. CE) and contemporary phenomenologists refer to a fundamental reality that is prior to and contrasted with divisions, descriptions, opinions, stories we tell. I will look at similarities in the ways ancient and contemporary philosophers refer to the presumed fundamental reality, focussing especially on the spatial metaphors they use. Words: deceptive and transformative. A problem faced by ancient and contemporary philosophers alike is that words seem unsuited to refer to the supposed fundamental reality, which is undivided. Parmenides and Śaṅkara tell us that words, even their own, can be “deceptive”, since they make us believe in the reality of the boundaries they trace around the items they describe by distinguishing each item from all the rest (Parmenides, DK B8,52, Śaṅkara, BSB II,1,27). Luckily, words can also be transformative (Robbiano 2006). They may trigger a realization that reveals how all divisions pointed to by words are fundamentally unreal (Ganeri 2007). Distinctions that do not point to ontological separations. Whereas words are always carriers of distinctions, distinctions do not always point to ontological separations. For instance, Parmenides distinguishes being from ‘knowing’, ‘being aware’ (noeîn), but does not regard them as separate: being is the same as noeîn (DK B3), which does not mean ‘having mental states with cognitive contents’: cognitive contents are secondary; they are fruit of human words and opinions (DK B8, 38-41). Śaṅkara explicitly states that the self is the only fundamental certainty one can have and nobody can deny (BSB I.1.1), whereas every further elaboration on it is superimposition. Superimpositions are clearly distinguished from the self, but not separated from it: there is not separate, second reality next to the self (ātman) that is Brahman. Same words for Śaṅkara’s self, Parmenides’ being and pre-reflective selfconsciousness. Especially intriguing is that Parmenides (cf. especially DK B8, 1-49) and Śaṅkara use words and phrases that are very similar to the ones used by 20th and 21st century 155 phenomenologists to refer to pre-reflective self-consciousness: an ubiquitous selfawareness that accompanies all mental states and makes them possible (Zahavi 2006, 125). Such self-consciousness is more fundamental than any experiential content (Gallagher 2000, 15 in Krueger 2010, 38), unchangeable and constant (Zahavi 2005, 132, in Krueger 2010, 47), invariant (Tagini & Raffone 2010), unitary and continuous (Zahavi 2010, 76). It might possibly be quite invulnerable (Damasio 1999, 118, in Krueger, 2010, 40) and with no boundaries (Albahari 2010, 81-82). It might also be nonindividualized: Ganeri among others has pointed out that pre-reflexive selfconsciousness fails to individuate thinkers (Siderits, Thompson & Zahavi 2010, 21) and “is somewhat akin to the impersonal Advaitic ātman, present equally in all” (Ganeri 2010, 182). The foregrounded background: spatial metaphors. One of the things that distinctions can do when used by philosophers that want to point to an undivided reality is foregrounding what is usually in the background (Sokolowski 1998, 516-518). Foregrounding the fundamental background can be attempted by means of spatial metaphors that suggest lack of divisions and continuity of reality across what seem to be boundaries. E.g. Śaṅkara suggests that our self is like ether or space (ākāṡa), which is the same notwithstanding its apparent enclosure in jars and pots: we are fundamentally self (ātman) that is Brahman, but we mistakenly identify with our different bodies and minds (BSB. I.1,5; BSB I,2,6). E.g. Parmenides visualises being as undivided and safely protected as if by an ultimate boundary (peîras pumatón, DK B8,42), i.e. a limit which does not separate two domains but whose function is to signal the invulnerability of what is inside, since there is nothing outside, which could endanger it. Pre-reflexive self-consciousness is also prone to spatial metaphors: it can be visualized in terms of “background”, “one coherent space”, which is not separated from the single experiences, like space is not separated —only distinguished— from objects in space (Fasching 2010, 204-206). Pre-reflexive self-consciousness, just as Parmenides’ being, which is noeîn, and Śaṅkara’s self, which is Brahman, can be foregrounded and pointed to as an undivided space, which is prior to —and on neither side of— the distinction between subject and object, since it is the condition of this and any other distinction. ROBINSON, David P. (Curry College) “A Place within Uechi-Ryu” The notion of place is one that affects the worlds of the individual and the interpersonal. Place is a sense of belonging and connection and can be experienced through physical location, community, and within the self. Traditional martial arts engage these very concepts. This paper will explore the topic of place as it relates to the philosophic and spiritual traditions inherent in the study of Uechi Ryu karate-do. The cultural and 156 spiritual perspectives of Okinawa are incorporated in to the training precepts of karatedo such as the concept of “no first attack” and “respect” being intrinsic to the process. The goal of this work is to effectively articulate the value of such a study and to demonstrate its applicability and value beyond the practical methods of self-defense and towards the aim of creating a positive and useful personal place. The development of this system, and its philosophy, has taken root across the world, allowing for many students to find their own place within this style. Particular attention will be paid to the way this notion of place has been challenged and developed as Uechi Ryu has spread globally. This work will use the author’s experiences as a practitioner of Uechi Ryu as a framework for engaging this topic. ROMANO, Carlin (Ursinus College) “Long-Distance Love as Philosophical Place: What Hu Shi Learned from Edith Clifford Williams” In 2009, Susan Chan Egan and Chih-p’ing Chou published A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit: The Half-Century Romance of Hu Shi and Edith Clifford Williams (Chinese University of Hong King), a biographical account that opened up the little-known love affair of Hu Shi and Williams to the world. Between 1914 and 1962, they exchanged some 300 letters in which they both challenged and dissected each other’s ideas. Hu Shi (1891-1962) needs little introduction. Sometimes called "the father of the Chinese Renaissance," he was Dewey's most prominent Chinese disciple, as well as an enormously important and influential force in the turmoil of the early 20th century. As President of Peking University, he became one of the founders of China's modern educational system and a champion of everyday speech as a legitimate form of intellectual communication. In the Mao years, he was denounced for his promotion of independent, experimental thinking. Edith Clifford Williams (1885-1971) is much less well known. An avant-garde painter, Ithaca native, and long-term veterinary librarian at Cornell University, she met Hu Shi when he was a student at Cornell. Their love affair began in the early 1930s. In my presentation, which will include a serious analytic interpretation of the material provided in A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit, I’ll examine how this at times tortured relationship, born in romantic idealism but tempered by the reality of their times, helped form Hu Shi’s idiosyncratic worldview and peculiar version of pragmatism. ROSENLEE, Li-Hsiang Lisa (University of Hawaii – West Oahu) “The Place of Friendship in Spousal Relationship: You 友 and Philia” This paper intends to propose a hybrid conceptual paradigm incorporating both Confucian you 友 and Greek philia to replace the spousal relationship. So in response to the question of “What is a spouse for?” the answer is friendship. And in rethinking 157 spousal relationship as a hybridized Confucian you 友 with a blend of Greek philia, the functionary and oppressive aspects of marriage are thus made incompatible with this friendship based marital union. At the same time, by incorporating marital relationship into friendship, the concept of friendship is made ever more perfect. Just as in a good marriage both spouses are lifted up by their marital union, the union between marriage and friendship uplifts both conceptually as well. Spouses, in short, should be best friends who lead one another to moral goodness through mutual cutting and polishing one’s critical moral sense with penetrating understanding and enduring faith, and the spousal relationship, in turn, is also the best friendship that is perpetual and complete in its form and content by building a truly shared life with all aspects of human capacities, eros and all. In short, a feminist marriage should be a marriage of moral friendship and passionate love. It is a new conceptual paradigm of marriage that is made in a Confucian image for feminists; it is also a practical feminist paradigm that we mortals can strive for and realize in our human all-too-human life. SAAL, Britta (University of Vienna, Austria) “About the Taking Place of Intercultural Philosophy” With the emergence of comparative and especially intercultural philosophy in the late 1980s it has been claimed that philosophy can no longer be equated with European philosophy, but that there are rather multiple philosophies in different cultural places in the world. The Indian-German philosopher Ram Adhar Mall speaks here about the simultaneous “situated unsituatedness” (orthafte Ortlosigkeit) of philosophy, since the philosophia perennis – the everlasting and therefore placeless philosophy – only appears embedded in different cultural places. Very similarly, the Canadian philosopher Bruce Janz developed the concept of “philosophy-in-place”, by which he points out that philosophy always happens in places and how this matters especially in the African context. Considering now that the notion ‘intercultural’ indicates a space: the ‘inter’, and considering the above mentioned emphases on place concerning philosophy, my question here is: Where, in which place in this inter-space, does intercultural philosophy take place? And how does it take place? To answer this question I first like to distinguish between the dimension of the intercultural – that means the cultural places –, and the dimension of the intercultural – that means the places of encounter, engagement, and negotiation in the inter-space. It is here, where philosophy as an activity takes place(s) in form of (a) polylogue(s). That is to say, the place of intercultural philosophizing is a place in the inter-space which arises in the very moment of taking it. To further elaborate this, I will refer to Peter Sloterdijk’s “coming-to-the-world” (Zur-Welt-kommen) as well as to Stuart Halls “positioning”. Thus, in relation to Mall’s “situated unsituatedness” of philosophy and Janz’ “philosophy-in-place” I suggest the “taking place” of polylogical philosophizing to denote intercultural philosophy first and foremost as an activity marked by a processual and common practice. 158 SALLIS, John (Boston College) “The Protoplaces of Philosophy” This discourse takes as its point of departure the double sense of the phrase "the place of philosophy," namely that it designates both the place or abode in which philosophical thought is enacted and the concept of place that comes to be formulated through such thought. The place of philosophy in these senses is considered in such philosophers as Plato, Emerson, and Rousseau. Attention is given finally to enchorial space and to its attestation in Chinese thought and art. SALTZMAN, Judy D. (California Polytechnic State University) “Desire Nothing: Nirvana is Nowhere” The Diamond Sutra (Vajrachchedika) like many Mahayana Sutras, is filled with paradoxes. The thesis of this essay is to discuss it’s teaching that the Srotapati (Stream Winner) who takes the Dharma (Path) is taught to desire nothing, not even the Nirvana, the spiritual liberation of all beings. For even this desire is a focus on the illusory self (anatman)-- leading someone to some place is Sunyata (Empty). Even to desire not to desire is Empty, because it is still a desire. This presentation will demonstrate that, although it is impossible not to desire, it is possible to give up desires for personal aggrandizement, and clinging to a doctrinal idea that following the Dharma perfectly will help you to lead others to Nirvana. This state is in reality nowhere and no place. The Buddha is already here within each being who is no permanent being at all, but the result of Skandas. The Diamond Sutra gives us hope, if we can comprehend its teachings. At the beginning of the Sutra, the Venerable Subhubti asks the Buddha, How should men and women who set out on the Bodhisttva Path progress, and how should they control their thoughts?” The essence of the Buddha’s answer is that that although countless beings have been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to Nirvana. The Bodhisattva who is enlightened does not know it, for to think that he/she has attained a physical place; a spiritual plane of mind, or having no mind at all is a delusion. Even the Buddha fields of the Pure Land Sutra are not serene Buddha fields. Also, the Buddha teaches that even The Prajnaparamita, The Perfection of Wisdom, is not perfection. One who thinks he has attained Perfection of Wisdom, or The Buddha fields is not there, and has attained nothing. However, in speaking of the Dharma, the Buddha says, “Wherever this discourse is taught, Subhuti, that place on earth is worthy of veneration by the whole world with its gods, men and Asuras. That place is like a shrine in which flowers and incense are offered. That place is the Diamond Heart; it cannot be attained simply by intellectual means. Furthermore, even if a Bodhisattva offers all treasures, which are made of dharmas (elemental constituents), he/she would gain immeasurable merit, yet no merit. 