傑弗裏·薩克斯、布萊恩哲學層麵看中華文明和西方文明

2024年9月21日，聯合國可持續發展解決方案網絡在哥倫比亞大學主辦的聯合國未來峰會前第二天哲學與教育小組的精彩內容，嘉賓包括 Jeffrey Sachs、Yasmine Sherif、Bryan Van Norden、S. H. Kumalo、Katja Vogt、Yaw Osei Adutwum，主持人為 Philo Wang 和 Paul Walsh。

儒家、道教和佛教哲學

Bryan W. Van Norden 是美國瓦薩學院 James Monroe Taylor 哲學係主任，也是中國武漢大學哲學學院的講座教授。Van Norden 出版了十本關於中國哲學和比較哲學的書籍，包括《中國古典哲學導論》（2011 年）、《哲學回歸：多元文化宣言》（2017 年）、《中國後期哲學讀本：從漢到 20 世紀》（2014 年，與 Justin Tiwald 合著）、《適合所有人的古典漢語：初學者指南》（2019 年），以及最近的《中國古典哲學讀本》第三版（2023 年，與 P.J. Ivanhoe 合著）。範諾登關於中國哲學的視頻講座係列可在網上免費觀看，他撰寫的關於孔子的 Ted-Ed 視頻也已獲得超過一百萬次觀看。

範諾登作為公共知識分子發表了許多文章，並兩次獲得美國哲學協會公共哲學評論獎。他最受公眾關注的文章包括《孔子論同性婚姻》、《如果哲學不會多樣化，那就直說它本來的樣子》（與傑伊·加菲爾德合著）、《無知者無權被觀眾看到》和《這位古代道家是第一位殘疾哲學家嗎？》（與約翰·阿爾特曼合著）。範諾登最近主持了中國中央電視台 (CCTV) 的紀錄片《中國智慧。老子篇》。範諾登最近的一次公開演講是關於學習哲學的好處：“學習哲學是無用的：除了對科學家、商人、律師、醫生、神職人員、藝術家、活動家、影響者、戰爭英雄和民主公民。”範諾登的其他一些受歡迎的文章可以在他的子堆棧“The Doc Talks”中找到。

範諾登曾獲得富布賴特獎學金、美國國家人文基金會獎學金和梅隆獎學金，並被《普林斯頓評論》評為美國 300 位最佳教授之一。2017 年至 2020 年，範諾登擔任新加坡耶魯-新加坡國立大學學院觀音堂佛祖廟教授。（他在《全球人文之戰》中寫到了他的經曆和耶魯-新加坡國立大學的命運。）他的書籍和文章已被翻譯成阿拉伯語、中文、丹麥語、愛沙尼亞語、波斯語、德語、韓語、葡萄牙語、西班牙語和土耳其語。他的愛好是撲克（他曾參加過拉斯維加斯的世界撲克係列賽）和電子遊戲。

我們今天麵臨著嚴重的教育危機，危機在於世界其他國家對西方文明、文學、宗教和哲學的了解程度遠遠高於西方對世界其他國家的了解程度。用一句簡單的口號來說，其他國家對西方的了解程度高於西方對其他國家的了解程度。所以，在今天的演講中，我想談談我們是如何陷入這種境地的，以及我們現在可以做些什麽來擺脫這種境地。如果你回顧 18 世紀的歐洲哲學教科書，你會發現，關於哲學在世界上的起源，存在三種常見觀點。直到 18 世紀，歐洲哲學教科書中的常見觀點之一是，哲學起源於非洲哲學從非洲傳給了希臘世界第二種主流觀點是哲學起源於印度，然後從印度傳到了古希臘現在我相信你們都能想象出第三種關於哲學起源的主流觀點是哲學在印度和非洲都是獨立發展的，並且都傳給了古希臘哲學起源於古希臘獨立發展的觀點，更不用說哲學起源於古希臘的獨特觀點，這種觀點直到 18 世紀才在歐洲哲學中被認為是一種奇怪的邊緣觀點，因此，鑒於這種開放的態度，當人們第一次了解中國哲學時，他們非常容易接受並且非常興奮也就不足為奇了.

