Connie Kassor – Why Can’t Mādhyamikas Finish What They Started? An exploration of awakened awareness (ye shes)

Prof. Connie Kassor

Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University

Why Can’t Mādhyamikas Finish What They Started?
An exploration of awakened awareness (ye shes)

The Philosophy of Religions Workshop is excited to host Prof. Connie Kassor of Lawrence University, who will be presenting on a portion of her upcoming book Accounting for Awakened Awareness: The Madhyamaka Philosophy of Gorampa Sonam Senge (linked below).  Prof. Kassor summarizes the topic of the workshop as follows:

“What I’m exploring here is the nature of a fully awakened buddha’s awareness (ye shes, jñāna). According to Gorampa, a fully awakened being’s mind can be understood from two perspectives: From a Buddha’s own perspective (rang snang), conventional phenomena do not appear. But from the perspective of others (gzhan snang), it can be said that conventional appearances do exist for a Buddha. This is a strange and seemingly unsatisfying position that has puzzled me for some time.
I think that Gorampa arrives at this position for three reasons: first, he is thoroughly committed to a logically coherent and consistent system of thought; second, he is committed to reading Candrakīrti as literally as possible; and third, he finds the position on this matter put forth by his philosophical opponent Tsongkhapa unsatisfactory.
What I am puzzling over — and what I hope we can discuss together — is why Gorampa arrives at this position. Might there be some other, more satisfying way that someone like Gorampa can successfully refute Tsongkhapa while also remaining faithful to Candrakīrti and to Madhyamaka systems of logic and reasoning?
What follows is largely informed by the Synopsis of Madhyamaka (dbu ma’i spyi don), Gorampa’s longest and most detailed Madhyamaka text. This text describes Madhyamaka in terms of the basis (gzhi) that is to be understood, Madhyamaka in terms of the path (lam) that is to be practiced, and Madhyamaka in terms of the result (‘bras bu) that is to be realized. Gorampa’s investigations into the nature of an awakened being’s mind occur in the final Result section.”

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper (contact the Workshop for the password if you plan to attend) and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

TOMORROW, April 14th, 12:30 PM, Swift 201

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 incl usive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Viren Murthy, Rethinking Resistance: Takeuchi Yoshimi and the Conundrums of Global Modernity

Viren Murthy

Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Rethinking Resistance: Takeuchi Yoshimi and the Conundrums of Global Modernity

The Japanese public intellectual Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977) is particularly interesting to us today because through reading China, he constructs a critique of Eurocentrism that anticipates postcolonial discourse.  However, he does so at a time when socialism continued to be a powerful ideal.  For this reason, if we examine Takeuchi from our present historical conjuncture, we can grasp some of the tensions between postcolonialism and Marxism and, in particular, the tension between universalism and particularism.  In this context, Takeuchi uses Lu Xun as a lens to understand political actors such as Sun Zhongshan and Mao Zedong.  While most works on Takeuchi have touched on his reading of Lu Xun, they have rarely dealt with his attempt to understand Mao Zedong.  Consequently, they have failed to grasp the relevance of Takeuchi’s work for Marxist theory both historically and theoretically.

During transition from wartime to postwar Japan, Takeuchi constantly returns to Lu Xun and Mao Zedong to develop a vision of Asia as an alternative to a modern world dominated by abstraction and alienation.  Through Lu Xun and Mao, he rethinks the relationship between intellectuals and the people in way that he believes would be a new path for Asia.  In short, he envisions the people as an amorphous force that cannot be quite subsumed under capitalism and the state.  With respect to Marxism, Takeuchi’s work anticipates recent postcolonial attempts to question the Eurocentric nature of Marxism, while at the same time rethinking concepts such as the people and the working class. Takeuchi’s work might seem obsolete today with the passing of Mao’s China.  However, since his death in 1977, scholars have built on elements of his legacy.  Towards the end of my presentation, I will touch on how themes of Takeuchi’s work live on in the work of the Japanese sinologist Mizoguchi Yūzō and the Chinese critical intellectual Wang Hui.