159 Dana (Charity) must be offered, without knowing it is Dana. No being has been led to Nirvana. The Dharma is Adharma, because on the Path, one is always at the place where he/she is going. Each person is the Path itself. SATO, Maki (University of Tokyo, Japan) “In Between Time and Space (the Infinite and the Finite): ‘Histo-topo-philia’” A common understanding shared among global society, based on scientific discoveries and research investigations, that humans are the cause of global environmental problems urges and calls for action to actively respond to the changing environment (climate change per se). However recent developments in studies of the global history, provides us with a longer and wider perspective of the relationship of humans and nature, identifying humans have faced drastic climate changes in our Anthropocene history. Though we have to humbly admit that there still remains uncertainties in the scientific findings due to our short-sightedness and blindness in how humans scientifically conceive nature, we cannot ignore the latest scientific findings. In this regard, the question arises: How can we build an optimal relationship between humans and nature under the given constraints of infinite time and finite space? The author has been working on the concept of “Histo-topo-philia” by proposing and highlighting the importance of identifying and caring a meaningful place (or placefulplace vis-a-vis placeless-place) in our everyday life environment, rather than protecting particular places such as national parks. However, it is seemingly impossible to build an optimal mutual relationship with the nature only by addressing the importance and the idea of “care” (sorge) to everyday place we live. How can we build an optimal mutual relationship with our surrounding everyday environment to live our everyday lives in resonance and mutuality with the surrounding others in nature, and to realize us humans as a member of (a part of) the natural world? Is the idea of “care” sufficient enough as the bases to build such mutual relationships with living and non-living things in the world? By touching upon the notion of morphism in Zhuangzi and the idea of care by Heidegger, the paper is going to elaborate on the idea of “Histo-topo-philia” by considering the present world as a place where the spatial and temporal is unified. SELLMANN, James (University of Guam) “Place, Position and Perspective: A Classical Daoist World View and Physiology” In this paper I argue that Classical Daoist philosophy, especially Zhuangzi’s worldview, offers a unique understanding of place. For classical Daoists, existing in a place puts a creature in a position that results in a certain limited perspective. Daoist physiology, by means of meditation, teaches people to “walk both ways” (Zhuangzi 4/2/40, Watson p. 41). Walking both ways provides a new position in their placement thereby expanding peoples’ perspectives. As Laozi says, “we can know the world without going out the door; we can see the way-making of nature without looking out the window …” (Laozi, 47). With the right training that activates their neurophysiology, Daoists develop the ability to take different positions to discover new perspectives regarding their place in 160 the world. These new perspectives also allow them to gain insights into the position and perspective of other creatures and people. SHAINDLIN, Peter Shaindlin (Author and COO, Halekulani Hotel) “From Ancient Wisdoms to Modern Mediated Spaces: Relationship between Meaning and Action” This panel collects works from four disciplines: literature, journalism, and philosophy and language education. Yet when place is “superimposed” on these projects, we are immediately transcended into a common space where time and place, ancient and modern, flow in a continuum between past, present and future that breaks the boundary of disciplines. The four papers seem to be in agreement on the notions of: 1) time/space coupling; 2) soft boundaries of meaning-making constrained and afforded by modern developments and technology advancement; 3) seeming correspondence between ancient Chinese philosophers and Marx and Heidegger’s concepts of time and being, even though Chinese philosophers’ yin-yang balance on place implies both being and moving. Another underlying notion implicit in the emergent theme is the notion of care: 1) Tuan’s notion of “fields of care”, 2) Hodges’s theory of language as “caring system”, and 3) Heidegger’s Dasein as “Being is carried out and guided by the care of to be”. To relate care to Chinese philosopher’s “highest good”, Dao/the way implies the incessant being and becoming with the world. The four papers explore being and becoming with the world and relationally tie place within and with other things through Chinese classics, geolocation media, identity construction, and values realization. The discussant Peter Shaindlin embodies the philosophy of the panel in that his identity speaks to what the four paper tries to reveal: A Dasein being/philosopher in action in place. Peter Shaindlin: though not an academic is an autodidactic philosopher, cultural critic, novelist, photographer, musician, poet and COO. SHANER, David (Furman University) “Hei-Sei-Ji: The Place of Peace (A Case Study in the Mind of a Temple’s Sense of ‘Place’)” This multi-media presentation would use photos and videos that document the “spatial” movement of Hei-Sei-Ji from Nagoya, Japan to Furman University located in the southeastern United States (Greenville, SC). This five year project occasioned a magnificent cultural transformation characterized by a new sense of identity and “place” for what was once a conservative Southern Baptist University. Today Hei-SeiJi (trans. "The Place of Peace") is the University’s iconic centerpiece for international education. The identity and sense of place at Furman University was almost immediately transformed by shear difference, as it were, as people witnessed the re-construction 161 process and tools used by the Japanese master temple artisans who specialized (and socialized) in three distinct groups (wood, tile, and plaster). On September 8, 2008 The Place of Peace was formally celebrated by the local southern (and international) communities. At this time Hei-Sei-Ji was formally dedicated as The Place of Peace in a ceremony facilitated by the presenter. Since 2008, The Place of Peace has been utilized as the university center for bodymind education where a faculty approved course (PHL 202: "Realizing Bodymind" Jp. Shinshin Toitsudo) is offered that also satisfies the university general education “Wellness” requirement. SHAPIRO, Gary (University of Richmond) “Atmospheres and Diagrams: A Preface to Geoaesthetics” In this time of accelerating global environmental change, the arts have opportunities both to clarify the problematic situation of dwelling on the earth and to create heterotopias, or other places, that exemplify fruitful, aesthetically satisfying modes of inhabitation. I will explore some possibilities offered by land art – broadly including parks, gardens, earthworks, environmental surrounds and the like – in staging such heterotopias. I draw on the work of both older and contemporary artists and thinkers (e.g. 18th century British gardens and picturesque theory, Olafur Eliasson and Peter Sloterdijk). The talk articulates the strong interrelations of the concepts of atmosphere and diagram for a constructive aesthetics of place. I take atmosphere as involving both affective and physical poles; taking clues from Foucault and Deleuze, I understand the effective diagram of a constructed place to involve not only architectural design but the effective disposition and enabling of energies and perspectives. SHEN, Vincent (University of Toronto, Canada) “The Manifestation of Dao in Urban Places” In this paper, I will make explicit my understanding of the meaning of the urban life as manifesting dao, combining phenomenological concept of the life-world, Daoist concept of dao, and Confucian concept of tui, to the understanding of various urban places. This could be seen as an essay in a concrete ontology of the urban lifeworld. Thus, the space in a city is where human beings realize their desire/existence with intensive communication and complicated infrastructure. In the city, various urban places are where we meet with many strangers. For me, the infrastructure and places in the city—such as streets, transportation, schools, markets, administrative centres, parks and gardens, churches and temples—are there to structuralize people’s lifeworld and to cultivate themselves so as to form a meaningful life. I tend to see the city as a complex human gathering where human desires are to be realized. The city is a gathering of desires, and dao is the way or, better, the waying of so many things including human desire. 162 Combining both phenomenology and Chinese philosophy, this paper will speak about different layers of manifestation of dao in the city. In fact, Dao has several meanings: as the way, as saying and discourse, as laws of nature, and as the ultimate reality. To start with its basic meaning of the way, this paper will begin with the streets in the city, and talk about those trees along the streets. Then, it will go to dao as discourse, and discuss a city’s many places for discourse, like schools, market places and town hall etc. Then, in its meaning as laws or patterns of nature, I will discuss the cosmic patterns as revealed through parks and gardens in and nearby the city. At the end, I will discuss dao as the ultimate reality and its relation to urban places like churches, synagogues, temples and shrines etc. So, dao is manifesting itself in many places of the city, yet still unfathomable. The city is visible and we live in it, yet it is still invisible and bringing us beyond. Human desire is always craving and longing to determine itself in the desired desire. Still, the desiring desire is moving on, insatiably, infinitely, and unfathomably, to a destiny that is beyond all borders. SHIELDS, James Mark (Bucknell University) "Radical Enlightenment: Critical Buddhist Reflections on Spinoza and Marx." “Critical Buddhism” (Hihan Bukkyō) was a provocative if short-lived movement within normally placid world of Japanese Buddhist Studies, lasting from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. Seeking to inject Buddhist Studies—and Buddhist practice—with a selfconscious sense of history and a progressive commitment to social justice, scholars Matsumoto Shirō and Hakamaya Noriaki published a number of works dedicated to these aims. In my 2011 work, Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought, I argued that Critical Buddhism, for all its promise, was ultimately limited less by the stridency of its advocates than by its adoption of rationalist, “liberal” paradigms of philosophy, ethics and politics. While the Critical Buddhists’ arguments concerning the relevance of Rene Descartes’s ideas to Buddhist practice in the contemporary age are fascinating, I suggest that a more judicious dialogue partner for Critical Buddhism are figures associated with the so-called Radical Enlightenment, in particular Spinoza and Marx. This paper is an initial attempt to augment Critical Buddhist arguments via a critical appropriation of particular themes, arguments and ideas developed by the leading figures of the Radical Enlightenment, particularly with regard to topos or “place.” The point, as with any attempt at critical, constructive, crosscultural philosophy, is not to suggest a perfect equivalence, nor to hold one side up over the other, but to explore the possibilities inherent in bringing together wires that have rarely been crossed (with, of course, residual risks). SHRESTHA, Amjol (University of Hawai’i) “Where are Universals? An Essay Explaining the Placement of Immanent Universals in Their Particulars” 163 For Nyāya-Vaiśeṣ ika thinkers, universals (sāmānya or jāti) are real, mind-independent entities that inhere in their concrete particulars. If we accept this view, then how shall we explain the way a universal occupies the space of a concrete particular? In this essay, I argue that immanent universals do not occupy the space or the location of a concrete particular, rather a universal occupies the place of a concrete particular. Place unlike space is a set of relations. The intuition that prompts this argument originates from a simple example that distinguishes location from place. Imagine moving a fish bowl, without disrupting the fish bowl furniture, from point A to point B. Although I have changed its location, I have not changed its place, because I have not rearranged or removed the fish bowl furniture. In short, the place is the same. Indeed, the sameness that arises from the change in location is the sameness that reveals the immanent universal. SHUN, Kwong-loi (UC Berkeley) “Ethics without Forgiveness” The paper begins by arguing against ethical views that idealize forgiveness in the sense of regarding the readiness to forgive, in general or only under certain conditions, as a virtue. It then presents an ethical view that does not idealize forgiveness and that is grounded in certain ideas central to Confucian thought. While the main body of the discussion will be based primarily on philosophical considerations, the paper will conclude with a discussion of the Confucian root of such an ethical view. SIDERAS, Christos (Royal Society of Medicine & Birkbeck, University of London, UK) “A Place without Space: The Contributions of Matte-Blanco towards Understanding the Unconscious” Matte-Blanco, a psychoanalyst and a theorist of the unconscious, saw, following the lead of Freud, regularities in the expression of the unconscious and described these as due to a logic of another type, countermanding the logic of usual consciousness. He termed this logic symmetric, as opposed to the asymmetric logic of the conscious. He suggested that a person can shift from these poles of symmetry-asymmetry, through the different gradations of symmetrization. He described that with increasing levels of symmetry, there is a blurring of binary structures in relationships, leading to the collapse of difference to a class equivalence, with the inner- outer distinction becoming abolished, a lack of temporality and the prototypical absence of contradiction. At the extremely symmetric state, the sense of self and other is gone, space- time collapses, distinctions are negated and true indivisibility is achieved. That said, he felt that human functioning relied on an ability to shift seamlessly between these gradations and, somehow, compartmentalize them. These thoughts were explored further by his followers and the idea of the unconscious as being one and the same as emotions was suggested, with the greater depths of this unconscious state being much more highly charged in affective terms, that is, the more 164 intense emotional states being more symmetrized. The key idea of the unrepressed unconscious, Freud's third unconscious, was brought to the center of further theorizing, as an unconscious that does not know consciousness, unlike the one usually discussed, the one repressed, consisting of conscious memories submerged in the ocean of nonconscious. The question of the drives, so central to Freud's later theorizing, the drives of life and death, were also considered in the light of these ideas. I consider the atemporality described to be not a true atemporality but an aspatial temporality, one without division and without ordering, as per Bergson's suggestion of duration. This duration, a process, is very much present in emotions and is a different sort of time than the one conceptualized in a fracturing mind. This would fit with the descriptions given by the clinician-theorist Riccardo Lombardi, of a divisibility of thought in the conscious mind and an indivisibility of emotional being in the unconscious. I relate this idea of divisibility with the Pythagorean prime duality of peras~apeiron and the ontogenic mythos of Anaximander. John Sallis' explanation of the unintelligible and invisible also comports here to the idea of the unrepressed unconscious, but the key is that there is, despite contrasting descriptions, a oneness of the states of form and formlessness, as articulated in part by the Desert Fathers of early Christianity, but also the adepts of Mahayana Buddhism. Drawing from the Japanese Zen tradition, some descriptions of these ideas are given as examples, including also the ideas of traversing and aptly navigating such self boundaries as this is borne out in the exchange between Shin'ichi Hisamatsu and Masao Abe, suggesting the way of the free is in reaching "that place where there is nowhere to stand." This place with no space. SKOOG, Kim (University of Guam) “Is Morality tied to Place or Self? Revisiting an Old Problem with a Comparative Approach” From earliest times in recorded reflection on morality and “the good life,” writers have pondered just how significant is “place” in the overall development of morality in a society. Does the collective experiences, thoughts, and shared culture/belief system determine moral standards and social expectations amongst a people occupying a particular place? Or, should morality as practiced in a certain place amongst the resident community be judged by transcultural moral ideals—from the perspective of self? This line of inquiry is the basis for the showdown between cultural relativists and moral absolutist, a debate that has waged for millennia with both extremist viewpoints taking some serious damage and discredit. Keeping close to the theme of this conference, “place,” this paper will try to reassess some of the issues that have arisen in the past in this debate, and look historically and philosophically at how belief systems have changed or remained the same when either moving to a different “place” occupied by a different community or when a different belief system held by a different people “invades” their place. 