孔子及其弟子的名言在英語中被稱為 analex，在中文中被稱為 lunu，孔子的名言第一次被翻譯成歐洲語言是由耶穌會傳教士完成的，耶穌會傳教士對西方哲學非常熟悉，這是他們培訓的一部分，他們將孔子的名言翻譯成拉丁文，標題為 confucious sonorum
philosophus 孔子，中國哲學家因為他們立即意識到儒家思想是
哲學的，而且非常有趣的哲學，不僅僅是耶穌會士對儒家思想作為一種哲學感到興奮，出現在任何現代西方哲學史標準課程上的gried vilhelm liit是一個真正的標誌，事實上他說混亂倫理比西方倫理更好，他補充說，雖然我們承認這一點是可恥的，但他說混亂倫理更適合像我們這樣的凡人的生活，而不是不那麽現實的西方倫理，lightnet也很著迷，因為lightnet當然發明了二進製算術，這是計算機的基礎，所以下次你使用電腦時，感謝哲學家，不客氣，但當他了解到《易經》、中國占卜和哲學文本，使用六卦描述情況，六條斷線或連續線的集合，liit認識到斷線和連續線本質上是零和一，他說我的天，他們發明了二進製算術在我之前做得很好，鑒於人們對中國哲學的興奮，顯然中國哲學一直是西方哲學課程的標準組成部分，直到今天，不，為什麽不呢？我擔心的簡單答案是伊曼紐爾康德現在伊曼紐爾康德無疑是一位才華橫溢的哲學家，在某些方麵，我認為自己是一個反對者，許多人在伊曼紐爾康德的哲學中找到了解放思想，康德當然沒有發明偽科學種族主義的概念，但他在發現它後就接受了它，它並不為人所知，因為他並沒有在他更知名的作品中主要寫到它，但在他的講座中，他將種族按等級排列，白人排在最頂層，白人 K 告訴我們，他們身上有所有的天賦和動機，所以他們是唯一能夠進行哲學研究的種族，你必須原諒我在這裏的語言，但我隻是在重複康德說過的話，有時我們必須看醜陋的東西才能麵對它們康德說印度人看起來像哲學家，但他們沒有抽象思維能力，因此永遠無法實現科學或哲學顯然康德從未讀過任何一本印度哲學著作否則他會更了解印度科學K說中國人與印度人處於同一水平，再次原諒我的語言因為他們自己的書告訴我們他們沒有比他們的聖人幾千年前所想出的進步一點點非洲人K告訴我們康德的語言是喋喋不休和虛榮的，隻能被訓練成仆人他說根據康德的說法，美洲的印度人不會說話而且不育這一說法從表麵上看必須是錯誤的，因為在歐洲人進入之前占領美洲的人類現在你可能會說好吧所以康德是一個h康德是一個種族主義者，但我們不再閱讀那些作品了，誰在乎呢？我們應該關心的原因是康德是一位偉大的哲學家，他改變了西方哲學，他的弟子們重寫了歐洲的哲學教科書，他們把亞洲、非洲和美洲的本土傳統從哲學教科書中剔除，現在，絕大多數（不是全部）但絕大多數我的哲學同事都會拒絕反方賬戶的明確種族主義，但他們接受反方賬戶的汙染果實，即無可爭議的假設，即除了可以追溯到柏拉圖和亞裏士多德的傳統之外，任何傳統中都不存在任何哲學，關於這一點，我偶爾會快速退一步，我的哲學同事會說，為什麽布萊恩，為什麽你必須把種族主義帶入其中，你知道為什麽，為什麽你認為這是關於種族主義的，難道它不僅僅是關於無知嗎？我都數不清我有多少次了曾對人們說過諸如你是否考慮過聘請中國哲學專家之類的話，他們說，沒有中國哲學這種東西，我問他們，你讀過什麽被認為是中國哲學的，你不同意，他們說，哦，我沒有讀過，但我知道沒有，我知道印度哲學、非洲哲學和美洲土著哲學也發生了同樣的事情，人們覺得他們不必讀它，他們知道它不存在，這就是為什麽這是關於結構性種族主義的，那麽康德的影響是什麽？美國隻有大約 133% 的哲學博士課程，有沒有誰可以勝任指導中國哲學論文的工作人員，而且沒有一所常春藤盟校的哲學係裏有任何人能夠指導中國哲學的論文中國哲學現在印度哲學的情況稍微複雜一些，在哥倫比亞，這是為數不多的哲學博士課程之一，你可以在那裏學習印度哲學，他們有一位助理教授，我希望有一天他們能讓她終身教授印度哲學，但總的來說，在美國，你可以學習南亞或印度哲學的地方比你可以學習中國哲學的地方要少，非洲哲學與印度哲學差不多，我的朋友裏卡多·普提到了準韋杜，他幾年前去世了，他是美國為數不多的教授非洲哲學的學者之一，上次關於美國本土哲學，我查了一下，有三個博士課程，你可以在那裏研究歐洲人到來之前生活在美洲的人們的思想，那麽我們能做些什麽呢，我寫了一本關於哲學的書，我在這本書中論證了如果你喜歡我剛剛提出或了解到的一些主張的文獻資料，或者對一些反對教授中國或非洲或美洲土著或南亞哲學和哲學係的乏味和謬誤論點的快速回應。

