Philosophical Seminar: Prof. Douglas Berger 'The Philosophical Vocabulary, Polemics, and Vision of the Dao De Jing '

Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 15:00 to 17:00
JH 7, John Hume Building

Abstract:
The ancient Chinese philosophical and literary classic, the Dao De Jing, has in the last five centuries proven to be the most popular Asian text for European and American audiences, having been translated into Western languages almost seven hundred times.  The plethora of interpretations that have arisen from these many different translations have led readers to believe that the Dao De Jing might be anything from a work of ancient mysticism or perennial philosophy to a form of Chinese naturalism to a kind of self-help treatise.  This presentation will attempt to locate the most ancient manuscripts and commentaries on the enigmatic philosophical poems that make up the text into their earliest historical and political framework.  The talk will demonstrate how the earliest versions and readings of the Dao De Jing offered advice for rulers of small, vulnerable states about how to survive a long-term and devastating civil war among larger, more powerful states, while at the same time attending to their own people's needs.  Through an examination of the ways in which the work employs key ideas such as Dao, wu, wu-wei and its framework for sagely governing, we will explore what relevance this cluster of originally intended ideas might have for our world and lives today.

Speaker:
Douglas L. Berger is Professor of Comparative Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Intercultural Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands.  He works primarily in the areas of classical Confucian, Daoist, Mohist and Buddhist thought in China as well as classical Brahminical ("Hindu") and Buddhist thought in India, though he also works in the fields of cross-cultural philosophical hermeneutics and 19th-20th century European philosophy.  He has written dozens of essays and book chapters in these areas, along with two monographs, "The Veil of Maya:| Schopenhauer's System and Early Indian Thought (SUNY Press, 2004) and Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought (SUNY Press, 2015).  He has also co-edited, with JeeLoo Liu, an important collection of essays entitled Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (Rutledge, 2014).  He is the current chief-edior of the University of Hawai'i book series Dimensions of Asian Spirituality and the former president of the international Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy