Summer Residential Institute in Comparative Philosophy

at the  University of Hawai’i at Manoa

July 30—August 17, 2012

Organizers and Sponsors:

The University of Tokyo

University of Hawai’i

Asian Studies Development Program

APPLICATION DEADLINE: March 1, 2012

Introduction and Purposes

The University of Tokyo and the University of Hawai’i are two institutions of higher learning that have had a sustained commitment to promoting literacy on non-Western traditions of philosophy.

Since its inception in 1991, the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP), a joint program of the East-West Center and the University of Hawai’i has sought to enhance teaching about Asia at American two-year and four-year colleges and universities at the undergraduate level. ASDP offers a variety of content-focused faculty and institutional development programs and activities centered around summer residential institutes, field seminars in Asia, workshops on the U.S. mainland, and an annual academic conference.

In the summer of 2012 these three institutions will combine resources in sponsoring a three week residential institute in comparative philosophy.

The curriculum outlined below will contain a combination of topical lectures in Chinese and Japanese philosophy and sessions that focus on a close reading of relevant classical and modern texts.

The 2012 program will be led by professors Kobayashi Yasuo (University of Tokyo), Nakajima Takahiro (University of Tokyo), Kajitani Shinji (University of Tokyo), Roger T. Ames (University of Hawai`i), and Masato Ishida (University of Hawai`i).

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Asia Pacific region is rising and reshaping the world’s economic and political order. Over the past two decades, trade in this zone has risen 400% and GDP has tripled.

At the center of the Asia Pacific are China and Japan. Beyond political economy, what influence will these countries and their long-enduring civilizations exert upon an emerging world culture?

Over the past quarter century, estimating the depth and extent of East Asia’s continuing influence has become a serious academic preoccupation in the Western academy. One result of this effort has been a dispelling of the presupposition that modernization is equivalent to Westernization.

A second has been growing awareness that understanding East Asian cultural traditions in their own terms opens possibilities both for gaining new vantages on global concerns, and for expanding the critical resources on which we might draw in discerning effective means-to and shared meanings-of a flourishing and sustainable global community. In order to contribute to these processes, this and succeeding generations of scholars must be up-to-date on the dynamic relationship between East Asia and the rest of the world. But understanding the complex drivers of China’s and Japan’s contemporary evolution also requires an appreciation of the conceptual and cultural currents flowing through the histo ries of the region. Studying the canonical texts defining of these cultures and their interpretive contexts is crucial. The purpose of this UTUH Institute is to assemble a select group of scholars who are committed to learning-about and learning-from these traditions, to reading these texts carefully and critically, and to fathoming their significance to the emerging world order.

Historically, East Asian philosophy has been read and interpreted too often through a decidedly Western cultural lens, and as a consequence it has been forced to answer to Western cultural assumptions. While East Asian cultures have evolved enormously over the centuries, there are nevertheless enduring cosmological commitments that have given continuity and coherence to these changing and fluid traditions. The challenge for us, then, will be to adopt a hermeneutical approach to these canonical texts that will allow us to discover the uncommon assumptions that give them their philosophical contexts, and through a careful reading, to come to appreciate the structural differences that make them distinct. In order to accomplish this goal, we will undertake a careful, critical reading of the primary texts that will be sensitive to alternative worldviews and different modalities of thinking, as well as to fundamental linguistic differences.

Participants

This UTUH Institute will draw senior graduate students from the University of Tokyo and the University of Hawai’i as its core of participants. In addition, it will complement this group with an international cadre of advanced graduate students and scholars from philosophy programs around the world. The lectures will be conducted in English, and Chinese and Japanese language ability although helpful will not be presupposed. All participants should have English language skills sufficient to follow and understand academic lectures. The program will accept twenty participants.

Program

Every weekday there will be classroom sessions that will be a mix of lectures and seminar-style discussions. These sessions will provide the academic and scholarly substance of our program in which we delve into the texts to broaden and deepen our understanding of them. Please refer to the schedule.

The Faculty

Yasuo KOBAYASHI is Professor at the University of Tokyo, and director of the University of Tokyo, Centre for Philosophy (UTCP) since its creation in 2002. Graduating from the department of French at the University of Tokyo in 1974, he worked under the influence of contemporary French philosophy on interdisciplinary criticism of art and literature. In 1981, he completed his doctorate in Semiotcs at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, with a thesis on the philosophical problematic of time and text (jury members including Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida).