165 Why does significant change happen in some instances and not in other cases? What role does the specific ethical process within a moral community lead to the preservation, disillusion, or replacement of their ethical structure? In what ways does varying and evolving notions of “place” shared throughout a community modify (or resist modification of) ethical values and perceptions of virtue? Is it possible to concluded at the end of this study, that ethics is better to reside in place or self ? SMID, Robert (Curry College) “Ecologies of Place: A Comparative Inquiry” All human beings have a sense of “place,” which identifies particular spaces and imbues them with particular meaning and significance. Different traditions, however, have constructed this sense of place in different ways, privileging certain kinds of spaces over others and, similarly, emphasizing certain features of those spaces over others. These differences have become especially apparent of late in light of the rising ecological crisis, as human beings have become able to transform their surroundings in unprecedented ways—and often to ill effect. This has not diminished our ability to create a sense of place; to the contrary, we continue to find our place within our continually transformed world (including, most recently, places in the digital world). Yet not every sense of place serves our interests as a species equally well. This paper is concerned with the extent to which contemporary senses of place work against those interests, insofar as they become detached from the broader ecological context within which they are rooted. Accordingly, it seeks to identify traditions that have been more successful in maintaining that connection, including but not limited to certain elements of the Shinto, Daoist, Jain, Native American, and Neopagan traditions. The primary purpose of the paper is to consider the extent to which, as well as possible strategies by which, any advantages that exist within these traditions for an ecologically mindful construction of “place” can be carried over into other traditions as well. SPECKER SULLIVAN, Laura (University of Hawai’i) “Particularist Bioethics” Principlist ethical justification pervades American bioethics, from the Belmont Report to Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’ Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Yet how useful are these principles in resolving difficult cases that arise in research and clinical settings in diverse places and within different cultures? There are strong indications that the answer to this question is “no.” As Renee Fox quoted William LaFleur in her acceptance of the Henry Knowles Beecher award at the 2015 American Society of Bioethics and Humanities meeting, “bioethics has become more international without becoming internationalized.” Fox herself had already observed in 1984 that principlist methodology in bioethics “contribute(s) to its inadvertent propensity to reflect and systematically support conventional, relatively conservative American concepts, values, and beliefs.” 166 In this presentation, I describe an alternative method of assessing and evaluating ethical arguments in bioethics. This method, which I term “particularist bioethics,” approaches bioethical issues from the ground-up, rather than from the top-down. Drawing from metaethical defenses of moral particularism, I show how evaluating the ethical justification of a given biomedical practice entails providing a critical picture of the practice on multiple dimensions: institutional standards, relevant concepts, social expectations, empirical data, and so on. The practice is not measured against an ideal or principle, but is judged in terms of its specific purposes, meanings, and expectations. I suggest how particularist bioethics can be used to analyze two different practices: stem cell research in Japan and stem cell research in the U.S. I propose that different ethical issues arise in these two practices because each is located in a particular place, within particular institutions, and based on particular assumptions. These examples give a clear picture of what a particularist analysis might look like and how it can contribute to ethical justification in bioethics. SPONSEL, Les (University of Hawai’i) and Poranee NATADECHA-SPONSEL (Chaminade University) “Sacred Places: What Can a Philosopher Say?” Sacred places are particular sites, areas, and/or landscapes possessing one or more attributes that distinguish them as somehow quite extraordinary, usually in a religious or spiritual sense. Individuals may experience a sacred place in different ways as a site of awe, mystery, power, fascination, attraction, connectedness, oneness, danger, ordeal, healing, ritual, meaning, identity, revelation, and/or transformation. Sacred places are an integral part of the human condition and experience as an ancient cross-cultural universal. Billions of people throughout the world variously recognize and appreciate the special meanings and significances of certain sacred places in their own habitats and elsewhere. Many of these sites attract pilgrims and tourists, some sites with thousands or even millions of visitors annually, as for example Lourdes in France or Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it is more than simply curious that individuals from many different ecological, cultural, religious, and national backgrounds may quite independently view the same site as sacred. For example, Mount Kailas in Tibet is sacred to adherents of the indigenous Bon religion, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains as well as some Westerners. How might a philosopher explain the existence, meaning, and significance of sacred places in general? Moreover, might there be something inherent in the place that attracts attention as sacred from people of diverse backgrounds? These and other questions will be explored from a philosophical perspective with an emphasis on the theories of environmental ethics. In looking at sacred places from some philosophical perspectives we need to discuss the relationships between sacred places as objects and human beings as subjects. How do humans view sacred places in terms of their own virtues either as intrinsic values or 167 as the instrumental values these places render to the benefit of the wellbeing of humankind. Will John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian approach be the best explanation? William James’s the will to belief can help to understand why sacredness is attached to such places. Arthur Schopenhauer’s attempt to explain our experiences as the objectification of the will should lead us to see the distinction between reality and appearance, and also how we might see the universalistic and individualistic views in these sacred places. Being-in-itself and being-for-itself as Jean Paul Sartre explains how we know our world can further differentiate the perceptions of sacred places. Buddhist teachings represent an Eastern world view of sacred places from the basic Four Noble Truths and the practical ethics of the Noble Eightfold Path. Right thoughts and right livelihood are the focal points of do no harm to others which in turn reduce suffering and increase happiness. For Buddhists sacred places can represent a sanctuary from greed and anger where loving kindness and compassion dwell. The Buddhist concept of interconnectedness helps to explain how sacred places are relevant to Buddhists. The environmental ethical theories will be discussed within the scope of the existence and function of sacred places. The anthropocentric and ecocentric approaches will explore the moral consideration of sacred places. STALNAKER, Aaron (Indiana University) “An Early Confucian Theory of Shared Practice” Several analysts have argued that the dào or “way” of the early Rú or “Confucians” is practical in the sense that it concerns human life and its proper organization. I think the early Confucians should be seen as practical because they are very concerned with the actual practices people engage in, and view the dào as consisting of repeated activities that shape human relationships, character, and embodied skills. This approach builds on long-standing scholarly fascination with Confucian “self-cultivation,” but extends it to focus on the formative and expressive practices the early Rú advocated, as well as their richly elaborated views of human relationships, roles, and how individual development relies on and fits into the web of human relationships. According to early Rú sources, following the Way requires teachers and students to engage in long-term relationships of practical training in crucial arts such as ritual and music, together with textual study and a communal life in the study group. Mastery of these arts and practices, when properly integrated together, constitute mastery of the dào as a whole. And Confucian analysis of the transmission of traditions of practice suggests that while some practices, such as ritual, are crucial to the cultivation of virtuous skill mastery (dé 德), a greater variety of practices, such as archery, have the potential to be practiced so that they contribute to real mastery, even if they are more vulnerable to failure and deformation. Thus the early Rú see a spectrum of practices from the most humanly essential and generally valuable, on the one hand, to the most narrow and inessential, on the other, with important consequences for thinking about 168 how best to approach and understand a variety of human activities that many already perform. My approach to these issues is to interpret the early Rú as “practice theorists” in their own right, rather than as exemplifying some contemporary theory such as that of Pierre Bourdieu. STERNER, Gregory (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) “Placing One’s Self in the World: A Moral Duty to Resonate” In this study, I will argue the position that resonation with the myriad things (every aspect of society from one’s self, to nature, to one’s fellow human beings) is a moral duty, following from the Confucian notion of social propriety and fulfilling one’s role in the larger world. One of the five social relationships Confucius highlighted in the Analects, which must be honored as a matter of duty, was Master and Servant. He spoke of the Master and Servant relationship (as well as Parents/Children, Husband/Wife, Elder Sibling/Younger Sibling, and Friend/Friend) in the context of filial piety (honoring one’s parents and ancestors in deference and their name in action), but also within a larger vision of social propriety. Confucius regarded the family as a microcosm of the overarching structure of society over the individual. I will examine how the Master/Servant relationship can be extended to encompass the master (society) and the servant (one’s self) and what honoring one’s duty in this context looks like. I will also compare and contrast the Eastern Confucian idea of social propriety with the Western Platonic concept of Justice as well as the Eastern Confucian notion of following yi (right moral action) in the context of li (propriety) with the Western Aristotelian idea of “right reason.” I will examine the function of resonation itself in the process of connecting societal relationships to the end of moral correctness and social justice. Furthermore, I will explore the idea of resonation as practice, relating specifically to looking inward, honestly appraising one’s abilities and strengths, recognizing one’s weaknesses (and in addition, what position or polarity one occupies in location among the other myriad things) and pursuing a vocation (role) appropriate to both and in conjunction with the needs of the larger world. STOLL, Joshua (University of Hawai’i) “Where is My Mind? On the Implacement of Self” As we go about our lives we are, of necessity, tied to others in some manner. But those others are still very much other no matter how close to oneself they are. Though you are here with me at some place, you can never be here, in my place. As suggested in Abhinavagupta’s Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa, the world itself, the place where we meet, comes about through the space that grows out of and through what occurs between us. As social creatures perpetually in each other’s presence, perhaps even in solitude, we are intimately, albeit subtly, involved in the development of everybody else, indeed of the 169 world itself. But despite this multiplicitous occurrence of people in the world, things seem to only ever be present to me – whoever that is. In light of this of this paradoxical juxtaposition of myself and others which opens up a world, this talk will investigate the question of not just who I am – i.e. who is the one to whom things are present – but where the events that constitute my mind, my experience, occur. It will ask and analyze the question “Where is my mind?” To this end, I will look at Jonardon Ganeri’s recent ‘ownership view’ of selfhood, the idea that a self is the necessarily embodied endorsement of and claim to clusters of intentions and preferences, conscious or not, regulated by normative emotional responses to the environment. Although Ganeri, following Peter Strawson, takes it that such a self is necessarily social, he doesn’t delve much into sociality itself. To make more explicit the social ‘location’ of human persons, I will explore Abhinavagupta’s discussion of the world coming about through the questioning of Śiva by Śakti. Next I will emphasize Emmanuel Levinas’ claim in Alterity and Transcendence that ethics is a matter of an immediate fear, in the face of the other, of literally taking their place, that is, of eliminating them from the world. Finally I will discuss the sort of multiplicitous and relational conceptions being emphasized by feminist thinkers. These points will culminate in the idea that the self is in an embodied mind’s being prompted by another. Thus, if for Ganeri the self is the place (ādhāra) – irreducible to the body though necessarily grounded in it – where the mind occurs and is thus owned, then this can only be because of the way we are perpetually already implaced (to use a term of Edwin Casey’s) in the yawning gap that opens up between us in social engagement. In order for there to be a ‘first person stance,’ to use Ganeri’s phrase, one must always already be seconded by the other, that is to say placed, by others, among the array of social possibilities. STOREY, David (Boston College) “Wisdom at Work: Philosophy in the Agora” We take for granted that the proper place of philosophy is in the academy, yet the academy is not where philosophy was born. When students leave the university, they are told they are entering the “real world.” This signals that philosophy has no place or use in their professional and personal