我在《奪回哲學》中談到了這一點，但在書中，我說我們需要從兩個方麵奪回哲學，我們需要將哲學帶回到最初激發哲學的國際化理想，柏拉圖知道其他文化中也有一些有趣的想法，他想了解它們，大多數人直到現代時代開始才知道這一點，所以我們需要將哲學帶回到它的國際化根源，它的國際化和多元文化根源，我也認為我們應該將哲學帶回到它的根源，作為與哲學作為一種生活方式有關的東西，尤其是在英語世界，哲學已經變成了一堆智力客廳遊戲，人們願意為“現任法國國王是禿頭”這句話是假的還是假的而戰鬥到死真假我有一個研究生院的同事寫了一整本書，我可不是在編造，這是哲學家們喜歡爭論的真實問題，而不是生命的意義，當你以一種世界主義的方式思考哲學和生命的意義時，你會發現，人們在許多文明中討論的四個主題是什麽是正確的生活方式什麽是最好的生活方式在英語中，我們技術上稱之為人類繁榮，在中文中，你會把它稱為人類的隨機方式，或者在古希臘語中，你會把它稱為udonia，或者呃，在拉丁語中，你會把它稱為beatitudo，不同文化中的概念相似，他們如何填寫這個概念往往不同，但他們對這個話題很感興趣，如果你關心生活方式，那麽你也會關心你需要以那種方式生活的性格特征，在英語中，我們稱之為美德，在中文中，他們稱之為duh或現代漢語詞匯

在希臘語中被稱為 AR，在拉丁語中被稱為 virtu，如果你關心美德，你就必須關心如何培養美德，在英語中我們稱之為道德修養，在中文中，你可以說 shyong，在希臘語中你會說 pidea，在拉丁語中你會說 humanitas，當然，如果你關心培養美德，這樣你就可以過上一種生活方式，你關心人性是什麽樣的，這樣你就可以過上那種生活方式，培養那些美德，我們用英語談論人性，它來自拉丁語 nura，這是希臘語 fusus 的版本，在中文中你談論的是人性，所以我們對常見問題找到了不同的答案，在一個相互聯係的多極世界中，我們需要了解其他人對這些話題的看法，而不僅僅是處理他們現在所想的模因或人物，如果你想要一些關於如何使教育多元文化的具體建議，當 G7 國家開會時最近在意大利，他們召集了一群頂尖的哲學家，我很高興你笑了，我們製定了一份關於未來哲學需求的聲明，我們在巴列塔市撰寫了《巴列塔哲學與跨文化宣言》，你可以在我的網站 Brian van.com 上找到它，那是 bryanvnnordn.com 對不起，我拚錯了，但出於某種原因，人們覺得我的名字很難拚寫，我不介意，但你找不到我們，但如果你隻是查一下巴列塔宣言，它會帶你到我的網站，我也有鏈接，指向不同種類的哲學的教學大綱和閱讀材料，所以我想以一個軼事來結束，我認為這個軼事可以說明，我說巴列塔宣言會給你一些關於如何實現多元文化哲學的具體建議。

