ABSTRACTS
AGARWAL, Nishkam Sandesh (Author and Freelance Researcher)
“Finding a Place forAtmanin Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from thePrincipal Upanishads”
Traditional interpretations of Atman in Advaita Vedanta firmly position it asConditioned Brahmanwhich is “associated” with a human being.For example, Swami Adiswarananda(The Vedanta Way to Peace and Happiness)saysthis succinctly when referring to the jivatman,and the Mundaka Upanishad refers toAtmanas one of the “indwelling” souls by reference to the metaphor of the two birds sitting on a tree.
One of themahavakyasfrom the Chhandogya Upanishad,Tat tvam asi, then reconnects theAtmanwithBrahman.In this mahavakya, theAtmanis the subject andBrahman(Object)ispart ofthe predicate.The Isha Upanishad, viaSoham asmi, is technically identical with this subject-predicate delineation:aham(Atman) is subject, andsaha(Brahman) ispart of thepredicate.Similarly, theBrihadaranyakaUpanishad says:Ayam atma Brahma,anothermahavakyawhich alsois generally interpreted (e.g., by Shankara) as havingthe same order of subject(atma)and predicate (namely,Brahman, the object).
In this paper, I propose an alternativesyntacticre-write of themahavakya(tat tvam asiand its equivalents), by reversing the subject and object (which is part of the predicate).If theAtmanistransposedintothepredicate, andBrahmanisclassifiedas Subject, then themahavakya, and its variants are radically changed in meaning and implication.In particular, in this new scheme, the place forAtmanin the hierarchyBrahman-Atman-mind/bodybecomes questionablesince it obviates the need to “reconnect” theConditioned Brahman(orAtman) withBrahman.One of the profound implications of this re-write is that the concept of reincarnation ofAtmanbecomes more difficult to interpret.
AI, Yuan (Queen’s College, Oxford, UK)
“The Collective Memory of the Place Lv Liang吕梁and its Identity Function”
Inspired by the idea of “collective memory” which was firstly raised by Halbwachs, and developed by works of Pierre Nora, Chaim Yerushalmi and Jan Assman, this paper examines how the place of Lv Liang吕梁in ancient China functions as a cultural memory. Moreover, it discusses what identities are associated with this place. Through analysing different sources from early China up to Qing dynasty, this paper will answer the questions that (1) why this place became memorable in the first place? (2)What identities were associated with this place originally? (3)How and why does the memory of this place transformed? (4) Why the memory of this place can span through generations? Using the place Lv Liang吕梁as a case study, this paper demonstrate the importance of “memory of places” in ancient China and how a place of memory transformed from a mythological place to a political area.
AKINA, Keli’i (Hawai’i Pacific University)
“The Hawaiian Sense of Place as Focus and Field”
The Hawaiian sense of place is pervasive in ancient Hawaiian oral literature and in all cultural expressions.For traditional Hawaiians, the sense of place determines individual identity and self-esteem. The most ancient of chants, the Kumulipo, locates individuals within the context of infinite cosmology and limited geography through the expanse of time recorded as genealogy.Hawaiian notions of place are rich and range from the broad concept of the universe to the narrow concept of personal geography and proxemics.
Oral literature about the Hawaiian sense of place is replete with dualisms for location such as Earth (ʻĀina) and Heaven (Lani), Moon and Sun, near and far, and intimate and distant, as it describes human "being."Yet, the same oral literature alsoreferences processes and continuities between seemingly discrete entities and events as it describes human"becoming."Is the Hawaiian sense of place substance-oriented and dualistic or is it process-oriented and non-dualistic?
This paper will demonstrate the usefulness of the notions of focus (de) and field (dao), developed from Confucian thought, for a philosophical description of the Hawaiian sense of place as it applies to human identity, self-esteem, and relationship both to places and persons.
ALBERTINI, Tamara (University of Hawai’i)
“Places of Exile and the Diasporic Self: Forced Exile, Self-imposed Exile, and Exile in One’s Mind”
Rather than living in a place, diasporic selves discover that “places” live in them. These could be ancestral lands, native landscapes, sacred sites, a family home, or merely the memory of a door, porch, or well. “Places” of diasporic selves do not even have to relate to a physical location. A poet like Dante thus described the Paradise and Hell he “visited” in his mind. In the Islamic world, Sufis “traveled” in their minds and made the outermost cosmic spherestheir true abodes.