lives. It seems odd that people are generally only exposed to what are arguably the richest resources humanity has developed to help them live wisely and well for four years in their youth. This is even stranger when we consider that Western philosophy’s birthplace was the marketplace, and was only later institutionalized in an academy. In this presentation, I argue that we are in the midst of a renaissance of what Pierre Hadot called “philosophy as a way of life” and explore its implications for the future of philosophy within and beyond the academy. This renaissance is unsurprising given that we now live in an informational economy based more on the exchange of information and ideas than an industrial economy in which philosophy was confined to the 170 academy. The signs of philosophy’s return to the marketplace are ubiquitous: a bevy of popular books and blogs by philosophers and about philosophy in everyday work and life; the explosion of interest in mindfulness meditation; the emergence of “in-house philosophers” at companies like Google; the growth of ethics consulting companies and corporate social responsibility; the rise of philosophical counseling and consulting, Philosophy For Children, and the growth of Stoic-inspired cognitive-behavioral-therapy in psychotherapy. I see these as anomalies pointing to a tectonic shift already in motion, a change in the role and place of philosophy in contemporary life. These trends are emerging at a time when the academic job market is hemorrhaging, the future and purpose of higher education as we know it seem unclear, and accelerating automation makes the future of work itself look frighteningly uncertain. My argument is not against academic philosophy, but against the idea, embraced explicitly or tacitly by many academics and many lay people, that the academy is the proper—that is, exclusive and best--place for philosophy. I argue that our mission has changed. We do not need “research,” but “outreach”: the use of skillful means to midwife wisdom in sundry sectors. The operative symbol should be not the philosopher escaping the cave/marketplace to seize wisdom, but returning to the cave to awaken others; not the stone Buddha sitting on the mountaintop, but the merry monk entering the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands. As Plato warns in the Republic, we must not allow the people who escape the cave to dwell in the “Isles of the Blessed.” And to adapt his adage, the world will know no end to suffering until businessmen become Bodhisattvas or Bodhisattvas become businessmen. To this end, I offer several proposals for the future of graduate education in philosophy. First, graduate programs should aim to change their culture, so that successful placement is not defined as obtaining a tenure-track job. Second, the role of the placement officer should be given pride of place within departments, expanded to include non-academic careers, and integrated with the universities career services. Third, departments should keep meticulous data on alumni so that students can connect with those who charted a path out of the academy. Fourth, given that we live in the age of the internship, departments should broker graduate student internships at think tanks, non-profits, and businesses, along the lines of service-learning programs. Fifth, as a profession we should be taking seriously the philosophy of work and leisure, especially as it pertains to the mission of a university in the 21st century. Our schools today are hardly places of true schole—leisure—and the future of automation is likely to dramatically change the meaning and relationship of work and leisure. The animating goal of these initiatives is to better adapt academic training in philosophy to the needs of a warping world in a way that does not water down the reservoirs of its ancient traditions. STRUHL, Karsten J. (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY) “Buddhism and Marxism: Points of Intersection” 171 In this essay, I will focus first on the general concern which informs both perspectives – their respective analyses of the causes of suffering. For Buddhism, suffering (dukkha) has a fundamental ontological cause – the illusion of self and its attendant desires, cravings, and attachments. For Marxism, suffering is caused by the division of labor, class exploitation, alienation, and the illusion that these are necessary. Second, I will discuss their respective understanding of the overcoming of suffering. For Buddhism, this requires extinguishing the illusion of self and its attendant desires, cravings, and attachments. For Marxism, this requires the construction of a classless society which would ultimately overcome all divisions of labor and forms of domination and their attendant ideological illusions. Third, I will focus on their respective practices to achieve the overcoming of suffering. This will include attention to engaged Buddhism as a revolutionary social practice. Finally, I will consider what each perspective can contribute to our confronting the fundamental existential crisis of the 21st century – climate change and the ecological crisis. I hope to demonstrate that Marxism and Buddhism can, in each of these areas, mutually enrich and support each other, offer constructive criticisms of each other, and intersect in ways that can help to change human consciousness and the world. As regards this last, I will argue that the historical creation of a society in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Marx) will require a human agency liberated from the illusion of self (Buddhism). SUHRUD, Tridip (Gandhi Ashram, India) “Walking to Truth” The Bhagvad Gita asks a question: How does a sthitpragna (one whose intellect is secure) move, sit, speak and Walk? M K Gandhi pursued a life-long quest to attain the ideal state as described in the Gita. We know of his direct speech and his practice of silence, his economy of prose which saw use of extra words as a practice akin to accumulation, his posture developed for hours of incessant spinning. And his walk? The images of a reed thin man, walking with long, impatient, rapid strides are etched in our minds. The staff (or stick) he carried grew longer with each passing year, till it grew longer than him. He walked daily, ritually to prison gates and back from his Ashram in Ahmedabad. He walked in South Africa with miners, and in Noakhali to wipe tears from every eye. He walked for Swaraj to Dandi from his Ashram in Ahmedabad. The essay seeks to understand Gandhi's practice of walking, trace its path from London, South Africa, Dandi, Noakhali, to his final walk to meet the assassin's bullets and find his Truth." SULLIVAN, Ian M. (University of Hawai’i) “The Sage in Silicon Valley: A Confucian Sense of Place in the Age of the Internet” 172 In Confucian role ethics, a priority is given to one’s vital familial relations. Tied up in these emotionally and socially close relations is an element of spatial proximity as well, a physical closeness. Presumably, the historical need for such spatial proximity was part economic and part communicative. Economically, the establishment and maintenance of the family and home required labor that itself required physical presence. Communicatively, these narrative Confucian relations required communication and a constant co-creation of the relations, a reinvestment of them with meaning through shared and sharing experiences. When looking for ways in which classical Confucian values can be adapted to contemporary society, it is tempting to see the demand for spatial proximity as anachronistic. The economic well-being of the family no longer requires spatial proximity in terms of either labor or cash currency. Not only can I work far from my family—and sometimes must work far from my family thanks to corporate culture—but with the swipe of a finger across my smartphone I can transfer money back to parents or dependents and thereby contribute to the “home account.” Communicatively, the need for spatial proximity seems to have diminished as well. Social media allows me to share photos, videos, voice, and text messages from the opposite side of the world with little expense or effort. Experiences can be shared more readily and more effectively over great distances then ever before. Despite all of this, I will argue that spatial proximity, when fleshed out as a thick sense of place, remains a compelling reason to follow some version of the classical Confucian teachings on remaining spatially proximate and physically present. A shared physical environment imbued with personalized and shared meaning, namely a place, in which one shares a bodily proximity and thus the ability for bodily communication through touch, remains a paramount requirement for the growth, if not the very maintenance, of our vital relations. SUNDSTROM, Ronald R. (University of San Francisco) “Yi Fu-Tuan, The Lived Experience of Place and the Disruptions of Gentrification” There is a rich literature on the lived experience of place driven by research in phenomenology and cultural geography. The connections of these phenomenological approaches to issues of justice in cities and communities (e.g., concerns about housing inequality, gentrification, and displacement) have been largely evocative rather than robustly connected through the mechanics of theories of justice. In this paper, drawing on the work of Yi Fu-Tuan, I map out a series of connections between these two camps. I discuss how important but hidden normative features appear in competing definitions of gentrification provided by social scientists, developers, local government agencies, and community groups. Their competing conceptions of gentrification are value laden and partial, and incompletely deal with the normative concerns at the heart of anxieties over gentrification. 173 I argue that analyzes of gentrification should learn from the anxious perspectives of poor communities, and not succumb to the temptation of allowing market-based reasoning to displace moral and political concerns about the rights of individuals and communities. Accounts of the lived experience of place are a valuable tool for considering those perspectives, and such analyses could be paired with the technical mechanisms of democratic egalitarian arguments about the needs of individuals and communities for capacity and community building. The result of this pairing is a critique of housing inequality based not just in distributive justice, but also in the appreciation of community capability, and the recognition of urban residents as equal democratic citizens. TABATA, Taketo (Miyagi University of Education, Japan) “The Phenomenology of the Group Dialogue: The Description of the Intellectually Safe Place of p4c Sendai in Japan” The purpose of this presentation is to give a phenomenological description of the group dialogue of philosophy for children Sendai (p4cS). P4cS comes from p4c Hawai‘i (p4cHI) and shares its ideas, tools and methods. In p4cS, a unique freedom emerges in the classroom. (1) At first, I distinguish p4cS group dialogue from standardized Japanese class teaching. Some features of the p4cSI/HI are shown; (a) the arrangement of desks in a circle without desks and not in rows behind desks, (b) the new lighthearted tool to communicate called the “Community Ball”, (c) the full articulation of the new rules of the dialogue, e.g., intellectual safety and only one who holds the community ball can speak and others should listen to him/her, (d) the new orientation not to answer but to listen to the questions from children, and (e) the change of the teacher’s leadership from the tyrannical to the democratic. These elements make a drastic change of the classroom, the teacher and children. This change is so radical that any unexpected good or bad events occurring in the class provide opportunities for the teacher to more deeply understand the children and for the children to develop themselves. (2) Second, I focus on the change of the teacher in the p4cS and describe his/her lived experience in terms of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. In p4cS the teacher should change his/her attitude as a “teacher” to a “facilitator”. The essential attitude of a teacher is teaching and leading, suggesting and guiding. In contrast, the teacher as a facilitator of p4cS stops to teach. The teacher “suspends” reflectively to teach and lead children. In addition he/she should “bracket” the rightness and various beliefs in his/her opinion, ideas and life-view, and open him/herself to the children’s rightness and beliefs. It’s like “ἐποχή (epokhe)”. However the “reduction” of the teacher isn’t as radical as that of a phenomenologist and remains partial. The teacher’s interest turns to serve the intellectually safe place and to let children speak and listen. The teacher doesn’t withdraw into the inner subjectivity but appears as a servant leader, a spectator and a participant in the outer intersubjectve world of the dialogue. 174 (3) Third, the intellectually safe place of the p4cS dialogue is described as the place of the “appearance”―something that is being seen and heard by participants in terms of Hannah Arendt. Nevertheless, the speech and action in public that Arendt points out are not the same as those in the p4cS; speaking and listening after throwing and receiving the community ball in p4cS are kinds of “action” Arendt says. Speech and action reveal human unique distinctness. And to act means to take an initiative, to begin, to set something into motion. In this phenomenological point of view we can understand the reason why so many unexpected amazing events happen in p4cS/HI. TANKE, Joseph (University of Hawai’i) “Painting From The Outside: Reconstructing the Early Foucault’s Account of Art” This presentation develops an answer to the question with which aesthetics has sought to displace the priority of metaphysics throughout the course of modern Western philosophy, namely, how is there something rather than nothing? It does this by examining Michel Foucault’s account of the constitutive role played by madness [folie] in the arts of modernity. By isolating Foucault’s remarks on van Gogh, Nietzsche, and Artaud, we develop Foucault’s early and largely abandoned notions of art and creativity, with the aim of explaining how nothing can produce something. This project entails a close reading of the significance that Foucault builds into terms such as “reason,” “unreason,” “art,” and “madness” throughout the course of his major work the History of Madness, and the account it offers of the various stages in the development of Western reason. By isolating Foucault’s remarks on van Gogh, we seek to place his understanding of painting in dialogue with thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida; however, unlike the famed debate regarding the “truth in paining,” it will be argued that one virtue of the Fouaultian approach to van Gogh (and painting) resides in the fact that it offers us a historical-ontological account of how a non-place, such as madness, can be configured so as to produce novel forms of experience. TIAN, Lin and Peter ZHANG (Grand Valley State University) “Interality and the City: The Case of Xi’an” This article scrutinizes what makes the city urbane by foregrounding interality (间性), which is a newly coined philosophical concept that wills nothing short of a paradigm shift in philosophical inquiry. As a polysemous term, interality can mean empty space, interplay, relationality, betweenness, and beyondness, etc. To illustrate the point, the article uses Xi’an, the highly cultured tourist city in Northwest China, as an “object of study” and compares it with other cities such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, Kyoto, and London, where appropriate. The article makes the following main points: 1) Interality is what gives a city its spirit (i.e., breath). Without interality, the city is suffocating and soulless. 