CHINESE PHILOSOPHY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPASSION

These upcoming lectures seek to explore the process of moral growth, and of compassion specifically, from the perspective of the ancient philosophical wisdom of Chinese civilization.

Lecturer:

Professor David Wong
Professor Wong has the rare distinction of being a scholar of Confucian ethics who has formal and rigorous training in Anglo-American analytic philosophy. High accomplished in both traditions, he is a leading world authority in Chinese-Western comparative philosophy.

Discussants:

Professor Neil Levy
Professor Levy is trained in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy and has become a world leader in the emerging field of neuroethics which brings together neuroscience and moral philosophy.

Professor Shun Kwong-loi
Professor Shun is trained in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and Confucian philosophy. He and Professor Wong co-edited Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He is a leading scholar on the ethics of Mencius and Director-Designate of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Professor Edward Slingerland
Professor Slingerland is an expert on early Chinese thought especially Confucius, with strong interests at the interfaces between virtue ethics, moral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology.

Professor Richard Shweder
Professor Shweder is a highly distinguished cultural anthropologist with strong interests in the areas of cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, and comparative human development.

Schedule:

May 15 — First Lecture. Early Chinese Philosophy and the Nurture and Nature of Moral Development.

May 16 — Second Lecture. Shaping Compassion into a Virtue.

May 17 — Seminar. Discussion of the lectures between the Lecturer and the Discussants.