有一所歐洲大學最近引起了一些爭議，這個歐洲大學裏有一位年輕的新貴哲學家，他想在哲學課程中引入一位新人物，很多保守派教師說，這個人不是我們傳統的一部分，你們用這些非經典的思想家淡化了課程，文本學生幾乎因為課程的這種變化而騷亂，我說的大學是巴黎大學，我說的辯論發生在 13 世紀，這位年輕的新貴哲學家是聖托馬斯·阿奎那，他試圖將亞裏士多德重新引入歐洲哲學課程，因為他的作品已經丟失但幸運的是保存在伊斯蘭世界，現在它們被翻譯成拉丁文，順便說一句，有證據表明阿奎那隻對亞裏士多德作品的拉丁文翻譯有效，而且有很多印度和中文的譯本以及非洲和美洲土著哲學，對我來說，托馬斯·阿奎那真正令人興奮的是，阿奎那有自己的基督教信仰，但他想向柏拉圖和亞裏士多德等異教徒學習，他想向邁昂斯等猶太人學習，他想向阿比薩和奧伊斯等穆斯林學習，他認識到尊重自己的傳統與熱愛和學習其他傳統完全一致，我總結的方法是使用偉大的拉丁詩歌《特倫誰誰》中的詩句，這是英文翻譯，當然，他說特倫斯說我是一個人，沒有什麽人性對我來說是陌生的，或者正如孔子的弟子所說，在四海之內，我們所有的兄弟都謝謝你

讓我補充一下，這是一個很棒的小組，呃，每個人都參與其中，這個討論不是在聯合國安理會進行的，它不是在 G20 上不會發生，世界領導人之間不會發生，將軍之間也不會發生，這是一個非常嚴重的問題，那就是我們沒有在決定我們生死的人們之間進行關於我們想要的世界的哲學討論，我認為這是非常中肯和嚴肅的，沒有關於加沙戰爭的哲學討論，沒有關於烏克蘭戰爭的哲學討論，在投下炸彈或選擇是否投下炸彈或尋找不同方式或尋找不同方法的人們之間，對我來說，這就是為什麽這次討論也非常中肯，當然，這與我們的孩子有關，與我們的生活方式有關，與我們希望年輕人如何生活和學習有關，因為他們將在一個呃，非常多樣化和全球化的世界，但我們也正處於末日時鍾所說的午夜前 90 秒的節點，而我們對其他社會沒有最基本的了解，甚至不知道我們沒有，甚至不知道如何獲得它，所以這裏每天都有人假設中國人會做什麽，這樣我們就可以擁有

Highlights from the panels on philosophy and education from the second day of the United Nations Pre-Summit of the Future Event, hosted by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Columbia University, on 21 September 2024, featuring Jeffrey Sachs, Yasmine Sherif, Bryan Van Norden, S. H. Kumalo, Katja Vogt, Yaw Osei Adutwum, with moderators Philo Wang and Paul Walsh.

Welcome to the website of Bryan W. Van Norden!

Bryan W. Van Norden is James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy at Vassar College (USA), and Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). Van Norden has published ten books on Chinese and comparative philosophy, including Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011), T aking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy: Han to the 20th Century (2014, with Justin Tiwald), Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners (2019), and most recently the third edition of Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2023, with P.J. Ivanhoe). Van Norden’s video lecture series on Chinese philosophy is freely available online, as is a Ted-Ed video on Confucius he wrote, which has over a million views.