2) Overdevelopment makes a city unlivable precisely because it squeezes out the city’s interalities. 3) The good urbanist values interality as much as elegant physical 175 structures. 4) Interality, urban rhythmanalysis, flow, and affordance. 5) The recovery and reinvention of interalities. 6) A thick description of interalities in Xi’an over the past thirty years. 7) Implications of the study. THÉOFILAKIS, Fabien (University of Montreal, Canada) “The Development of a Geographic Vision in the National Socialist Worldview” Fabien Théofilakis (History and German Studies, University of Montreal) will talk on “The Development of a Geographic Vision in the National Socialist Worldview.” Looking at written and visual sources created by the leaders of Third Reich, among them the notes written by Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trial, he traces the conceptual development of the so-called German “Lebensraum” (vital space) as a spatial ideal for the new Europe. This vision, contrary to current scholarly assumptions, was not uniformly understood to begin with, but developed out of a dynamic and contingent negotiation of maps, proposed by different Nazi agencies. Looking at primary maps, he extracts debates about deporting “Reichsfeinde” (enemies of the Reich) on the one hand and re-Germanizing newly conquered territories on the other. Tracing this dynamic as a spatial discussion, he argues, sheds new light on the Nazi project. Finally, he compares these historically produced maps to the spatial scales and aesthetic that scholars have recently employed when studying the Holocaust. THOMPSON, Kirill O. (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) “Fallingwater”: Daoist Inklings about Place for Design and Sustainability The Laozi offers poetic reflections on the formation of opposites and interplay of being and non-being, which arise and return to dao. This formation and interplay of opposites and being and non-being against the backdrop of imperceptible, inchoate dao yield an aesthetic view of not just the formations of things but of the couching formation of reality, which together yield place. (Arguably, the human sense of place refers to “place” in this sense rather than to coordinates on a map.) This aesthetic view of place registers the dynamic mutual dependence of the opposites, e.g., being and non-being, that form this floating world in the perspective of dao. The present paper will note implications this aesthetic view has for ontology and fundamental philosophy but will concentrate on its implications for grasping and working with place, design, and functionality, particularly as illustrated in the thought and designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. As intimated by Laozi, ch. 11, working with place, design, and functionality in this perspective tends to foster efficiency and sustainability. I conclude by attributing these assets to the rich ontology and fundamental philosophy of Laozi’s position, and suggesting how this aesthetic view could facilitate the design of more efficient and sustainable as well as elegant structures, implements, and artifacts. Reference text. Laozi 11: Thirty spokes join at one hub, But it is the non-being (the hole) that gives the use of the cart. 176 Lumps of clay are molded to form a vessel, But it is the non-being (space within) that gives the use of the vessel. Doors and windows are constructed to form a chamber, But it is the non-being (space within) that gives the use of the room. While the materials are the asset, But it is the non-being (within) that gives the function. THOMPSON, Paul B. (Michigan State University) “The Allure of the Local in Food Ethics” Philosophical inquiry into food security, the environmental impact of agriculture and fair treatment for small farmers and other food system workers has recently congealed into the field of “food ethics”. Taking up an alternative food movement’s interest in mounting resistance to large corporate actors and the global food system, advocacy for “locavore” eating practice is a topic in food ethics that links to the Conference theme of “place”. Emphasis on local food systems links several disparate normative rationales, however, and not always in ways that cohere. First, local food systems are said to place a lower burden on the environment than the global food system, providing an environmental ethics rationale. Second, local food systems allow money to circulate in local economies, providing a rationale based on local job creation within communities of place. Third, local food systems are said to promote sociality and convivial social relations, serving a political value of place-based solidarity. Finally, aesthetic qualities such as terroir are said to enrich the experience of eating foods from specific places. Do these notions of place converge or diverge? The answer is that while there are tensions, there is a surprising sense in which quotidian practices of local food culture have the capacity to invest place with distinct but mutually supporting conceptions of value. Food practice is thus a cornerstone for sense of place. TIMM, Jeffrey (Wheaton College) “A Place Beyond Place: The Divine Madman and the New Materialism” The New Materialism rejects “transcendence” and “objectivity” within the study of embodied, emplaced and “embraided” cultural experience. Recently scholars like Vasquez (2011) and Harvey (2013) have argued for an approach to the study of religion as everyday life, celebrating difference and employing “otherness” as a methodology. From the otherness of the Vajrayana the gaze turns to the new materialism, wondering exactly what is new about it. Contrasting the natural embeddedness of traditional indigenous cultures with the alienation from place and self in the modern west sets the stage for a third possibility: Vajrayana. Kyimed Lhakhang is a sacred temple in western Bhutan identified with the divine madman and, despite its emplacement or embraidedness in a particular and meaningful landscape, it forever points to a transcendence of place and “going beyond, beyond.” 177 This Vajrayana cultural understanding of place is directly linked to an appreciation and cultivation of alternate states of consciousness. It is here that the divine madman and his ancient wisdom tradition, attuned through insights of biogenetic structuralism, quantum physics and fractal geometry, may have some helpful suggestions for the New Materialists. TIWALD, Justin (San Francisco State University) “The Importance (or Lack Thereof) of Local Ties in Neo-Confucian Charactercentered Theories of Governance” This paper revisits the great Confucian debate about two systems of regional governance: the ancient “enfeoffment” or “feudal” (fengjian 封建) system and the more centralized “commandery” or “province-county” (junxian 郡縣) system. One important dimension of this debate concerned the advantages of having regional governors with ties to the localities that they govern. Proponents of the enfoeffment system thought that local ties make an official more invested in and knowledgeable about the communities he governs, whereas defenders of commanderies thought that local ties make it more difficult to centralize and unify authority. I offer a novel approach to this debate, one which takes account of another major current in Confucian thought that I describe as a preference for “character-centered theories of governance.” According to character-centered theories, successful governance depends more fundamentally on the virtue of those who govern than on the institutional rules and regulations to which they adhere. I look at two of the most sophisticated character-centered theorists, HU Hong 胡宏 (1106-1161) and ZHU Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) and explain how they are able to use character-centered foundations and frameworks to justify their particular views about the value and function of local ties. Both Hu and Zhu prefer the enfeoffment system because it fosters and builds on local ties, but whereas Hu thinks the enfeoffment system is necessary for good governance, Zhu thinks it an implication of his character-centered theory that both the enfeoffment and the commandery systems can bring about successful governance. Hu and Zhu thus illustrate different ways of conceiving the relationship between virtuous governance and historical and personal connections to one’s place. Other issues that overlap with the theme of space are the use of fixed boundaries to reduce conflict, the centralization vs. decentralization of power, and the value of what HU Hong calls “being rooted” in the place in which one lives. TOYODA, Mitsuyo (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan) “Towards the Growth of Agrarian Literacy” One of the concerns that J. Baird Callicott shares through his works is the impoverishment of the value of agriculture. With the trend of increasing mechanization, farmers are enforced to pursue efficiency and profits by introducing whatever technological measures available. Agriculture is a business based on the relationship 178 between farmers and consumers. Farmers’ choices are thus significantly influenced by the choices of consumers. Thus, Callicott writes, “Farmers are asked to make costly changes in their method of production for the sake of everyone else’s quality of life.” In order to consider the value of agriculture that has been dismissed in recent agricultural business, Callicott cites Aldo Leopold’s land aesthetic. Aesthetics goes beyond instrumental evaluation. It is the appreciation of the existence of certain things per se. Leopold’s land aesthetic, according to Callicott, “recognizes the beauty of neglected natural environments.” It is not about the appreciation of scenic beauty of agricultural landscapes but the understanding of their history of evolutionary and ecological biology. Biological literacy is thus the foundation of Leopold’s aesthetics. The connection between agriculture and biodiversity began to be emphasized in Japanese agricultural policies. Farmlands are now valued from various perspectives such as ecological habitat, scenic beauty, therapeutic function, disaster prevention, etc. Several agrarian villages have been selected as GIAHS sites by FAO and have been recognized as important bio-cultural heritages. In spite of these progresses, the future prospect is not bright. In this paper, I examine unique agrarian aesthetics in Japanese tradition and consider the difficulties and hopes concerning current agricultural conservation movement. One of the possible solutions is the cultivation of agrarian literacy. TRIGG, Dylan (University of Memphis) “Place, Culture, and Nostalgia: a Phenomenological Perspective” The reception of nostalgia in the 19th and 20th century is striking. At once an emblem of political conservatism, nostalgia is also an invariant aspect not only of individual existence but also of different cultures. From the Japanese concept “mono no aware” to the Portuguese term “Saudade,” nostalgia is a nuanced and culturally mediated concept. In this paper, I assume a phenomenological perspective on nostalgia, exploring the points of converge and divergence between Eastern and Western attitudes toward pastness, longing, and transience. My claim is that spatiality plays a central role in the formation of nostalgia, such that our experience of the past is tied up with the materiality of places, both in the presence and in their absence. I explore this claim through situating Freud’s short essay “On Transience” in dialogue with Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. TSAI, George (University of Hawai’i) “Blame and the Blamed's Place in (or beyond) the Moral Community” How does blame achieve its desired-effect of modifying the behavior of the blamed? More specifically, how does the blamed's place or position with respect to the moral community (whether the blamed is situated within or beyond the moral community) 179 make a difference to how, and whether, blame is able to achieve its desired-effect? In exploring these questions, I argue that it is a rather complex matter how blame operates to change the blamed, and that this complexity matches the fact that the blamed (as a group) are a morally and psychologically diverse lot. TURNER, Paul M. Turner (DePaul University) “The Estrangement of Presence in the Zhuangzi” It is well-known that the Zhuangzi 莊子 portrays apparently irreconcilable opposites as, in fact, mutually dependent on one another. This is most clearly the case with two sets of terms in the text's second chapter, shi-fei 是非 ('that's it' and 'that's not') and shi-bi 是 彼 ('this' and 'that'). Each term plays a role in distinguishing between what is correct or incorrect, and especially with regard to determining just what is properly virtuous, good, beautiful, and so on. Much of the English language commentary to date portrays these pairs of contraries as being primarily linguistic. Their contrariety seems merely semantic, then, while the contraries in fact form a unity either insofar as their meanings require one another, or there is an underlying unity beyond language which the use of names somehow distorts. In this paper, I will take up and radicalize Brook Ziporyn's suggestion about the status of perspective in the Zhuangzi, which is that a thing does not merely have but rather is such a perspective. This is to say that a thing's affirmation and negation structures its presence. What this means is that affirming and negating are not activities which beings undertake in an everyday sense, or 'within language', but are rather better understood as ontologically constitutive of a being which can act or speak. I will argue that a thing in the Zhuangzi is a clearing and lighting-up (ming 明) which essentially emerges from the dark and confused chaos of nonbeing (hundun 渾沌), where illumination has the sense of 'forming a meaningful world'. What is remarkable, then, is that the presence of any thing involves the chaos of nonbeing, or what it is not, such that its presence depends on what is not there. This means, I contend, that all presence is simultaneously there and beyond itself, so that there is essential uncertainty as to 'where' it is. To make this case, I will provide close readings of several key passages from the inner chapters, focusing on moments where things are shown to emerge out of, or exist within, formlessness and ambiguity, such as the Qiwulun's 齊物論 'music from empty holes' and the final chapter's account of Emperor Chaos' hospitality toward guests. What will be key for the analysis is the way such 'ex nihilo' emergence—understood in a nontraditional sense—means that beings are inextricably rooted in what is unformed and nowhere, and still further how this noplace is a common ancestral 'home' for each of the myriad things. VAIDYA, Anand Jayprakash (San Jose State University) and Victor PINEDA (University of California, Berkeley) 180 “How Can Disability Studies Help Global Philosophy Think about Place and Space: Lessons from the work of Dr. Victor Pineda” Recent work at the intersection of justice studies, disability studies, phenomenology, and the metaphysics of space and place suggests that paying attention to how persons of disabilities experience