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Yiting Tang: On Being Attuned: A Reading of Zhuangzi II

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Yiting Tang

MA student, UChicago Divinity School

On Being Attuned: A Reading of Zhuangzi II

Thursday, February 13th, 5:00 PM, Swift 207
 
The workshop will consist of a short presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. We will focus on a pre-circulated paper,  which can be accessed here (password: “Zhuangzi”).
 
Abstract
 
It is well-known that, in classical Chinese philosophy, qing 情 does not always and primarily mean emotions. At the same time, many studies still approach the discourse on qing 情 in the Zhuangzi under the rubric of something like the philosophy of emotion. The aim of this paper is not so much to criticize that approach to the Zhuangzi but to explore the aspects of qing 情 in the Zhuangzi that don’t neatly fit into the categories of emotions, moods, and affects. My attempt will be to illustrate the discourse on qing 情 in the Zhuangzi through the concepts of being and attunement. My main questions are: What if to be is to be attuned? What is the relationship between attunement and rhythm, frequency, intensity, and valence? And what kind of philosophy might result if the opening of Zhuangzi II is read as a phenomenological account of being as various and varying modes of attunement?

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Taryn Sue (tarynsue@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Alla Alaghbri: Waḥdat al-Wujūd in Epistemological light: Rationalism, Mysticism, the Problem of the Stage Beyond Reason in Al-Bukhārī’s Faḍīḥat al-mulḥidīn.

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Alla Allagbhri

PhD Student, Divinity School

Waḥdat al-Wujūd in Epistemological light: Rationalism, Mysticism, the Problem of the Stage Beyond Reason in Al-Bukhārī’s Faḍīḥat al-mulḥidīn. 

TUESDAY, February 4th, 5 PM, Swift 207

The workshop will consist of a presentation followed by discussion and Q&A. The paper to be read in advance can be accessed here (password: “being”). We hope to see you there!

Abstract:

The problem of Being (Wujūd) particularly God’s Being and its relationship with the existence of everything other Him has a central place in Islamic philosophical theology. The problem generated a range of rich discussions concerning issues of ontology and metaphysics more generally. What is interesting is that the problem of Being was also a sight in which problems of epistemology were investigated. This was especially the case between mystics of a philosophical bent (otherwise called philosophical Sufis) and rational theologians. In this paper, I investigate some of these epistemological problems through an analysis of a treatise written by the rational theologian, ʿAlāʾ Al-Dīn Al-Bukhāri (d.1438). My focus will be on the philosophical Sufi’s idea of a stage beyond reason, that is, an epistemological terrain in which the basic propositions of reason, such as the law of non-contradiction, are witheld in light of direct mystical experience. I will explore the idea’s conceptual history and al-Bukhārī’s deep suspicion of it. Along the way, I will draw some conclusions about the epistemic commitments of rational theology and the sources of the philosophical Sufi’s dissatisfaction with it. Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Taryn Sue (tarynsue@uchicago.edu) and Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Nathan Mulder Bunce: Specters and the Image

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Nathan Mulder Bunce

Ph.D. Candidate, University College Dublin

Specters and the Image: Ethical Injunction as Apparition of the Inapparent

TUESDAY, December 3, 5:00 PM, Swift 207
 
The workshop will consist of a short presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. We will focus on a pre-circulated paper,  which can be accessed here (password: “Specters”).
 
Abstract
 
By now, which is to say since Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, denunciations of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ are widespread. This context demands a radical rethinking of the image or appearance for a conception which does not rely on the value of presence to support its meaning. How should the image be understood in the wake of the disappearance of this grounding support? Does the significance of this uprooting of the image transform the image into the simulacrum? Drawing on Derrida’s Specters of Marx, I suggest the logic of the ghost—a hauntology—offers a conception of the image adequate to the demands of the post-metaphysical situation without falling into the nihilism of simulacra. Images, and more generally phenomena, as specters reverse the process of total depletion through the ethical injunction, calling us to reinvest the significance of images without certain knowledge. To be sure, this reinvestment requires interpretation, but an interpretation deprived of its end and without hope for itself. This unassured end would constitute the chance, which is the risk and promise, of justice.