Van Norden has published a number of essays as a public intellectual, and is a two-time winner of the American Philosophical Association Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize. Among his most discussed essays for the general public are “Confucius on Gay Marriage” “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is” (co-authored with Jay Garfield), “The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience,” and “Was This Ancient Taoist the First Philosopher of Disability?” (co-authored with John Altmann). Van Norden was recently the host of a documentary for China Central Television (CCTV): “Wisdom of China: Laozi” (中國智慧。老子篇). One of Van Norden’s recent public lectures was on the benefits of studying philosophy: “Studying Philosophy Is Useless: Except to Scientists, Businesspeople, Attorneys, Physicians, Clergy, Artists, Activists, Influencers, War Heroes, and Citizens of a Democracy." Some of Van Norden’s other popular essays may be found on his substack, “The Doc Talks.”

A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon fellowships, Van Norden has been honored as one of The Best 300 Professors in the US by The Princeton Review. From 2017-2020, Van Norden was Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. (He wrote about his experience and the fate of Yale-NUS in “The Global Fight for the Humanities.”) His books and articles have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Estonian, Farsi, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. His hobbies are poker (he has played in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas) and video games.

“I am a human, and nothing human is alien to me.”— Terence

“Within the Four Seas, all men are brothers.” — Zixia

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傑弗裏·薩克斯、布萊恩：從哲學層麵探討，在聯合國未來峰會前活動上的精彩演講