and understand “space” and “place” is central to the very construction of space and place from the standpoint of equality and justice. In this talk we present the pioneering work of Dr. Victor Pineda, who is the key architect of the AWE movement (A World Enabled Movement). We present his work against the background of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum who have also drawn attention to the experiences of persons with disabilities in their articulation of the capabilities approach to justice. However, we argue that Dr. Pineda’s work is pioneering and goes beyond those of Sen and Nussbaum in so far as he argues for the thesis that our current understanding of disability is confused, since we take a medical or biological approach to disability rather than a social and environmental approach to disability. We show how his careful argumentation suggests that everyone is disabled relative to some environment or place because disability is a functional notion tied to an individual in a space that is a constructed place through affordances it allows a person to optimize in freedom and being. We rehearse his empirical research on the United Arab Emirates in which he shows how laws concerning disability have shaped the production of the city life. We conclude by suggesting that cross-cultural research on disability provides a pathway forward for researchers in a variety of fields. The grand unification we point is research space and place that combines disability studies and future studies with comparative philosophy and theories of justice in political theory and philosophy. VALMISA, Mercedes (Princeton University) “The World is a Cage” or The Place of Freedom in Early Chinese Philosophy Zhuangzi 莊子 23, “Geng Sang Chu” 更桑楚, speaks of a bow master who would make a cage of the world so that no bird finds escape. What is the place of human freedom in a cage-like world? Much as birds flying in an immense cage, we seem to freely move around without realizing our boundaries. Are we in control? Can we actually choose how to act? Do we even have an influence over the course of events? Inspired by the long-standing Western philosophical debate on the (in)compatibility of determinism and free will, I analyze the way in which Early Chinese authors argued that behaving adaptively could lead to a kind of non-dualist, compatibilist freedom that I call “Adaptive Freedom.” I begin with a Song-times debate on the historical and philosophical reasons for feudalism (Su Shi 蘇軾�vs Zhu Xi 朱熹), which helps illuminate similar positions with regard to fate and free action in Early China. In a complex web of interactions between actors and environment, the place of freedom emerges between an inherently deterministic and limit-imposing universe, and the awareness of a strategic, purposeful and adaptive agent. This analysis provides an 181 alternative reading of compatibilist freedom for contemporary philosophical debates, and turns away all arguments in favor of dominant determinism, fatalism and passive resignation in Early China. van der BRAAK, A.F.M. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) “The Secular and the Sacred as Contested Spaces? A Cross-cultural Hermeneutical Investigation into Western and Chinese Perspectives” In the Abrahamic religious traditions, the notion of the sacred is often conceived in terms of nearness to God and God’s grace. The sacred is thus differentiated from the secular, and is set apart as mysterious and inconceivable. Emile Durkheim has even singled out such a ‘setting apart’ of the sacred as the defining element of religion: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden” (Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life: 47). Charles Taylor has argued in A secular age that one aspect of secularization in the West (the emptying of public spaces of all reference to the sacred) has resulted from the growing opposition and separation between ‘secular’ spheres of activity (economic, political, cultural, educational, professional, recreational) and ‘sacred’ spheres of activity (religious, spiritual). In the West, the secular and the sacred have become contested spaces over the past centuries. This paper wants to contrast this Western perspective on the secular and the sacred with a Chinese one. In classical Chinese, there was no exact term to describe ‘religion’. In the nineteenth century, the phrase zongjiao was coined, with a combined meaning of ‘ancestral teaching’ and ‘pious doctrine’. Absent in this phrase is the connotation that is present in religare: re-establishing the bond between the superhuman and the human, and bridging the gap between the divine and the secular (Yao and Zhao, Chinese religion: 27). Instead, the concept of zongjiao draws the divine nearer to the human world. In this way, religion is demystified and rooted in human experience and expectations. Rather than emphasizing the tension between the human and the divine (e.g., a separation from the divine needs to be reconciled through grace as a way to salvation), zongjiao emphasizes communication, correspondence and mutuality, which enables confidence in the human capacity for transformation and perfection. Each individual is believed to possess the source and resource to reach perfection or enlightenment. As a result of this, the sacred (shensheng) is conceived of as a permanent presence. The Chinese term is a combination of shen (the mysterious or spiritual) and sheng (sagacity), referring to the realm where the supernatural and the human are integrated into a perfect unity by which humans have reached enlightenment. Since the transition from the secular to the sacred is a continual process, the sacred can therefore be practiced, sought after and learned about: the Way exists everywhere. This paper uses a cross-cultural hermeneutical approach to investigate the philosophical and theological presuppositions behind the Western approach to the 182 secular and the sacred as contested spaces, and investigate an alternative hermeneutic of the secular and the sacred that is closer to the Chinese perspective. VENDE, Yves (Sun Yat Sen University, China) “Mencius and Plato about Land Repartition: Humane Space is Well-divided Space” One of the recurrent questions asked to Mencius by rulers who come to visit him, is how to gain the authority over all under Heaven (天下) and to unify the entire China under one sovereign power. Many rulers worry about the size of their territory which seems too small to achieve this goal. How to pretend to take command over all under Heaven with only a small kingdom? According to Mencius, to gain command over all under Heaven is not a question of the size of a territory but rather of the behavior of the ruler. If the ruler behaves like an authentic King and conducts a benevolent government which includes giving the appropriate amount of space to each one in accordance with his rank - then all under Heaven will be willing to follow his leadership. To make a repartition of the available land, and to settle rules for the use of it, is also to give each one an opportunity to fulfill his needs and to make the world humane (otherwise wild beasts might come and enter into competition with men). In Plato's Laws, the protagonists discuss a similar question, which is how to deal with issues relating to good governance. The goal was not to unify all of Greece but to create a colony in Crete, so as to make it an exemplary city. For that purpose, the city must not be too close to the sea (because ports bring business and business attracts all kinds of morally depraved people). The dialogue also addresses the issue of territorial repartition which should be done according to the size of the population. This division of the land is in fact closely tied up with the concern of avoiding conflicts among citizens. Therefore, an important aspect of this organization of space is agriculture, which should be the base of the economic life of the city. According to the Laws, a good King should act like a cloth-maker or a pastor. Reading the Mencius and the Laws, we can observe that in both ancient texts, to divide land properly and to be strict on boundary issues is part of “good” government, whether the final objective is to unify China or to establish an exemplary city. For both Mencius and Plato: space is humane when it is politically organized, which first requires a welldivided space. VOJTÍŠKOVÁ, Kristýna (Charles University, Czeh Republic) “Watsuji Tetsurô’s Fûdo in the Context of Globalized World” Watsuji Tetsurô's (和辻哲郎, 1889-1960) theory of fûdo (風土) as a “cultural climate” conceptualizes a “betweenness” (間柄) of humanity and milieu as inseparable and mutually determining. Watsuji tends to view fûdo as stable within a particular culture. However, globalization as a homogenizing element undermines human attachment to physical space, as well as cultural and national differences, which seems to be a prerequisite of Watsuji's concept of fûdo. Thus it may seem that it tells us little about the ethics of inter-relationality between human being and his milieu in the world of 183 globalization and multiculturality. In my paper, I will argue that in the notion of “betweenness” as a fundamental structure of human being within fûdo, there is an ethical insight that enables Watsuji's view to shift from a theory of climatic (or national) characters, as it is often perceived to be, to an approach to cohabitation within a shared milieu that blurs the frontiers of cultures and nations. WANG, Robin R. (Loyola Marymount University) “Equality and Hieracrchy in A Swirling Space” Based on a careful reading of some pre-qin Chinese texts this paper will focus on the space where equality and hieracrchy can be made compatible. It shows that equality and hieracrchy cannot be fixed in a frozen polarity and argue for a constructive and complicate relationship between equality and hieracrchy. WEBER, Ralph (University of Basel, Switzerland) “The Place of Europe in Philosophical Eurocentrism” This paper revisits the global debates about Eurocentrism since the 1980s and offers a critical discussion of the variety of Eurocentrism charges. I distinguish between philosophical and political charges and argue that political Eurocentrism is something contemporary philosophy would do well to guard against. Ironically, more often than not lurking behind attempts at charging others with philosophical Eurocentrism is nothing more than a political anti-Eurocentrism. What needs to be examined, therefore, is what a philosophical Eurocentrism would amount to, how it could be philosophically defended if it can be so defended at all, and how best to attack it philosophically. Europe, whether understood as a concept or a place, is best understood relationally, which implies other concepts or other places. In philosophical discussion and its underlying institutional support systems across the globe, Europe still has an impressing presence, while the relational quality it is given covers the entire range from appreciation to abhorrence. A better understanding of what philosophical Eurocentrism might and might not be and how it is tainted with political Eurocentrism is required precisely if one wants Europe to banished from philosophy and to be simply a place again. Europe should acquire a presence among other presences, or perhaps with regard to philosophy better a non-presence among non-presences. The philosophical importance of place is a double-edged sword, and the lessons that can be drawn from the debates about Eurocentrism should make us aware of the dangers involved in hypostatizing it. WELTER, Albert (University of Arizona) “Public Places and Privileged Spaces: Perspectives on the Public Sphere and the Sphere of Privilege in China and the West” 184 Public places (i.e., Habermas’ “public sphere”) have privileged status in modern democracies as arenas for the free exchange of ideas and commodities. Likewise, private interests enjoy a privileged status beyond state control, authorized as free expressions of the autonomous individual. In this paper, I compare the notions of public place and private space against common assumptions in the Chinese tradition, where public and private realms were never thought of as distinct, but as part of a continuum of harmonious, if sometimes contested terrain. In place of a public sphere where the principles of an engaged democracy are manifest, Confucian models in China provided for a “sphere of privilege” that allows access to the mechanisms of power and arenas of cultural privilege through control mandated by central authority. This authority designated and privileged an inside sphere, a “sphere of privilege,” where sanctioned activities deemed to foster government aims operated as legitimate organs of government policy. WEN Haiming (Renmin University of China) “Roger Ames’s Reconstruction of Chinese Metaphysical Idea of Place” This article aims to clarify the metaphysical dimension of Roger Ames’s reinterpretation of Chinese philosophical idea of place. I argue that his metaphysical reinterpretation of Chinese philosophical idea of place can assist research on Chinese philosophy in transcending the background of Greek-German philosophies in particular, and Western philosophical narratives in general. What he has done is to reconstruct a new model of philosophical interpretation on the idea of place for Chinese metaphysics, one that connects ancient Confucian and Daoist metaphysics with the processual nature of reality in American Pragmatism. He has translated many ancient Confucian and Daoist classics into English, and by doing so, provided a new perspective of interpretation of the idea of place with which to reconstruct Chinese metaphysics, introducing a new vocabulary with distinctive metaphysical implications. Furthermore, through his reconstruction of Chinese metaphysics, his interpretation has also shed light on the continuing dialogue between Chinese and American philosophy. WILLIAMS, John R. (National University of Singapore, Singapore) "Our Journey Home is our Home: Zhuangzi and the Impossibility of a Coherent Philosophy of Place" If the following claim from Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall's "four presuppositions of Daoist cosmology," (P1) "we too are inescapably people of a time and place," is taken to mean (at least by implication) our claims are all historically conditioned, then we must be prepared to accept the consequences of P1: namely, (P2) if P1 is true, then P1 is likewise, being itself a claim, historically conditioned; (P3) P2 must also be historically conditioned, given P1; (P4) P3 must also be historically conditioned, given P1; (P5) P4 must also be historically conditioned, given P1; and so on, ad infinitum. Subsequently, one can either (1) argue that at least claim P1 is exempt from the relativism it advocates; (2) argue that P1 results in the paradox of relativity, and is thereby refuted; 185 or (3), argue that the implications of P1 corroborate rather than refute P1. Given one takes this regression to corroborate rather than refute the initial proposition, one cannot establish givens, such as Platonic ideas, or determiners, such as Kantian categories, as a point of departure for philosophical inquiry: that is, the regression precludes a perspective sub specie aeternitatis from which to establish such a point of departure in a non-question-begging-manner. I call this implication of P1 (qua "3") "homelessness." Ames has recently aligned himself with Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology to confront this homelessness. In this paper, I