Viren Murthy teaches transnational Asian History and researches Chinese and Japanese intellectual history in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He is the author of The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness (Brill, 2011) and The Politics of Time in China and Japan: Back to the Future, (Routledge, 2022). He is also co-editor with Joyce Liu of Marxisms in East Asia (Routledge, 2017), co-editor with Fabian Schäfer and Max Ward, of Confronting Capital and Empire: Rethinking Kyoto School Philosophy (Brill, 2017) co-editor with Axel Schneider of The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia (Brill, 2013), and co-editor with Prasenjit Duara and Andrew Sartori of A Companion to Global Historical Thought, (Blackwell, 2014).  He has published articles in Modern Intellectual HistoryModern China, the Journal of Labor and SocietyCritical Historical StudiesFrontiers of History in China and Positions: Asia Critique and the International Journal of Asian Studies. and his book Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution, will appear in University of Chicago Press, in 2023.

This workshop will focus on pre-circulated materials (attached below) and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

NEXT THURSDAY, March 9th, 3:30 PM, Swift 201

Co-Hosted​ by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop and the Arts and Politics of East Asia 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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (rguilbault@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Zhuangzi at Play

Prof. Pauline Lee
Associate Professor, Chinese Thought and Cultures
Saint Louis University

Respondent: Prof. Haun Saussy
University Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on Social Thought
Prof. Lee will be presenting selections from her monograph project Play in China: The Trifling, the Wicked, and the Sacred.  The paper can be read ahead here, and the event will be largely discussion-based.  We hope to see you there!
February 21st, 2023, 12:30PM CT – Swift Hall, Room 200

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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (rguilbault@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

The Yijing (易经) and Cybernetics : From Leibniz’s Xiantian tu (先天图) to Wiener’s Bergsonism

Yeti Kang

PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions, UChicago Divinity School

Respondent: Elvin Meng

PhD Student, Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, UChicago

The Yijing (易经) and Cybernetics : From Leibniz’s Xiantian tu (先天图) to Wiener’s Bergsonism

When Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz firstsent his paper on binary arithmetic to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1701, the Academy advised him not to publish it until he had found “better samples” to demonstrate the usefulness of his binary system. What Leibniz eventually added into his paper was a detailed account of the connection between the Yijing (易经) tri/hexagram or gua (卦) system and his binary arithmetic, based on the Xiantian tu (先天图) he received from the Jesuit missionary Joachim Bouvet (白晋). Such connection, as Leibniz suggests, not only reflects the universal applicability and metaphysical importance of his binary system, but also indicates the possibility of using Chinese writing as a sample for universal characteristic. Modern scholars tend to think Leibniz’s use of the Yijing as a strategic move, which proves at best a formal analogy between binary arithmetic and the Yijing system, and at worst a “Chinese prejudice” or “European hallucination.” In contrast, this paper argues that Leibniz’s reading reveals some profound connections and differences between the two systems at both the metaphysical and cosmo-technological levels.

 

To demonstrate these connections and differences, this paper compares the application of the Yijing tri/hexagrams and binary arithmetic in their cosmo-technological systems, i.e., in the Yijing divination and cybernetics. Based on the reading of Norbert Wiener’s account of cybernetic automaton and the divination system of the Yijing explicated in the Xici zhuan (系辞传), this paper outlines a recursive cosmic system in the Yijing, which not only shares certain logical and arithmetic premises with cybernetic mechanism, but also unifies the recursive system with the idea of sheng sheng (生生). However, beneath the recursive structure shared by cybernetics and the Yijing lies a fundamental divergency in their views towards the mechanism-organism relationship. Such difference leads to two radically different answers to Henri Bergson’s question about mechanism and moral mysticism. Through the journey of comparisons, this paper tries to answer two central questions: How do the two systems with strong similarities at the formal and structural levels end up producing two very different cosmo-technological and socio-ethical practices? How would the encounter of these two cosmo-technologies in the modern West shed new light on the discussions of mechanism/computationalism and moral mysticism in our information age?