布萊恩
all right does this work yes we Face a serious educational crisis in the world today the crisis is that the rest of the world understands the West the
civilization the literature the religions the philosophy of the West much better on average than the West understands the rest of the world to put it in a simple slogan the rest understands the West better than the West understands the rest so in my remark today I'd like to say something about how we got into this
situation and what we can do to get out of it now if you look back at European philosophy textbooks as late as the 18th
century there were three common views about how philosophy orig ated in the world one of the common views in European philosophy textbooks up through the 18th century was that philosophy
originated in Africa and from Africa philosophy was given as a gift to the Greek World a second major view was that
philosophy began in India and from India philosophy migrated to ancient Greece now I'm sure you all can imagine what
the third major view was about the origin of philosophy it was that philosophy developed independently in both India and Africa
and both of them gave it to ancient Greece The View that philosophy began independently in ancient Greece much
less that it began uniquely in ancient Greece was considered a weird Fringe view in European philosophy as late as
the 18th century so given this open-minded attitude it's no surprise that when people first learned about Chinese
philosophy they were very receptive to it and very excited about it the sayings of confucious and his immediate
disciples are called in English the
analex in Chinese the lunu and the first translation of the
sayings of confucious into a European
language was done by Jesuit missionaries
and the Jesuits have extensive
familiarity with Western philosophy as
part of their training and they
translated the of confucious into Latin
with the title confucious sonorum
philosophus confucious the Chinese
philosopher because they immediately
recognized that Confucianism was
philosophic and very interesting
philosophy at that it wasn't just the Jesuits who were
excited about Confucianism as a
philosophy gried vilhelm liit who
appears on any standard history of
modern Western philosophy curriculum was
a true sign aile and in fact he said
that confusion ethics were better than
Western ethics he added though it is
shameful for us to admit this he said
the confusion ethics are more suited to
the life of Mortals like us as opposed
to the less realistic Western ethics
lightnet was also fascinated because
lightnet of course invented binary
arithmetic which is the basis of
computers so the next time you use a
computer thank a philosopher you're
welcome but liet when he learned about
the eing the classic of changes the Chinese divination and
philosophy texts that describe
situations using hexagrams collections
of six broken or unbroken lines liit
recognized broken and unbroken lines are
essentially zeros and ones and he said
my God they invented binary arithmetic
before I did well given all the excitement about
Chinese philosophy obviously Chinese
philosophy continued to be a standard
part of the western philosophy
curriculum up to the present
day no it didn't why not the simple
answer I'm afraid is Emanuel
Kant now Emanuel Kant was undeniably a
brilliant philosopher and in some ways I
consider myself a contion and many
people have found emancipatory ideas in
the the philosophy of Emanuel Kant and
Kant certainly did not invent the notion
of pseudo scientific racism but he
bought into it once he discovered it
it's not as well known because he
doesn't write about it mostly in his
more well-known works but in his
lectures he ranked the races hierarchically with whites at the top
whites K informs us contain all talents
and mo motives in themselves and so they
are the only race capable of philosophy and you'll have to pardon my language here but I'm just repeating
what Kant said sometimes we have to look
at ugly things to confront them Kant
said Hindus look like philosophers but they are incapable of
abstract thought and so will never
achieve science or philosophy obviously Kant had never read
a single work of Indian philosophy or
he'd know better or Indian science for
that matter K said the Chinese are on
the same level as the again pardon my
language the Hindus because their own
books tell us that they have not
Advanced a single bit beyond what their
sages came up with thousands of years
ago the Africans K tells us are kant's
language a chatty and Vain and can only
be trained to be servants and he said the IND ous people
of the America according to Kant don't
talk and are infertile a claim which on the face of
it has to be false of the human beings
who occupied the Americas before
Europeans came in now you might say okay so kant's a he
was a racist but we don't read those
works anymore who cares the reason we
should care is that Kant was a great
philosopher who transformed Western
philosophy and his disciples re wrote
the philosophy textbooks in Europe and
they wrote Asia Africa and the
indigenous traditions of the America out
of the philosophy textbooks now the vast majority not all
but the vast majority of my colleagues
in philosophy would reject the explicit
racism of cons account but they accept
the tainted fruit of cons account which
is the unargued assumption that there never was any
philosophy in any tradition besides the
tradition that goes back to Plato and
Aristotle and just a quick degression on
this point occasionally my colleagues in
philosophy will say well why Brian why
do you have to bring racism into this
you know why why do you think it's about
racism isn't it just about ignorance I
can't tell you how many times I have
said to people things like have you
considered hiring someone in Chinese
philosophy and they say well there is no
such thing as Chinese philosophy and I asked them well what
have you read that is considered Chinese
philosophy that you disagree as
philosophy and they oh I haven't read
any but I just know there isn't
any and I know the same things happens
with Indian philosophy with African
philosophy with indigenous American
philosophy people feel they don't have
to read it they know oppr or it doesn't
exist that's the that is why this is
about structural racism so what's been the effect of Kant
there are only about 133% of the
doctoral programs in philosophy in the
United States is there anybody on staff
who can competently supervise a
dissertation on Chinese philosophy and there is not a single ivy
league university that has any one in its
philosophy Department capable of
supervising a dissertation on Chinese
philosophy now the situation of Indian