hope to proffer the Zhuangzian notion of "the radiance of drift and doubt" (滑 疑 之 耀 guyizhiyao) and related notions to complement Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology in this connection. As a result, I hope to give the reader a critical glimpse into a philosophy without foundations. WONG, David (Duke University) and Marion HOURDEQUIN (Colorado College) “Hiding the World in the World: A Case for Cosmopolitanism Based on the Zhuangzi” Human relations to place cannot be easily or simply characterized. As a species, we have long been both settled and mobile, with some rooted in place and others more migratory. Mobility is not a new feature of human life; however, economic globalization and technologies that facilitate rapid movement from place to place have increased the pressures and opportunities to move. Some argue that greater mobility, in combination with the homogenization of places through the spread of chain stores and multinational corporations, has created a problematic placelessness for many persons and societies. This paper draws on classical Confucianism and the early Daoist thought of Zhuangzi to explore questions of place and mobility in the contemporary world. From one point of view, contemporary mobility can be seen as liberating. Particularly among global elites, people have greater freedom than ever to cross cultural boundaries, to make homes in new places, and to pursue opportunities – economic, intellectual, artistic, or otherwise – that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Experiences of mobility for the less advantaged are often fraught with danger and insecurity, but often hold out the promise of a different or better life. Even if moving were easy and safe for all persons, however, we might still ask whether it would be an unmitigated good. In the Analects, Confucius criticizes those who withdraw from society to free themselves from its various problems and shackles. Although the text does not put it this way, one might read Confucius as criticizing moral placelessness, a form of human life where one is cut off from the social connections and cultural rootedness that make moral personhood possible (see, e.g., Analects 18.6). The Analects thus offers an important cautionary note regarding mobility and detachment from one’s roots. Zhuangzi, however, might be more optimistic about the possibilities for a cosmopolitan moral self, and in the remainder of the paper we explore the theme of roaming in the Zhuangzi, and what lessons the text might offer for contemporary life. Zhuangzi suggests that excessive attachment – to place, to one’s bodily form, and even to other 186 persons – is problematic, and from this perspective, one might critique certain parochial forms of rootedness, given the interdependence and moral entanglements of the contemporary world. For example, Zhuangzi tells a story about trying to hide what you value by secreting in a hiding place, only to have it exposed and your treasure stolen – but, the text says, if you hide the world in the world, you cannot lose it. This offers grounds for a positive conception of contemporary mobility, one that draws on a Zhuangist acknowledgement of interconnection and interdependencies to support an attitude of identification with the whole and not just one’s own corner of the world. At the same time, Zhuangzi does not shun attachment altogether, as attachments – to the human form, to one another, and to the places we inhabit – are important to our particular form of life, transient though it may be. WONG, Peter Yih Jiun (University of Melbourne, Australia) “On Realising One's Fate and Finding Contentment in One's Environs” In the “Appended Statements” (Xici 繫 辭) collected in the Book of Changes, the notion of knowing and realising one's fate (zhiming 知命) is paired with finding contentment within one's environs (antu 安土). It involves a sense of place that is always dynamic— there is no one place that is the ideal place: no Heaven, no paradise, no pure land. Instead, the person is required to sensitively and creatively adapt to the places and situations in which one finds oneself—both in finding an appropriate posture and in enhancement of the place. This paper seeks to articulate the foregoing understanding through a reading of the Confucian commentaries contained in the Book of Changes, which represent an interpretation of the core passages of the Book of Changes by means of categories that are ritual in origin—among which, the notion of place (wei 位) plays a key role. We then pose the question: Is successful and creative adaptation to a particular place a completely satisfying goal in its own right? Are there some situations that are preferred by the Confucians over others? XU Di (University of Hawai’i) “The Dunhuang Grottos and Education” Dunhuang is a famous and fascinating World Heritage site on the Silk Road in the desolated Gobi Dessert northwest of China (Fan & Wu, 2004; Treasures of Dunhuang Grotto, 2002). Since 366 AD, a traveling Buddhist monk built a modest and simply meditation grotto on the east side of Mt. Mingsha, over a thousand grottos, fancy or basic, have followed the suite over a thousand years of civilization. They first flourished over 13 dynasties (366 – 1368 AD), and then survived approximately another thousand years through wars and turmoil in the nation. Today Dunhuang Grottos is well-known and well studied in terms of its contributions to Buddhist religion, history, archeology, art, geography, sociology, and multiple fields. However, interestingly there is a missing link in Dunhuang study regarding Dunhuang and philosophy in general and educational philosophy in particular. This panel will 187 explore and examine the relation between Dunhuang and educational philosophy as it is manifested through Northern Liang (421–439 AD) to Yuan Dynasty (1227 –1368AD). The primary questions are: What is the connection between Dunhuang and Chinese educational philosophy or if there is any? How has the place influenced the Chinese educational philosophy in theory and practice? Where is the place of Dunhuang in education then in China’s ancient past and now for global education for both China and the rest of the world? The discussion will focus on the direct connection between Dunhuang Grottos and education. The paper will examine the formation of Chinese educational philosophy through cultural, social, historical, and geographical, and political diversity. It will highlight the synergy and transformation of educational philosophy and practices in Dunhuang and China over the course of history. Most importantly, the paper will draw from the insights of Dunhuang and its education for education today. Together the panelists hope to start a new field in Dunhuang study that has been seriously neglected and overlooked. Dunhuang is not only a place in the past or merely an ancient museum of the lost civilizations. It actually offers insightful and rich educational philosophy that has been developed, synergized, and transformed over thousands of years. It still holds the philosophical essence for education, relevant for us today. XUE, Fuxing (Nankai University, China) “Callicott’s Interpretation of Daoism” J. Baird Callicott considers Chinese Daoism significant for reflecting upon the limitations of traditional Western thinking, particularly the mechanical worldview. Drawing from leading scholarship in Daoist philosophy, Callicott addresses core concepts such as chi, Dao, de, yin and yang, and the wuwei/youwei distinction. He finds a deep and intrinsic connection between Daoism and contemporary environmental philosophy, and states that Daoism provides a classical paradigm that is applicable to today’s society. The cyclical nature of the Way closely parallels contemporary ecology, which describes cyclical and reciprocal processes in nature. The dynamic worldview embodied by “Dao” is crucial for today’s world and offers a rationale for “appropriate technology.” However, Callicott’s discussion of Daoism has some critical limitations: he neglects the importance of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi and he fails to address the problematic nature of the concept of wuwei. YANG, Liuxin (Peking University, China) “A Home under tian 天 for the People of ren 仁: On the Cultural Symbolism of the “Xiangdang Chapter 乡党篇 of the Analects of Kongzi” The “Xiangdang” chapter of the Analects of Kongzi is an extremely valuable document in describing the details of daily life of Kongzi in the classics of ru 儒 school. The parent’s country 188 is exactly the home where exemplary persons junzi 君子 can “dwell poetically ”, and the folk society composed by parents and children, brothers and sisters, and friends is just the community where exemplary persons can practice ren 仁 and li 礼. As a model, Xiangdang reflects Kongzi’s cultivation and teaching, with extremely rich and profound cultural symbolic meaning. We can find through the window of Xiangdang, traditions and customs of the Chinese moral civilization that Kongzi admired and inherited. Xiangdang symbolizes a moral civilization and a home of people under tian 天 , and has eternal significance. YAO, Fuchuan (Chinese Culture University, Taiwan) “The Place of Justice in Buddhism” In the West, justice has been a conventional and vague concept. It means different things for different people in different contexts. Although it may be significant to investigate why the concept of justice is vague, we are not interested in it. Instead, we are interested in an ignored question of what justice means for Buddhism in the East. In other words, we are interested in what the place of justice is in Buddhism. This issue has been neglected and might not be legitimate for Buddhism. For “justice” is surely a western vocabulary and the Buddha had never said anything about it. However, given the significance of justice and the emphasis on pluralistic views in today’s world and without clarifying this neglected question, it would be difficult for Buddhists to offer any plausible arguments in terms of Buddhist justice. So this paper is to do three things. First, I review this ignored question with very few literature in the East and West. Second, I argue that karma is the main concept of justice in Buddhism and explain how the law of karma can construe three western concepts of justice. Third, I raise and defend three cardinal concerns with the law of karma. YAO, Zhihua (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) “Does Space Exist? Buddhist Disputes on Ākāśa” In the Buddhist Abhidharma system, space (ākāśa) is classified as one of the unconditioned factors and enjoys a higher status than time (kāla), which marks the conditioned existence. All the conditioned existents, being bound in temporality, are inevitably impermanent. Owing to its unconditioned nature, space, however, is as permanent as nirvāṇa—the final goal of Buddhist practice. The privileged status of space is challenged by a group of Buddhists, who see it as violating the Buddhist teaching of impermanence. They try to reduce space to a conceptual construction and hence deny its existence. The current paper will examine the disputes on the reality of space between the two parties and try to articulate the Buddhist theories of space, a topic neglected by most contemporary Buddhist scholars. YE, Lin (Dunhuang Research Academy, China) “School Education in Dunhuang” 189 The discussion will examine the school education in Dunhuang. Dunhuang grottos have once been the public place that offered education to the ordinary people, as well as the women’s club and study center for scholars. The chair monks delivered Buddhism lectures and lay folks often gathered in the grottoes for special meetings. The murals and paintings documented the Buddhist stories and teachings which guided people’s behaviors based on moral principles. This discussion will focus on the educational function of Dunhuang grottoes and the implication of Dunhuang education to the contemporary education in China and beyond. YUAN, Jinmei (Creighton University) “On Zheng 正, Associative Properness and Logical Validity: A Case Study of Shared Practices of Matteo Ricci, S. J, and Chinese Mathematicians in the 17th Century Thinking through the discourse between Jesuits and Chinese scholars in 17th century China, one can discover some significant progresses in building a mutual understanding between the West and the East at a level of logical practices. One of successful example is the co-work of translating Euclid’s Elements Books 1-VI, Jihe yuanben 几何 原本, done by Matteo Ricci, S. J. (1552-1610) and Chinese mathematician, Xu Guangqi 徐光启(1562-1633) in 1607. (The rest of nine books (Books 7-15) of Elements was translated by the Protestant missionary Alexander Wylie and Chinese mathematician Li Shannan 李善兰 (1811-1882) in 1857). Their efforts and contributions provide a good case for us to study how a mutual understanding between two very different language games could be possible. The contemporary philosopher Richard Rorty suggests that it would be extremely hard to introduce a notion, even one as simple as the concept of “pain,” to another group of people who lack it in their language game. The concepts in a language are related, and one cannot grasp one concept without understanding a whole set of other concepts in the language game. Although it is a fact that the discourse between Chinese and Westerners often encounters problems and misunderstandings, Matteo Ricci’s and Xu Guangqi’s effort in bridging the East and the West could be a meaningful case study in clarifying how accurate one can understand the rules in another language game, and further to understand another unfamiliar culture. To study thinking patterns, which normally backup human thought and reasoning, brings in an inquiring of the differences between Chinese and western ways of thinking at the logical level. In this paper, I shall explore how Matteo Ricci, as a traditional Aristotelian thinker, tried hard to adopt Confucian terms and ways of teaching. In doing so, Ricci turns to be one of earliest western thinkers who can think within and outside the box. First of all, I shall discuss the gap caused by different thinking rules between Chinese and Western logics. I argue that while Aristotelian thinkers separate the logical world 190 from the real one, Chinese thinkers show no such attempt. The former, based on a presumption that there is an order in the universe, studies logical patterns for reaching logical certainty in deductive logic and seeks for the high probability in inductive logic. On the contrast, the latter, based on a presumption that everything is changing, seeks for associative properness, zheng 正, in doing reasoning, which can be examined from different perspectives. Secondly, I shall exam how an analogical argument, as an important associative logical tool, functions in Chinese ways of reasoning. Analogical arguments are also recognized and carefully used in Aristotelian induction, in which it is concluded that two entities are alike in one or more respects. After Ricci arrived in China, he soon learned how to use analogical arguments to discuss with Neo-Confucian scholars, including Xu Guangqi. Starting from there, he introduced Aristotelian understanding of Truth and Validity to Chinese mathematicians. Thirdly, I shall further focus on a particular rule, ostensive definitions, or pointing out, which is a rule used by both Ricci and Chinese mathematicians in learning from one and another. According to Aristotelian logic, an ostensive definition is a demonstrative definition in which the