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

February 14th, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (rguilbault@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Fulfilment of Fate as Zhuangzian Freedom

Luyao Li
PhD candidate, Chinese Philosophy, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
Visiting Student, University of Chicago Divinity School
Fulfilment of Fate as Zhuangzian Freedom
ABSTRACT: Freedom, as a prominent theme in Zhuangzi’s philosophy, attracts much attention from scholars.  Although the term has a broad and rich meaning, it could be understood primarily as a matter of overcoming constraints. In the pursuit of Zhuangzian freedom, fate exerts as an avoidable constraint, which is given by Heaven and out of human control. In this paper, I focus on the influences of constraints of fate on freedom and how to overcome it in the Zhuangzi. I will first argue that mingding lun 命定论, in the form of either fatalism or determinism fails to explain it because Zhuangzi always encourages people to think outside the box and change a default behavior pattern. Contentment with/acceptance of fate (anming lun 安命论), another popular theory, is merely workable when fate has already come upon us, but is inadequate to get us well-prepared before fate arrives. I then propose to use fulfillment of fate (zhiming lun 致命论) as a supplement to “contentment with fate” in Zhuangzian freedom, which is a recurring point, directly or indirectly in the Zhuangzi. Finally, I will further illustrate the way to fulfill one’s fate. It is different from working within the limits of fate and realizing it to the ultimate as argued by Guo Xiang, because it is similar to working without/with constraints in the assumption that we know the constraints in advance. Nevertheless, fate is unpredictable in the Zhuangzi. People are aware of it merely when fate comes or in other words when we arrive at the boundary of fate. Fulfillment of fate suggests following one’s virtuosities and trying one’s best to achieve fate’s limitation.

This workshop will be involve a presentation and discussion of Luyao‘s paper, the abstract of which is above. There will be no materials to read ahead, and anyone interested is invited to participate.  We hope to see you there!

Tuesday, January 17th, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (rguilbault@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Chapter 3 “Too Much Sad” from Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory (2022)

Prof. Eric L. Santner

Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago

Respondent: Tyler Neenan
 

PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions, Divinity School

Chapter 3 “Too Much Sad” from Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory (2022)

Untying Things Together helps to clarify the stakes of the last fifty years of literary and cultural theory by proposing the idea of a sexuality of theory.
In 1905, Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, the book that established the core psychoanalytic thesis that sexuality is central to formations of the unconscious. With this book, Eric L. Santner inverts Freud’s title to take up the sexuality of theory—or, more exactly, the modes of enjoyment to be found in the kinds of critical thinking that, since the 1960s, have laid claim to that ancient word, “theory.” Santner unfolds his argument by tracking his own relationship with this tradition and the ways his intellectual and spiritual development has been informed by it.
Untying Things Together is both an intellectual history of major theoretical paradigms and a call for their reexamination and renewal. Revisiting many of the topics he has addressed in previous work, Santner proposes a new way of conceptualizing the eros of thinking, attuned to how our minds and bodies individually and collectively incorporate or “encyst” on a void at the heart of things. Rather than proposing a “return to theory,” Santner’s book simply employs theory as a way of further “(un)tying together” the resources of philosophy, art and literature, theology, psychoanalysis, political thought, and more.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated book chapter (attached below) and will be largely discussion-based. We hope to see you there!

WEDNESDAY, December 7th, 12:00 PM, Swift 201

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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

An Edifying Conversation between Early Chinese Conception of Relationality and the Radical Empiricism of William James

Yunqi Zhang

PhD Student, Philosophy, Peking University

An Edifying Conversation between Early Chinese Conception of Relationality and the Radical Empiricism of William James
In William James’ radical empiricism, he employs “experience” as a relational notion as an attempt to overcome the subject-object dualism, which in many ways differ from the mainstream use of the term. This cause difficulty in understanding James’ radical empiricism. On the other hand, a distinctive characteristic of early Chinese thinking is its understanding of existence as based on interaction, and understanding determination of things as emergent in such interaction. This relational thinking structure may help us better understand James’ notion of the “context of experience.” Through this comparison we might be able to better understand the continuity and complexity of the content of the human experience, and to also celebrate the capacity of human beings to optimize the creative possibilities of this experience to live significant lives.

This workshop will focus on a pre-circulated paper and will be largely discussion-based. Email one of the coordinators below for the password. We hope to see you there!

November 30th, 12:00 PM, Swift 201

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 Danica Cao (ddcao@uchicago.edu), Audrey Guilbault (audreyrg@uchicago.edu), or John Marvin (johnmarvin@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.