This paper explores the “life” places take on in diasporic persons and how they are used to recreate a space lost, inaccessible, or otherwise irretrievable. Another focus is an exploration of how places - physical, remembered, poetical, mystical, or longed for - inform one’s imagination, thoughts, and language, especially one’s metaphors.
ALFONSO, Russell (Hawai’i Pacific University)
“Intimacy, Place and Music”
This paper explores the intersection between intimacy, place and music. In the first section I distill some of the main features of place as it is distinguished from space in the writings of Yi-Fu Tuan. Then I turn to the concept of intimacy drawing from two primary sources: Peter Hershock’s ‘Liberating Intimacy’ and Thomas Kasulis’ ‘Intimacy and Integrity’. The examples I wish to focus on are musical; I wish to illuminate the idea that sounds can be used to create a musical place that is especially charged with intimacy, intimacy understood as a felt sense of connection, a sense of meaning and belonging.
Generally speaking there is a difference between scored-rehearsed musical performance and improvised musical performance. I would argue here, that there is something distinctive about an improvised musical place. Improvised musical places are at once intimate in Hershock’s sense, liberating in Tuan’s sense that “spaciousness is closely associated with the sense of being free, and epistemically articulated in Kasulis’ sense of knowing how and when to act with the qualities of a virtuoso.
ALLIK, Alari (Tallinn University, Estonia)
“Same Place, New Locations: Mobile Home and Nomadic Lifestyle of Kamo no Chōmei”
In East Asian cultures travelling to various places, which serve as sites for geognostic insight into the true nature of reality, has always been a very important cultural practice. The temporary lodgings used by travellers were often put together from grass and tree branches and were valued over luxurious homes in the capital as true dwelling places for sensitive people. The Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772-846) has said in his famous four-line poem dedicated to the local landowner Mu: ever the most splendid sites / lack a permanent owner. During the subsequent centuries many writers subscribed to this idea: the wandering poet or a monk has privileged access to “splendid sites”, since these are only truly available for those who have renounced ordinary sense of ownership.
In this presentation I will take a look at the mobile home constructed by Buddhist writer Kamo no Chōmei (1153-1216) and argue, that the ambition of a poet-recluse such as him was not so much to move around, but to stay in the same place despite of the constantly changing circumstances. During an age defined by impermanence (mujō) the mobile home becomes in his description the only site of permanence since it adapts to the unpredictable ebbs and flows of the environment. In order to stay in the place where the environment supports meditating, playing music and writing poetry one had to sometimes change location. This kind of adjustment of location typical of nomadic lifestyle is very different from the migration of those on religious pilgrimages. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have said in “A Thousand Plateus”: “The migrant goes principally from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforeseen, or not well localized. But the nomad goes from point to point only as a consequence and as a factual necessity.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1990:380). I will argue that Kamo no Chōmei does not live in a hut of a travelling monk, but rather in mobile home of a poet-recluse who does not want move, but often finds that he has to. Comparing Kamo no Chōmei’s ideas with Western theories on nomadism and mobility I will attempt to outline the philosophy of place inherent in his writings.
AL-RAWASHDEH, Elham Y., Farah M. DA’SAN (University of Jordon) and Bishr M. ALUNGAL (New College, India)
“Postcolonial Spaces and Identity in Nathalie Handal‘s Poet in Andalucia”
This paper investigates the representation of space in Poet in Andalucia (2012) through which the Arab American poet Nathalie Handal ’’recreates Federico García Lorca‘s journey, Poet in New York, but in reverse.‘‘ Specifically, this paper demonstrates how Handal, through writing, reconstructs what she conceives as lost lands and identities. To the poet, both Palestine and Andalucia are two realms from which her people were expelled. Such memories motivate her to write literary texts that she looks upon as symbolic or imaginative spaces which stand for her own cultural spaces. Such a process renders literary texts as spaces where conflicting ideologies are contested. Throughout Poet in Andalucia, Handal makes reference to colonized spaces showing, therefore, how imperial discourses assume a powerful position of dominance and knowledge legitimization, and how anti-imperial discourses resist and produce an opposing spatial knowledge. Thirding-as-othering strategy brought to us by Edward Soja is best exemplified in Handal‘s poetry; as she endeavours to reconstruct real and imagined spaces in an attempt to bring to readers a clearer vision of their hyphenated identities and the world they live in. Hence, employing postcolonial theory as well as Soja‘s conception of Thirdspace, this paper proposes an analytical reading of Handal‘s Poet in Andalucia.