He has published over fifteen books on the subjects of literature, art, architecture, photography, philosophy, and science, including (in

Japanese): Origin and Root (Miraisha, 1991); Body and Space (Chikuma Shobō, 1995); The Optics of Representation (Miraisha, 2003); and The Odyssey of Savoir (Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2009). Le Coeur/La mort (UTCP, 2007) is available in French and English. He has proposed a new university-level curriculum, and edited a number of anthologies on the subject of pedagogy. His translatio ns from French include the works of Duras, Lyotard, Derrida, and Levinas.

Takahiro Nakajima is Associate Professor of Chinese Philosophy and Executive Director of UTCP (University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy).

His publications include Practicing Philosophy between China and Japan

(Tokyo: UTCP, 2011), Praxis of Coexistence: State and Religion (Tokyo:

University of Tokyo Press, 2011), Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Possibilities of Chinese Philosophy (Tokyo: UTCP, 2010), Humanities Philosophy (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2009), The Zhuangzi: Announce The Hours With Becoming A Cock (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2009), The Reverberation of Chinese Philosophy: Language and Politics (Tokyo:

University of Tokyo Press, 2007), The Chinese Turn in Philosophy (Tokyo:

UTCP, 2007). He also published translations of French sinology: Anne

Cheng: L’Histoire de la Pensée chinoise (Tokyo: Chisenshokan, 2010, with Yoshinobu Shino and Reiko Hirose), François Jullien: La Propension des choses Pour une histoire de l’efficacité en Chine (Tokyo: Chisen-shokan, 2004); François Jullien: Fonder la morale (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2002, with Yoshinobu Shino). He is now interested in the phenomeon on Confucian revival in China and Japan.

Shinji Kajitani is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Intercultural Studies at the University of Tokyo. His main research field is phenomenology, cultural studies and medical history. His recent publications are “Leib und Seele vor und nach der Modernisierung der japanischen Medizin – an Hand von Büchern zur Kinderpflege” (in: Neue Phänomenologie zwischen Praxis und Theorie, Karl Alber: Freiburg/München, 2008), “Die Fremdheit der Natur und die Funktion des Fests in der volkstümlichen Religion Japans” (in: Was bleibt von Gott? Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des Heiligen und der Religion, Neue Phänomenologie Bd. 9, Karl Alber: Freiburg/München, 2006), “ The Change in Understanding of the Body in the Edo-Period, and its Philosophical Connotations – Research into Japanese Childcare Books before and after the Introduction of European Medicine” (in: Annals of Existential Thought, vol. 23, 2008).

Basic Problems of the Phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2002). He is now interested in the change of understanding of the human and the world in the process of modernization.

Roger T. Ames is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa and Editor of Philosophy East & West. His recent publications include translations of Chinese classics: Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993), Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) and Tracing Dao to its Source

(1997) (both with D.C. Lau), the Confucian Analects (1998) and the Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing

(2009) (both with H. Rosemont), Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, and A Philosophical Translation of the Daodejing: Making This Life Significant (with D.L.

Hall) (2001). He has also authored many interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating

China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (1995), and Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (1997) (all with D.L. Hall), and Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011). Recently he has undertaken several projects that entail the intersection of contemporary issues and cultural understanding. His Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (with D.L. Hall) (1999) is a product of this effort. Almost all of his publications are now available in Chinese translation, including his philosophical translations of Chinese canonical texts. He has most recently been engaged in promoting a conversation between American pragmatism and Confucianism.

Masato Ishida is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, specializing in traditional Japanese philosophy, classical American philosophy, and the history and philosophy of mathematical logic. His recently published articles include: “Nishida, James, and Peirce: Revisiting Logic in An Enquiry into the Good” (Nishida Philosophy Association, 2011); “Classical Japanese Buddhist Philosophy”

(Oxford University Press, 2011); “Peirce and the Indeterminacy of Models in the Languages of Mathematics” (The Semiotic Society of America, 2009); “C. S. Peirce’s Definition of Symbol in §14 of the New List (The Public Journal of Semiotics, 2008); “C. S. Peirce and the Early Phases of Model-theoretic Logic” (Philosophy of Science Society Japan, 2008). He currently works on a project that explores the philosophical accomplishments of Ifa Fuyū, a Japanese intellectual contemporary with Nishida, and also develops a thematic project on perception drawing upon the works of Watsuji, Nishida, and Whitehead.

