The 2011 Term of the ISCWP’s “Beijing Roundtable on Contemporary Philosophy” workshop series is a one-day workshop on the theme “Classical Texts and Philosophical Interpretation: In view of studies of Chinese philosophy and development of contemporary philosophy”, which is to explore the relation between classical texts and their philosophical interpretation, especially in view of relevant resources and development of contemporary philosophy. For heuristic sake, the two key terms ‘classical texts’ and ‘philosophical interpretation’ are taken to mean these. The phrase ‘classical texts’ here means any important texts of philosophical value and significance in a variety of philosophical traditions (including important texts in contemporary philosophy), though especially in view of classical texts of Chinese philosophy in this context. The phrase ‘philosophical interpretation’ is to cover any reflective elaboration of the philosophical points and implications of classical texts, which is open to mutual understanding and reflective criticism and is carried out for the sake of contribution to philosophical exploration, instead of purely historical description. The issue of the relation between the two is intrinsically related to any reflective efforts in contemporary philosophical studies that address resources of classical texts for the sake of contribution to development of philosophy. The issue involves a series of philosophically interesting and significant questions which include, but is not limited to, the following: What are criteria or conditions for adequate philosophical interpretation of classical texts? How can contemporary theories of interpretation and of meaning (from either analytic or “Continental” or some other traditions) contribute to the issue? How is it that ancient thinkers/texts and contemporary philosophy can have jointly concerned issues/topics through philosophical interpretation? How to adequately look at the relation between philosophical interpretation, philosophical-issue concerns, and historical examination in studies of classical texts of Chinese philosophy? and so on. The exploration of the issue at this workshop can be taken through general theoretic explorations and/or case analyses regarding classical texts of Chinese philosophy. As the Beijing Roundtable workshop series has emphasized in-depth critical discussion on well-prepared research fruits on the target issue, submissions are expected to address the issue with well-explained and clearly-presented approaches. Papers (generally speaking, up to 3,000 English word equivalents in English or Chinese) together with 150-250 word abstracts (in English) may be submitted electronically (MS Word file, single-spaced) by 1st May 2011 to the review team c/o Bo Mou, ISCWP coordinator for the 2011 term of Beijing Roundtable, at mr068us@yahoo.com or bo.mou@sjsu.edu. [Note: for the sake of encouraging a submission that really needs sufficient words to present well-developed, carefully elaborated approach to the issue, it is allowed to be up to 5,000 words for the review purpose; but the author of the accepted submission needs to effectively present the essence of the material in no more than 20 minutes so that sufficient time (at least 20 minutes) can be reserved for critical discussion—for this purpose, some efficient means that have been effectively adopted by this workshop series will be suggested to the author-presenter.] Any interested ISCWP members and other interested colleagues are welcome to participate in this workshop. For further information concerning its academic coordination, contact Bo Mou; for further information concerning its host organization, contact Jianhua Mei, the Host representative, at jianhuamei@gmail.com. |