philosophy is a little more complicated
here at Colombia it's one of the few
doctoral programs in philosophy where
you can actually study Indian philosophy
they have an assistant professor I hope
they tenure her someday who covers
Indian philosophy but overall there are
fewer places where you can study South
Asian or Indian philosophy in the United
States than there are places where you
can study Chinese philosophy African philosophy about in
the same boat as Indian philosophy uh my
friend uh Ricardo poo mentioned quasi
wedu who passed away just a few years
ago he was one of the few scholars in
the United States teaching African
philosophy and he's passed away as for
indigenous American philosophy last time
I checked there were three doctoral
programs where you could study the
thought of the people who lived in the
American Amer before the Europeans came
in so what can we do about this well I
wrote a book taking back philosophy and
I argued in this book I if you liked
some of the you know documentation for
the claims I've just made or learned or
or some quick responses to some of the
tedious and fallacious arguments against
teaching Chinese or African or
indigenous American or South Asian
philosophy and philosophy departments uh
I talk about that in taking back
philosophy but in the book I say we need
to take back philosophy in two senses we
need to take back philosophy to The
Cosmopolitan ideal that originally motivated
philosophy Plato knew there were
interesting ideas in other cultures and
he wanted to learn about them most
people knew this until the beginning of
the modern era so we need to take
philosophy back to its Cosmopolitan
Roots its Cosmopolitan and Multicultural
Roots also I think we should take
philosophy back to its roots as
something concerned with philosophy as a
way of life too often especially in the
English-speaking World philosophy has
become a bunch of intellectual parlor
games where people are willing to fight
to the death over the question of whether the sentence the current King of France is bald is false or neither true
nor false I have a colleague from
graduate school who wrote a whole book
about that I'm not making that up this
is a real thing philosophers like to
argue about instead of the meaning of
life and when you think about philosophy
in a Cosmopolitan way and about the
meaning of life what you recognize is
that there are four topics that people
discuss across many many civilizations what is the right way to
live what is the best way of life in
English we technically refer to that as
human flourishing and in Chinese you would
refer to it as randow the way of a human
or in ancient Greek you'd refer to it as
udonia or uh in Latin you'd refer to it
as beatitudo similar concept across
different cultures what they how they
fill that concept out is often different
but they're interested in that topic and
if you care about ways of life then
you're also going to care about the
personality traits the character traits
you need to live that way of life in
English we call those virtues in Chinese
they call them duh or in modern Chinese
MAA in Greek they call them AR and in
Latin they call them virtu and if you care about virtues you
have to care about how you cultivate the
virtues and in English we just call that
ethical cultivation in Chinese you could
say shyong in Greek you'd say pidea and in
Latin you'd say humanitas and of course if you're caring
about cultivating virtues so you can
live a way of life you care about what
is human nature like so that it's
possible to live that way of life and
cultivate those virtues and we talk
about human nature in English which
comes from the Latin nura which is their
version of the Greek fusus and in
Chinese you talk about raning human
nature so we find different answers to
common questions and in an interconnected multi-polar world we need to understand what other people think on
these topics and not just deal in memes
or characters of what they think now if
you'd like some concrete recommendations about how to make
education Multicultural when the G7
Nations met recently in Italy they
called together a group of leading
philosophers and me um to glad you
laughed at that uh to develop a a
statement on the needs of philosophy
going forward and we wrote uh in the
city of Barletta the barleta Declaration
on philosophy and interculturality and you can find it on
my website Brian van.com that's b r y an
v n n o r dn.com sorry I'm misspelling
it but for some reason people find my
name incredibly difficult to spell I
don't mind but you won't find the we but
if you just looked up barleta declaration it should take you to my
website I also have links there to
syllabi and readings for different kinds
of philosop opy so I'd like to end with
an anecdote that I think kind of illustrates um and I say the barleta Declaration will give you some concrete
suggestions for how to achieve Multicultural philosophy um but I'd like to end on an anecdote there's a European University
that had a bit of controversy recently um this European University
there was this young upstart philosopher
who wanted to introduce a new figure to
the philosophical curriculum and a lot
of the conservatives on the faculty
saidwell this guy is not a part of our
tradition and you're watering down the
curriculum with all these non-canonical
thinkers and text students literally
almost rioted about this change in the
curriculum the university I'm talking
about is the University of Paris the
debate I'm talking about took place in
the 13th century the young upstart philosopher
was St Thomas aquinus and he was trying to introduce Aristotle
back into the European philosophical
curriculum because his Works had been
lost but fortunately preserved in the
Islamic world and now they were being
translated into uh Latin and by the way there's
some evidence that aquinus only worked
from Latin translations of Aristotle's
works and there are plenty of
translations of Indian and Chinese and
African and Indigenous American
philosophy and for me what's really
exciting about Thomas aquinus is that aquinus was someone who
had his own Christian faith but he
wanted to learn from pagans like Plato
and Aristotle he wanted to learn from
Jews like myones he wanted to learn from
Muslims like abisa and aoiz and he
recognized that respecting his own
tradition was completely consistent with
loving and learning from other Traditions as well and that approach the way I would summarize that is to use lines from the
great Latin poem Terren who who and this
is an English translation of course he
said Terrence said I am a human and
nothing human is alien to me or as
kung's disciple said within the four seas all our
brothers thank you

