Shaw teaches Classical Chinese Philosophy
Professor Clerk Shaw has spent years preparing for the Classical Chinese course by reading texts from the 6th – 3rd centuries BCE, auditing a Chinese Intellectual History course, co-organizing a translation and discussion group that has met weekly. Some of the texts include the Analects (Confucius or Kongzi) and later texts from the entry of Buddhism into China. The course was created in response to undergraduates inquiring as to why there were no non-Western philosophy course taught. The assignments and texts selected for this course are designed to provide the student with an opportunity to “reflect on the intrinsic interest” of the text and “reflecting on how we learn new material in general”.
Course Description: Classical Chinese philosophy discusses the full range of topics familiar from other philosophical traditions: ethics, politics, epistemology, mind, language, and more. Its texts contain some views and arguments familiar from Western philosophy (e.g., forms of virtue ethics and impartialist consequentialism) but often in different forms (e.g., different core virtues or different arguments for impartiality). In other cases, the basic categories and views seem more fundamentally different (e.g. the relationship between the heart-mind [xin] and body as compared to Western discussions of metaphysics of mind). Studying classical Chinese philosophy thus stands to improve philosophical understanding and expand our sense of the views one might hold and of how one might defend them. Further, because its schools and texts have deeply influenced both Chinese and global life, culture, and politics, studying it can improve our grasp of history and of the modern world