ANGLE, Stephen C.(Wesleyan University)
“Where and What is tian in Neo-Confucianism?”
Traditionally translated as “Heaven,” tian天, which I will translate as “cosmos” and “cosmic," plays multiple roles within Neo-Confucian thinking, helping to signal both the all-inclusive ambition of Neo-Confucian theory and also the pervasively value-laden nature of space and place in the Neo-Confucian vision. This paper explores the tensions created by tian's simultaneous invocation of horizontal inclusiveness and vertical hierarchy, as well as examining some of the ways in which tianframes the Neo-Confucians’ religious, political, and ecological perspectives.
ASHTON, Geoff (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs)
“Sāṁkhya and the Architecture of Devotion in the Bhagavad Gītā: Liberation through Re-Imagining Place as the Body of Krishna”
Place is a problem for the non-theistic philosophers of classical Sāṁkhya—for insofar as place manifests, we are em-placed and hence endure suffering (duḥkha). Accordingly, the Sāṁkhya Kārikā employs metaphysical analysis (as directed toward various tattvas or ontological principles) in order to realize the total dis-placement or isolation (kaivalya) of the true self from place as such (prakṛti). However, various texts exhibiting “proto-sāṁkhya” motifs, ideas, and methods of analysis orient the individual to place differently. Among these is the Bhagavad Gītā, a text that situates sāṁkhya analysis within the yoga of devotion (bhakti) to Krishna.
Focusing upon the chapters surrounding the theophany, this paper argues that the Gītā employs characteristically sāṁkhya metaphysical analysis in order to map out the architecture of place (prakṛti). Further, it does so at times in order to dissociate Arjuna from the horrors of the place that he occupies—namely, the duty to initiate a civil war. Unlike the historically later Sāṁkhya Kārikā, however, the Gītā situates sāṁkhya doctrine within a theistic metaphysics and a concern to both re-posses his place in the dharmic order and affirm the battlefield as a manifestation of the cosmic body of Krishna. By re-imagining place as the body of Krishna, Arjuna learns to not simply bear his dharma, but find liberation through embracing his place in the dharmic order in full awareness that his “yes-saying pathos” will not modify his fate.
AXTELL, Guy (Radford University)
“Moral Learning, Imagination, and the Space of Humor”
The functions of humor and laughter in the Taoist and Confucian classics has been a topic of some discussion (Froese; Glavany; Harbsmeier; Olberding). Froese (2013, 2014) for example treats the space of humor as opening a plethora of perspectives/possibilities and, especially in the Zhuangzi, revealing the possibilities but also the limitations of language. These studies of the function of humor are briefly surveyed in this paper, but then pushed in a number of directions, both theoretical and practical.
Firstly, on a theoretical level, the space of humor is developed together with the importance of the imagination for moral development in James and Dewey’s thought, and with the manner in which emotions are “ripe for narrativity” in the thought of contemporary enactivists like Daniel Hutto. Secondly, theoretical resources derived from this discussion are used to address concerns that Olberding examines in Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That (2011).
Our approach supports certain aspects of Olberding’s exemplarist virtue ethics, while adding correctives and insights on the persistent worries that exemplarism favors imagination over reasoning, and guidance over moral theory (Tan Sor-hoon). Finally, the pedagogical value of humor in transmitting ancient traditions of moral wisdom to today’s young audiences is highlighted through the work of Taiwanese cartoon artist TsaiChih Chung, a vital figure in moral education in many Chinese-speaking schools, but whose work remains little-known in the West.
