15 - 17 January 2022, HOLIC Workshop “Textual Analysis as the Basis for Understanding Chinese Logical Thought”

Organizers: Jeremy Seligman (The University of Auckland/Tsinghua University), Ai Yuan (Tsinghua University), and Yinlin Guan (Tsinghua University)

Workshop Theme:

There is a wealth of early Chinese philosophical texts from the Hundred Schools of Thought, dating from the 6th century BC to 221 BC. These texts are one of the main sources for understanding a wide variety of subjects in Chinese culture. For ideas on logic, the most important texts include the classics of Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, Names, as well as works of military science. These texts contain profound ideas on how to think, reason, and conduct argumentation, as well as the relationship between ming 名 (name) and shi 实 (object/reality), language and logic. Many ideas of these texts continued to be influential throughout Chinese history, and are still of great relevance to today’s world.

Prominent scholars have made great contributions in analysing and interpreting these texts, such as the ground-breaking works by A. C. Graham, Rudolf G. Wagner, Christoph Harbsmeier, and Chad Hansen. In China, Sun Yirang started the tradition of textual analysis in the late Qing Dynasty, and it has been continued by Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, Shen Youding, Wu Yujiang, among many others.

The HOLIC workshops are carrying on this tradition with particular attention to logical thought and to facilitate the Handbook project. Some of the previous events can be found at the website: www.holicnet.net. The workshop holds that any idea or theories presented should be firmly based on textual evidence, yet we are open to a variety of methodological approaches.

Keynote Speakers:

Christoph Harbsmeier (University of Oslo, Norway)

Dirk Meyer (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University, China)

Jana Rošker (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Joachim Gentz (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)

Yiu-ming Fung (Tunghai University/The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China)