The Facilities

The Institute will be hosted on the adjacent campuses of the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa and the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai`i.

The University of Hawai`i is a Research I institution with over 23,000 students and 2,200 faculty on its main campus. More than 300 faculty members are Asia specialists and the University regularly offers more than 600 courses a year dealing with Asia. The University of Hawai`i collection of Asian materials is among the best in the country, including a substantial body of audiovisual material.

The East-West Center is a public, non-profit research and educational institution established in 1960 with a U.S. Congressional mandate to promote better relations and understanding among the nations of Asia, the Pacific and the United States through cooperative study, training and research. To date, nearly 30,000 students and research professionals, primarily from Asia and the Pacific, have participated in Center programs. The Center considers professional development programs for K-12 teachers, college and university faculty, and journalists an integral part of its missions of community building.

Institute sessions will take place at the University of Hawai’i, while participants will have the opportunity of reduced cost housing in Hale Manoa—a guest house for graduate students offering easy access to all University and Center facilities, including libraries and sports facilities.

Fees

$300 program fee. Participants are responsible for their own travel and living expenses.

Application information

Applications are due by March 1, 2012, but we would be glad to receive them before that date. A complete application will include 1) an application form (attached below), 2) a two-page statement indicating why you are interested in the program and how it would benefit you, and 3) an application fee of $100 US dollars.

For more information

If you have any questions, please contact Roger Ames at:

Phone: 808 956 7288

Email: rtames@hawaii.edu

Address: Department of Philosophy

University of Hawai’i

2530 Dole Street

Honolulu, HI 96822

USA

The 2011 CCPC meeting will be held in Cork, Ireland at Cork University College and is being sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the School of Sociology and Philosophy.

The registration fee is $75 ($40 for students) and includes receptions.

Deadline for registration payment and proposals is February 16, 2009.

Sorry but only checks, cash, or money orders can be accepted for payment and should be made out to the “Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle” or “CCPC” and sent to:

David Jones

CCPC – History and Philosophy Department

#2206 1000 Chastain Road

Kennesaw, GA 30144

International participants may pay on site in cash if more convenient.

LODGING INFORMATION OPTIONS

Lodging at Tokai:

Please feel free to make reservations by faxing the appropriate form to Ms. Wanda Sako:

Tokai Reservations (right click and SAVE.)

Dorm rooms are $68 for a single, $46 per person for doubles. Guest rooms are $85 for a single, and $104 for a double. Additional charges apply for additional room sharing.

Dorm rooms are basic but comfortable with laundry facilities on floors.

More than likely we’ll be placed on the same floor away from students.

Most rooms have incredible views.

Unlike hotels, Tokai cannot offer daily maid service. Rooms do have phones for local calls (free), television, refrigerator, air conditioning, all linens, and soap. No other personal items are provided. Internet service is available, but does require a fee and set up by a Tokai technician.

Meals at Tokai:

Although some food will be provided at receptions, the Tokai cafeteria offers inexpensive meals: $7.00 for breakfast, $8.50 for lunch. If you prefer vegetarian foods for the breakfasts and lunches at Tokai, please let me or Wanda Sako know.

Parking:

Parking is available at a very cheap rate of several dollars per day.

Parking may be free if not overnight.

Our receptions will be held on the 19th floor that features spectacular views. For some visuals of the Tokai University Pacific Center:

http://www.hawaiitokai.edu/modules/myalbum0/photo.php?lid=66

More about Tokai:

Tokai is a 20 minute walk from Waikiki.

<http://www.hawaiitokai.edu/modules/htic01/>.

For a map:

http://www.hawaiitokai.edu/modules/contents_trial_06/index.php?id=2

Tokai University Pacific Center

Hawaii Tokai International College

2241 Kapiolani Blvd.

Honolulu, HI 906826

(808) 983-4100?

Alternative East-West Center Lodging:

Other lodging may be arranged at the East-West Center, but the Center is a bus ride or long (30 minute) walk away:

<http://www.eastwestcenter.org/about-ewc/housing/visitor-housing/>.

Room rates are $52.00 a night at Lincoln Hall. To check out the East-West Center web site please visit <http://www.eastwestcenter.org> (Housing section).

For more Spartan-like accommodations, there may be some rooms available in Hale Manoa with shared baths for $27.00. East-West Center alumni receive additional discounts on accommodations at any of the three EWC housing facilities.

To reserve a room at the East-West Center call Housing directly at (808) 944-7805. If you are an East-West Center alumnus or alumna, identify yourself when reserving your room. You will also need to provide credit card information to reserve a room there.

Directions and expenses to the East-West Center and parking prices and regulations may be found at:

<http://www.eastwestcenter.org/about-ewc/housing/frequently-asked-questions/>.

CLOSEST HOTEL

The Ala Moana Hotel is the closest hotel and is a short cab ride away or a 10-15 minute walk from Tokai. Rooms in the Kona Tower without views can be had for $99 a night; $109 with a view (probably a mountain or partial ocean view); and $119 for an ocean view. In the Waikiki Tower, rooms will range from $149 to $159 per night. These are current rates and can be locked in now. I was informed if rates drop in April, you would receive the lower rate.

<http://www.outrigger.com/hotels-resorts/hawaiian-islands/oahu-waikiki/ala-moana-hotel>.

There are dinning options in the hotel and close by at the Ala Moana Shopping Center, which has an extensive and inexpensive international food court.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT LODGING

Occupancy is low in Hawai`i these days and there are great deals to be had; some may include packages with cars and some flights will include packages as well. All accommodations in Waikiki will be typically suitable unless you have some special requirements. I may be able to help out some with questions.

Some top end hotels can be found in Waikiki (these would be a longer bus or cab ride away). There are some higher end hotels such as The Royal Hawaiian, Halekulani, and Moana Hotel. All are on Kalakaua Avenue that runs along the beach. Kuhio Avenue is a block away from the beach with generally less expensive hotels.

The New Otani Hotel is more modest and quiet and is located by a park and is closer to Diamond Head. The beach is smaller but this is a favorite of many and has more of a local flair.

The Aqua Waikiki Wave Hotel on Kuhio is an option with good rates and they offer free Internet service. It’s bit of a walk though:

http://www.aquaresorts.com/aqua-boutique-hotels-1-83/aqua-waikiki-wave-location-directions.aspx.

This hotel will put you into the mix of Waikiki.

ARRIVAL INFORMATION

In case you are taking a taxi from the airport, the address for Tokai University is 2241 Kapiolani Boulevard. Tell the driver that Tokai University is near McCully Street. The fare will be around $20-25 USD I think.

If you want to take a bus, ask at the Information Desk or a bus driver which bus number stops at Tokai University at McCully and Kapiolani.  To catch the bus you’ll need to go to the upper level of the airport and walk out to the appropriate stop on the islands on the top level. In Hawai`i people are generally very helpful with directions.

There’s a bus stop within a hundred feet of Tokai and you just get off the bus and walk to the conference site. The fare is $2.25 and you will need exact change. There is a 4 day Visitor Pass for $25. Honolulu’s bus system is excellent. <http://www.thebus.org/default.asp>.

QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS

If you have any questions or concerns about local arrangements please, contact David Jones (Local Arrangements Chair) by email <djones@ksuweb.kennesaw.edu> or by phone at 770.423.6596.

For questions on the program, please contact Michael Schwartz, this year’s Program Chair, at <mschwart@aug.edu>.

Professor Ames’s paper: “Deweyan Pragmatism and Confucianism: A Dialogue.”

Professor Sallis’s paper: “The Space of Imagination and the Elemental in Nature”

DHARMA EYES OF THE ZEN TRADITION

Japan is many things to many people and there are many reasons to visit this beautiful country. If you want to experience Japan through the eyes of the Zen tradition, then we invite you to consider joining us on this unique trip that emphasizes Japan’s living Zen heritage.

Highlights of the trip include touring some of the famous Buddhist temples in the ancient capitals of Kyoto and Nara, a Zen peace pilgrimage to the city of Hiroshima, and extended visits to the two great Soto Zen temples, Eihei-ji and the original Soji-ji.

The two-week trip will be lead by Kosho Itagaki, a Soto Zen priest, and Hiroshi Onaka, a master of Shorinji Kempo, a martial practice that originated in Zen. Dr. Jason Wirth and Dr. Elizabeth Sikes of the Seattle University philosophy department will accompany them.

The trip will last two weeks and we plan to leave from Seattle on June 18, 2010. We are doing everything in our power to keep the expenses to a minimum and the cost of the trip will be approximately $3,000.00 (airfare and accommodations included).

If you think that you might like to join us, please e-mail Dr. Jason Wirth (wirthj@seattleu.edu).