AYYAGARI, Shalini (University of Pittsburgh)
“Dancing in the Desert: Women’s Bodies and Gender Representations in Contemporary Hindi Cinema”
In this paper,I aim to tease out the complicated representations of place and the female body in contemporary Hindi cinema by examining intersections of a Rajasthani landscape and the portrayal of Rajasthani women in song sequences from two Bollywoodfilms,Paheli(2005) andDor(2006). Images and sounds of a distinctly regional Rajasthan in northwestern Indiaare often mobilized in contemporary Hindi cinema to create a timeless, traditional, and heritage-laden backdrop forfilmgoers to imagine an inclusive Indian national identity.
At the same time, Hindi cinema oftenreinforcesgender and cultural norms, creating comfortable and universal categories of comprehensibility through which contemporary Indian women have come to be understood. In this paper, I zero in on thefilms’ promises to be voices of social change in India, bringing such important women’s issues to light. I suggest that the use of Rajasthan as regional landscape creates a liminal frontier. As gender violence continues to plague contemporary India, it is only in fantastical song sequences, not in the real world of everyday life, in which such transgressions of gender and societal norms could possibly take place.
BABA, Eiho (Furman University)
“In Search of Appropriateness through Experience: Gewu and the Place to Conduct Gongfu as Transactional Events”
This paper examines the relationship between gewu 格物and the “place to conduct gongfu” (zuo gongfu chu 做工夫處) in Zhu Xi’s philosophy. I contend that gewu is a method of gongfu that is conducted on the “place” (chu 處) of transactional thing-events (shiwu 事物). I begin with wu 物and show that they are not discrete “things,” but situated affairs of ordinary events (shi 事) that implicate our involvement or transactions (yingjie 應接) with them. I situate my discussion in the context of process metaphysics adopted from the Appended Remarks of the Book of Changes and the Han cosmology of Huntianshuo 渾天說appropriated by Zhu Xi to highlight the importance of co-creativity in his construal of these transactional events. He states that “people often assume that daoli is an abstract (xuankong 懸空) thing. The Great Learning does not say ‘qiongli 窮理,’ but only says ‘gewu,’ because it wants us to comprehend through thing-events (shiwu); only in this way, can we see what is concrete (shiti 實體).”
Zhu Xi further defines “格” (ge) of gewu as “to reach” (zhi 至) and explains that “it is to actually go to the place (di 地)” where events unfold (Zhuzi quanshu 14: 469). I maintain that realization (zhi 知) through gewu is not an “abstract,” but a “concrete” understanding embodied or incorporated (ti 體) through cumulative practice (jixi 積習) and repeated applications (shixi 時習) of Confucian learning on or through transactional events as the “place” of gongfu. Zhu Xi also writes that “the heart-mind of the sages... can respond broadly with thorough appropriateness where each and every application is not the same (butong 不同)” (Zhuzi quanshu 6: 96).
I shall argue that gewu is a method of gongfu that works to realize appropriateness of our transactions with thing-events through concrete experience (tiyan 體驗) at the “place to conduct gongfu.” It aims to cultivate oneself (xiuesheng 修身) to become virtuosic in making ritual proprieties appropriate and acting with appropriated ritual proprieties in response to ever- changing circumstances as co-creators who “assist (zan 贊) in the transforming and nourishing activities of heaven and earth” (Zhongyong 22).
BAGGINI, Julian (Writer, UK)
“Dreams of Utopia – On The Absence of Place”
Philosophy is caught in a perennial tension. Although it rightly aspires to universal truth, to transcend the particularities of the individual thinker and her time and place, it can only be done by specific individuals in specific times and places. Indeed, philosophy is more defined by these localities than many other disciplines: we study particular works by particular thinkers and group them according to historical era and geographical location.
Modern Western philosophy has largely dealt with this tension by ignoring it. Courses in seventeenth century rationalism, for example, tend to pay scant attention to the historical or biographical background. The implicit assumption is that to do timeless, universal philosophy you must think as little as possible about the time and place in which it is done.
The irony is that this mode of philosophising results in work that is even more parochial than it would otherwise be, with schools of thought identified with and largely confined to specific institutions, such as Oxford or Cambridge. The result is a mode of philosophising that fails to join-up with the “great conversation” of humanity. This is also reflected in the sociology of Anglophone philosophy, which shows that its practitioners are relatively uninterested in other global traditions and do not participate fully in gatherings such as the World Congress of Philosophy.