let me just add It's a Wonderful panel
and uh everybody is engaged in it and
this discussion does not happen in the
UN Security Council it does not happen
at the G20 it does not happen among world
leaders uh it does not happen among
generals this is a very serious problem
which is that we are not having a
philosophical discussion about the kind
of world that we want among people who
are determining our lives and deaths and
that I think is uh extremely pertinent
and serious there has been no
philosophical discussion about the war
in Gaza there's been no philosophical
discussion about the war in Ukraine
among the people who are dropping the
bombs or choosing whether to drop the
bombs or to find a different way or to
find a different approach and this to me
is uh why this discussion is also
extremely pertinent of course it's
pertinent for our children it's
pertinent for how we live it's pertinent
for how uh we hope uh uh young people
will live and learn because they're
going to be in a in in a uh very diverse
and Global world but we're also at a
point of uh as the Doomsday Clock says
90 seconds to midnight and we don't have
the most basic appreciation of other
societies and don't even know that we
don't and don't even know how to get it
uh so there are assumptions made every
day here about what the Chinese are
going to do uh so that we can have a war
by 2027 says the US Navy this is
insanity uh and this is the level of
stupidity I'll use a a harsh word but uh
that that we really are governed by
right now now one of the things I uh and
by the way just the list of issues that
came up uh that are philosophical issues
as well as uh economic or political or sociological
or any other category migrants marginalized populations postcolonial populations Clash of civilizations
future Generations relations to the
biosphere these are all intrinsically
deeply philosophical issues that are not
so much discussed in a philosophical way
uh in places where it needs to be one of the things I as I studied more and more philosophy one of the things
that I came to love about philosophy is
that the great philosophers that we know
of um were not uh sitting in classrooms
they're all failed politicians almost
all of them uh or even better from my
point of view failed policy advisers uh
I love the fact that Plato failed three
times in trying to advise uh the
syracusa uh in Sicily because if he can
fail it gives us license for all of us
to fail uh one of the times he was near
nearly arrested uh and sold off to
slavery but he escaped at the last
moment so I'm just trying to take notes
uh well I was going to say that
confucious spent his whole life up to
age 70 going from Kingdom to Kingdom
being ignored basically uh until he sat
down with his disciples and then taught
for the next 2,000 years what to do but
during his lifetime he was mostly
ignored uh mavelli wrote The Prince uh
as basically a job application to get
the job back with the mediche lock these are not all my favorites but because they wrote for patrons the Earl
of Shaftsbury in that case and he was
secretary for the Carolinas and John
Stewart Mill worked for 40 years for the
East India Company I don't think he got
a lot right out of that particular part
of his career but the idea is we need to
bring this discussion in a very practical way also in a rather urgent way and it's very very rich and our assumptions about
how others behave are very culturally
determined by our own views I think one
of the things Pope Francis uh teaches
the most by the way is uh what his encyclical fatal tuti is about and that is encounter and the idea is that
if you really want to philosophical
approach listen to the other uh and know
how to make that encounter and that uh
in cyclical uh is dedicated it's the first ever I think
Catholic uh papal and cyclical dedicated
to a a Muslim leader it's dedicated to
the Grand Imam of alasar and it opens
actually with the description of St
Francis of AI and this is a historical
truth traveling uh traveling on foot
basically in ship to uh damietta uh Egypt in the fifth crusade
in 1219 to meet with the uh Sultan uh Kamel
al- Malik uh to try to make peace between the Christians and the Muslims on the battlefield uh and he had an allnight discussion with the sultan uh peace did not come uh in that way but it was another encounter that was extraordinary so I I want to thank all the panelists and all the uh philosophers and Gian Yu a colleague on our practical side of things but philosophical uh in his own right for how rich this is uh how meaningful it is how important it is and how much we have to really Propel it into uh active political course as well because this is not only philosophical uh to put it in quotation marks this is the most practical and that's how philosophy has always been that was the tradition practical uh and we need it practically speaking today more than ever so thank you

風蕭蕭_Frank

WELCOME!

Welcome to the website of Bryan W. Van Norden!

風蕭蕭_Frank

傑弗裏·薩克斯、布萊恩 哲學層麵看中華文明和西方文明

WELCOME!

Welcome to the website of Bryan W. Van Norden!

傑弗裏·薩克斯、布萊恩哲學層麵看中華文明和西方文明