Soup, Harmony, and Disagreement (D. B. Wong)

Conférence | Talk

David B. Wong

(Duke University)

Soup, Harmony, and Disagreement

Is the ancient Confucian ideal of he 和, “harmony,” a viable ideal in pluralistic societies composed of people who subscribe to different ideals of the good life, and different comprehensive moral and religious beliefs?  Is harmony compatible with accepting, even encouraging, difference, and the freedom to think differently, to act against the social and moral expectations of others, and to aspire to different ways of life?  In my talk I identify the different dimensions of harmony, the relations between them, and their relations to difference and the freedom to express one’s differences with others.  I argue that there are ways of conceiving harmony, difference, and freedom and of trying to realize them that acknowledges the tensions between them, but also their relations of mutual support. I rely on some central passages in early texts that distinguish harmony from agreement and conformity with others, and which instead suggest that harmony must accommodate and make use of difference.  I discuss the Confucian uses of ritual to foster a type of harmony that can at the same time accommodate difference, and apply these ideas to the current situation in the U.S., where fear of difference threatens to dissolve into antagonism and political paralysis.

Friday, October 14th, 2016

3:00pm

University of Ottawa

Desmarais Hall

Room 8161

Démocratie et déficit de rationalité (D. Robichaud)

Sur les ondes | On air

David Robichaud

(Université d'Ottawa)

Démocratie et déficit de rationalité

À l'émission Les Malins 

Samedi, le 08 octobre 2016, entre 9h45 (écouter en rediffusion)

Ici Radio-Canada Première Ottawa-Gatineau (90,7 fm)

La Philosophie et son histoire | Philosophy and its history

Justice intergénérationnelle et... toilettes publiques! (D. Robichaud)

Sur les ondes | On air

David Robichaud

(Université d'Ottawa)

Justice intergénérationnelle et... toilettes publiques!

À l'émission Les Malins 

Samedi, le 01 octobre 2016, entre 9h00 et 10h00

Ici Radio-Canada Première Ottawa-Gatineau (90,7 fm)

The Problem of Political Speech : an Aristotelian response to Heidegger (A. S. Duff)

Why Philosophy? (G. Hunter)

Kant's Copernician Turn : Reading the Analytic in Light of the B-Preface (S. Bird-Pollan)

Conférence | Talk

Stefan Bird-Pollan

(University of Kentucky)

Kant's Copernician Turn : Reading the Analytic in Light of the B-Preface

Source : Wikipedia

In this paper I suggest that Kant’s project is properly understood as departing from the ‘fact’ of experience, that is, from the particular way the world impresses itself upon us. Against both empiricism and rationalism which seek to free us from the contingencies experience or nature by classifying nature once and for all, Kant’s project begins by acknowledging our fundamental situatedness in experience and argues that nature can only be made intelligible from within our interaction with it. Such intelligibility is of a different kind than the intelligibility envisioned either by rationalists or empiricists. Kant’s Copernican turn employs the metaphor of science’s inquiry into nature as a way of understanding human subjectivity’s continued need to respond or make sense of nature from within nature. For Kant this continued involvement with nature is what makes us human. In the second part of my paper I read what Kant says in the Analytic if the first Critique in light of this central claim about our necessarily ongoing interaction with nature.

Friday, September 30th, 2016

3:00pm

University of Ottawa

Desmarais Hall

Room 8161