Shun Kwong-loi

Prof. Shun Kwong-loi
Recalled Professor, University of California at Berkeley

Kwong-loi Shun received his doctorate from Stanford University in 1986 and started teaching at UC Berkeley in the same year. He was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters & Science when he left UC Berkeley for University of Toronto, where he was Professor of Philosophy and East Asia Studies and Principal of the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He then joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he was Chair Professor of Philosophy, Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture, Head of New Asia College, and Director of the Institute for Chinese Studies. He returned to UC Berkeley in 2014 as Recalled Professor, and has been teaching courses on moral psychology and on Chinese philosophy.

Shun’s current research is a five-volume work on Confucian thought. The first volume, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, was published in 1997, and a manuscript of the second volume, on Zhu Xi and later Confucian thought, is undergoing final revisions. The third volume, which discusses methodological issues in transitioning from philological studies to philosophical studies, is close to completion. The fourth and fifth volumes jointly provide a comprehensive study of Confucian moral psychology, revolving around the idea of “no self” (wu wo 無我); the former is primarily philological and the latter, primarily philosophical. The main ideas of the final two volumes were presented in “On the Idea of ‘No Self’,” a presidential address he delivered in 2018 as President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).

Confucian Learning and University Education

poster
Monday, 24 February 2025
4:30 – 6:30 pm
Cho Yiu Hall

Joining the Face-to-Face Talks (Please register by 21 February 2024):
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13703488

For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk

Abstract:

Confucian thinkers discourse at length on the nature of the learning process for adults (da xue 大學), and the Confucian conception has been influential on traditional educational practices such as those incorporated in the traditional academies (shu yuan 書院). This lecture examines the four main components of the learning process under this conception, which might be abbreviated as “depth,” “breadth,” “aspirations,” and “moral transformation.” The four components are integrated in a process that leads to a total transformation of the person, both intellectually and ethically.

On the basis of this discussion, the lecture responds to certain misconceptions of Chinese educational practices, such as those recently voiced by Richard Levin, former President of Yale University. It also relates this conception to contemporary Western discussions of university education, such as those by Cardinal John Henry Newman and by philosopher John Dewey. While aligned with some of these discussions in certain respects, the Confucian conception also goes beyond them in important respects, such as its emphasis on the inseparability of the intellectual and the ethical, and the depth to which it probes the nature of these four components of learning and their interconnections.

Conducted in English
All are welcome

7/2(Fri.), 2:30 – 5:15pm, LHC G06
14/2 (Fri.), 2:30 – 5:15pm, LHC G06
21/2 (Fri.), 2:30 – 5:15pm, LHC G06
28/2 (Fri.), 2:30 – 5:15pm, LHC G06

The Ethical, the Ordinary, and the Spiritual

poster
Monday, 10 February 2025
4:30 – 6:30 pm
Room 220, Fung King Hey Building

Joining the Face-to-Face Talks (Please register by 7 February):
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13703488

For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk

Abstract:

Writers from different spiritual traditions have emphasized the importance, in our reflections on the ethical life of humans, of attending to ordinary humans who might be unlearnt or even illiterate, such as the “simple laboring folk” (Tolstoy) or the “people of scanty learning” (Tagore). The point is echoed by some contemporary philosophers, such as Iris Murdoch who urges the “return from philosophical theory to simple thing,” “things which are familiar to us in ordinary life,” and who also highlights the idea of the spiritual in this connection. In what ways does attending to the ordinary and the familiar bear on our ethical reflections, and how might doing so lead to the idea of the spiritual?

This seminar presentation proposes that attending to the ordinary and the familiar highlights a mode of non-normative ethical reflection (reflection on the nature of the ethical experiences of humans) and a mode of normative ethical reflection (reflection on how it is desirable for humans to live) that differ from certain modes of ethical reflection common in the contemporary philosophical literature. Highlighting such modes of reflection helps us better understand the nature of the ethical experiences of ordinary humans, in a manner that engages directly with their ethical concerns and that also brings to light a certain kind of transformative experience that might be described as “spiritual” in certain common usages of the term.

Conducted in English
All are welcome