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Taryn Sue (tarynsue@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Rafael Aguirre Schultz: Living and Dying with Montaigne and Zhuangzi

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Rafael Aguirre Schultz

MA Student, UChicago Divinity

Living and Dying with Montaigne and Zhuangzi

TUESDAY, November 19, 5:00 PM, Swift 207
 
The workshop will consist of a short presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. We will focus on a pre-circulated paper,  which can be accessed here (password: “Living”).
 
Abstract
 
It is difficult, at first glance, to see how the philosophies of Zhuangzi (c. 369-286 BCE) and Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) might intersect. On the one hand, there is Zhuangzi, the quasi-mythic Daoist sage whose eponymous work seeks to constantly decenter the perspective of its reader. On the other, there is Montaigne, the archetypal bon vivant and early-modern skeptic who claimed to know no subject better than himself. The two appear incommensurate. My claim is not only that these two share a certain philosophical disposition. Rather, I argue that Montaigne, in his attempt to faithfully depict passing, rather than being, serves as a resource for the ‘philosophy of living’ which the classicist and sinologist François Jullien has variously sought in his ‘detour’ through ancient Chinese thought.
Of particular comparative importance are the following elements. First, in both Montaigne and Zhuangzi one finds a movement away from a certain kind of skepticism towards an identification of the subject with a processual conception of nature. This affords both thinkers, not an indifference towards death, but instead a way of affirming it as necessary. Second, both Montaigne and Zhuangzi reject that entities have discrete essences, and instead argue that indication operates as a function of differentiation. For these reasons I nominate Montaigne’s thought as a resource for anti-ontological thinking within the Western philosophical tradition. In a manner which alienates him somewhat from others within his own intellectual tradition, Montaigne eschews ontological inquiry in favor of an approach to life as it is lived; not as mere being as opposed to non-being, but rather as movement, passing-through, never-being-the-same.

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Taryn Sue (tarynsue@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Seth Auster-Rosen: Doth He Refute Well or ‘Protest Too Much’?: Mikyö Dorje’s Critique of Dolpopa’s Zhentong-Madhyamaka Philosophy

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[PR WS] NEXT TUESDAY: Seth Auster-Rosen at the Philosophy of Religions Workshop
Seth Auster-Rosen
 
PhD Candidate, University of Chicago Divinity School
Doth He Refute Well or ‘Protest Too Much’?: Mikyö Dorje’s Critique of Dolpopa’s Zhentong-Madhyamaka Philosophy
TUESDAY, November 12, 5:00 PM, Swift 207
 
The workshop will consist of a short presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. We will focus on a pre-circulated paper,  which will be circulated this Friday, November 8.
In his Praise to Dependent Arising, Karmapa Mikyö Dorje (1507-1544), eighth reincarnate hierarch of the powerful Karma Kagyü order of Tibetan Buddhism, critiques the philosophy of Künkhyen Dolpopa (1292-1361), luminary of the rival Jonang order. Dolpopa’s Madhyamaka philosophical view (often referred to as Zhentong-Madhyamaka) is that the ‘kingdom’ of ultimate reality is totally separate from and opposite to the world of conventional appearances. Duckworth (2015), noting the resonance between Dolpopa’s position and the metaphysical dualism of thinkers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Leibniz, refers to it as a “Buddhist theo-logic.” But is that really right, or are critics like Mikyö Dorje–and Duckworth along with them–missing something fundamental to Dolpopa’s position? In my paper, an article-length distillation of the first part of my dissertation, I first sketch out the key points of Dolpopa’s view and then delve into Mikyö Dorje’s arguments against it in the Praise. Finally, I return to Dolpopa’s writing to highlight a crucial omission in Mikyö Dorje’s critique, and draw conclusions as to why so many critics like Mikyö Dorje mishandle Dolpopa’s philosophy in the way they do.

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago.

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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Taryn Sue (tarynsue@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.