objects denoted by the term being defined are referred to by means of pointing, or with some other gesture. For Chinese mathematicians, using pointing out to demonstrate associations, one can reach zheng 正, associative properness. Pointing out turns to be a rule which can open possible paths to understand logical validity. Xu Guangqi’s strong curiosity in accurate proofs echoes Ricci’s effort. With some compromises, Aristotelian deductive logic is finally introduced to Chinese via Elements, a Geometry text. The conclusion of this paper is that Chinese logic and Aristotelian logic are very different. The effort of seeking for zheng, associative properness has no comparison to seeking for logical validity. However, the attempts to understand the unfamiliar and the novelty are commonalities of human beings. To understand different ways of thinking, efforts must be made from both sides. The discourse between Jesuits and Chinese mathematicians in 17th century is an excellent example of having an open mind for a sense of wonderings. This is the hope for human knowledge and mutual understanding. YUSA, Michiko (Western Washington University) "Topological Existence: Panikkar & Nishida" XXXXX ZHANG, Peter (Grand Valley State University) “Beijing Hot, Beijing Cool” This article uses McLuhan’s notions of hot and cool as heuristics to advance a critique of the city of Beijing as a living and lived material-symbolic complex. It both extends the applicability of these notions and draws attention to their paradoxical coexistence when 191 the analysis becomes specific. The article ends by calling for a cooler Beijing, a society to come. The main function of the city as a node is the production of subjectivity. – Félix Guattari (1985, p. 460) ZHANG, Xi-Wen Verena (Tunghai University, Taiwan) “Space, Architecture, and Meanings in the Italian Renaissance and the Chinese Song Dynasty” Immanuel Kant in his Critique of the Power of Judgment addresses that “taste can be called sensus communis with greater justice than can the healthy understanding, an that the aesthetic power of judgment rather than the intellectual can bear the name of communal sense.” In the sense, when we gaze the ceremonial space, the Saladei Baroni of the “Castello Aragonese”, why its beautiful star vault astonish us so much? The vault was constructed “about the 85-foot (26-meter)-square space to a height of nearly 92 feet (28 meters).” Its Spanish architect Guillermo Sagrera “transformed the square space into an octagon by constructing squinches in its corners.” He set eight primary ribs springing out of the wall and converging toward a central oculus. In this way, the vault was divided into several harmonious parts in which present a combination of Gothic and ancient styles. It reminds us one of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture, the Dome of the Cathedral in Florence (1418-1436) which was constructed about 100-foot high (30.5 m), 459-foot diameter (140 m), and “the diameter of the octagonal crossing meausres nearly 140 feet (43 m), almost as great as the Pantheon in Rome.” The octagonal form of the Dome deviated from the classical hemispherical; Brunelleschi used eight visible ribs and sixteen concealed one—“in a manner similar to the construction of Gothic vaults.” Another kind of transformation of Chinese pagoda from square to octagon is from the Period of Simplicity (ca. 500-900) to the Period of Elaboration (ca. 1000-1300); in the former period, there the square form of one-storied, multi-storied, multi-eaved pagodas prevailed in China. After the end of Tang dynasty, one-storied pagoda disappeared; “the octagonal form became the norm and the square plan the exception.” “The octagonal pagoda which first appeared in the Tomb Pagoda of Ching-tsang in 746...” The term of pagoda may be a kind of southern pronunciation of Chinese “pa-chiao-t’a”—“pa-kot’a” meaning “eight-cornered pagoda”. Chinese architect, Liang Ssu-ch’eng in his A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture mentions: The word “pagoda” instead of “t’a” is deliberately used in this book because it is accepted in all the European languages as the name for such a monument. The very fact that the word finds its way into almost every European dictionary as the name for the Chinese t’a may reflect the popularity of the octagonal plan at the opening of Western contact. It’s hard to say that the Italian Gothic, eight-corner form have any genetic relation to Chinese pagoda. However, we may ask why this form had been prevailing in Europe (France, Spain, Italy...) and in Asia (e.g. India and China). What communal sense this form aroused in human beings? What is the meaning transmitted by this form? What functions of architecture with this form serve for? What’s the relation between space and architecture with this form in the Italian Renaissance Renaissance and in Chinese Song dynasty? 192 Firstly, this paper aims to answer the above questions and besides, it relates to some theoretical questions proposed by Robert David Sack in his Conceptions of Space in Social Thought: A Geographical Perspective and explores them when connecting with the above questions. Secondly, The meaning of relation between space and architecture may refer to the problem of subjective and objective meaning raised by Immaneul Kant in his Critique of the Power of Judgment on philosophical, aesthetic level. Thirdly, it also relates Talcott Parsons’s theory of social system, especially the relation between political subsystem and society as a whole. In conclusion, this paper tries to compare space, architecture, and meanings in the Italian Renaissance to that in the Chinese Song dynasty through philosophical, geographical, historical and sociological dimensions. ZHANG, Yue (University of Exeter, UK) “The Scholars’ Garden: A Place of Confucian Rituals and Freedom” [Subthemes: The Place of the Personal; Place and Culture; Place and the Political] This paper argues that the Chinese scholars’ garden is a place for developing Confucian personhood and achieving Confucian freedom through ritualistic practices of the arts. Building upon the arguments of Hahm (2001), Li (2010) and Zhuang (2013), the paper challenges conventional understanding of scholars’ gardens as places embodying the Daoist concept of individual, escapist freedom. The Confucian emphasis on ritual propriety and self-discipline is often considered as the antithesis of the Daoist individual freedom. Hahm (2001) using a Foucaultian perspective, argues that the Confucian practices of self-discipline do not inhibit individual freedom—but rather such practices are indispensable for the proper practice of freedom, which Hahm identifies not with individual freedom, but rather with the creation of a free or better society. Hahm’s view may be complemented by Li Zehou’s (2010) discussion of the Confucian ideology of ‘rites-music mutuality’ (li yue fu he). Li demonstrates that the Confucian view of self-discipline or ritual propriety is not merely about using external forces (e.g. rites, laws, moral codes) to restrict the body (behaviours), but more importantly, using the means of music (yue) or art – inner forces—to cultivate the body, i.e. to affect one’s inner psyche (emotions, understanding, imagination and ideas) which one’s actions reveal. Music or art, therefore, are not excluded from Confucian rituals, but complement to rites, a quintessential form of Confucian ritual practice. Rites, together with music or art both mould or temper the individual’s psyche and similarly shaped the social order, thus allowing Confucian freedom. A Chinese scholar’s garden, as I suggest elsewhere (2012, 2015), is a place for practising the arts (e.g. poetry, calligraphy, music) through which Confucian personhood 193 is developed. Reading both Confucian classical texts and scholars’ garden essays, I argue, in light of the above, that a scholars’ garden emerged through the sustained Confucian ritual practices of the arts. Instead of being a place to pursue Daoist individual freedom, the scholars’ garden is a place where the scholar harmonizes both his (rarely her) self and socio-political relations, thus practising freedom in a Confucian or Foucaultian sense—to create a better society. ZHENG, Dongping, Yang LIU, Daniel HOLDEN, Jared TOMEI (University of Hawai’i) “A Relational Space for Language Learners’ Mobility between Built and Natural Environments” Language learning in classrooms can imply the reinforcement of abstract rule-learning first and language use in its aftermath. “Place” is a secondary phenomenon, rather than a lived and functional space that is relationally and temporally meaningful. This paper aims to rethink the function of classrooms, a conventional learning space, to expand the ecology of language learning to natural and sociocultural places where learning while doing on the fly is of a normative practice. In place-based learning, learning materials are used as resources. Learners are brought out of the safe haven as protected by well-defined textbook boundaries, teacher expectations and classroom norms. Learners are forced to encounter strangers, odd things, and texts not written for language learners. The same place offers different features to natives vs. non-native speakers. Perception of place results from cultural experiences, which gives rise to different action potentiality (Chemero, 2009). Being in places extends language to things, signs, actions, and a sense of normativity (dialogical third parties in Linell’s sense (2009). Taking action in places cultivates and attunes learners’ affectivity to care for the world and themselves. We use examples of language learners’ play of a mobile game, Guardian of Mo‘o locating Hawaiian culture within UH campus diversity and cultural artifacts along the East-West Road. The game was designed using concepts of place, and never-ending perception and action cycles with the affordances of virtual and real world spaces for action taking; and therefore to demonstrate the technologically enabled meshed spaces for language learners’ wayfinding. ZHENG, Yujian (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) “The Place of the Second Nature in the Diachronic First Nature” This paper aims at revealing a paramountly important feature of the place of rational beings in the universe, a feature inextricably embedded in natural evolution or cosmological contingent processes that, with no supernatural design, ultimately have produced creatures who can legitimately and inevitably assume the ‘design stance’ to understand almost everything in their environments as well as cosmological history. 194 To facilitate this aim, I argue for a special notion of modality, i.e., retrospective necessity, that distinguishes itself both from causal/nomological necessity and from conceptual/apriori necessity. It is, in one sense, akin to Kripkean style aposteriori necessity but, in at least two important aspects, irreducibly unique: firstly, it is associated with the ex post facto perspective of an end-product of some multistep lottery-like (natural) games, regardless of the epistemic status of the product; secondly, the objectively attributable retrospective necessity (in a weak sense) to the product’s upstream causal chain would only gain its full logical status when the endogenous product, or surviving species, become epistemic rational beings, beings capable not only of self-legislation in the space of reasons but simultaneously also of normative retrospective endowment/ascription of content to their evolutionary predecessors. I will conclude the argument with an illuminating comparison of this generic notion of retrospective necessity with the (weak version of) Anthropic Principle in cosmology, with an eye to showing the latter’s special significance in re-enchanting nature as well as our unique place in it. ZHU, Fengqing (Harbin Institute of Technology, China) “Five Trends in Confucian Studies” For over a decade, Confucian studies has gone through several evolutions and developments. From 2010 to today,this area has delivered a number of the fine scholars.In this paper, I will analyze and compare five current trends in Confucian studies: 1. Global-Contextualism. Generally ,contextualism means that any system of claims, value, and activities cannot be understood outside of the real cultural context in which they occur. For many scholars, to understand the philosophical background of contextualism is very helpful in exploring the real meanings of these crucial concepts in Confucianism. A modern practice of classical Confucianism requires a contextualist interpretation of the world. As virtue, consequential or normative ethics, Confucianism should be contextualized, globalized, and developed as the moderm way of thinking emphasizing rationality and practice over traditional considerations. For this reason, there has been a dramatic shift toward a more contextualist methodology. Some of these methodologies attempt to reinterpret Confucian thought through the contextualism of globalized sinology. 2. Asian-Modernism. Some scholars disclose in meticulous detail the relevance of Confucianism to the contemporary world. It is popular to divide Confucianism into traditionalist and modernist forms. “New Confucianism” (different from NeoConfucianism) can be regarded as modernist Confucianism that incorporates modern interpretations and practices for nowadays needs.There have been significant discussion of the intercourse and interaction between Confucian developmentalism and Western models. 195 3. Asian-Americanism. Asian American have quite recently emerged as an increasingly important force in American politics. Asian American voices have been prominent in policy debates over such matters as education, race relations, and immigration reform. 4. Multi-Comparativism. More and more scholars have tried to construct an effective paradigm for a critical comparativism and multi-comparativism in the field of Confucian studies through Western philosophical hermeneutics. Some of them have provided applicable approaches to study Confucian through new or contemporary comparativism. We may reveal the development and main tendencies of new type of comparativism. 5. Classical-Textualism. Some scholars lean to “classical textualism.” “Classical textualism” demands rigid adherence to the Confucian text, and stresses that Confucianism can be understood only by interpreting the original words of the Confucian classics. Conservative scholars advocate an historical understanding of words, and the liberal ones prefer a more modern understanding of words. More and more scholars attempt to adopt the “classical textualism” or integral, complete and comprehensive textualism to overcome the fragmented textualism they believe is distoring original Confucian teachings. I will offer an overview of these five trends revealing how each of them comprise a significant movement in Confucian studies. In addressing each, I will provide certain theoretical critiques and the responses to those critiques. The main thrust of this issue is to examine the simlarities and differences among those scholarly inquiries as well as to justify those research programs that are debatable, controversial, and even confusing. In each movement I have in effect discussed certain types of challenges against “orthodox prejudice,” and also compared and contrasted them through a philosophical perspective. The significance of those trends is two-fold: it argues for a new stage in the development of contemporary Confucian studies, and it extends the Confucius thought to Western scholars and people. 196