SUN Xiangchen

Durant le mois de décembre 2015, le labex TransferS accueille SUN Xiangchen, directeur du département de philosophie de l’Université Fudan, Shanghaï.

Philosophie chinoise et occidentale

Les conférences se dérouleront en chinois avec traduction simultanée.

Mardi 1^er décembre - de 15h30 à 17h30 - ENS, Salle 235B, 29 rue d’Ulm, Paris 5^e

• Double-core as the Basis of Modern Chinese Value System

• In modern China, modernization is often being confused with Westernization, the core idea of Chinese cultural tradition is excluded from this process. So, we need to reflect May Fourth the new cultural movement, re-orientate Chinese cultural tradition in modern world, and give its modern expression, or as Hegel said, give its rational form. No matter the tension between the modernity and the traditional value, or the struggle between western culture and Chinese culture, both approaches limit our horizon, and lose ourselves in modern world. We should reestablished the polar of Chinese culture, and use the double-core of the individualism and familism to understand our life-world. Once we articulate this double-core clearly, we have the chance to form the real modern Chinese value system.

   

Jeudi 3 décembre - de 17h00 à 19h00 - ENS, Salle 235B, 29 rue d’Ulm, Paris 5^e

• Continuous Creation in an Endless Succession : the Existential Structure of Chinese Cultural Tradition

• The important significance of Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein does not lie in his exhaustion of the understanding human existence, but in his phenomenological reduction which suspends whole cultural tradition and shows some special dimension of human existence. The most notable feature of Heidegger’s description of Dasein’s existence is ’Being towards death’. If we explore the existential structure of Chinese cultural tradition, another kind of existential feature would be disclosed, that is ’being towards next generations’ or ’Continuous Creation in an Endless Succession’. Ontological speaking, it emphasizes the ’continuity of Being’. If so , Dasein is never homeless, and at home at the very beginning. Family is not only a social unit, but also based on the basic existential structure of the inter-generations. Project of Dasein is not only designed for itself, but also could be for next generations. This is also the reason why in Chinese cultural tradition the core virtue is filial piety, it is the joint of the continuity of being. Through the analysis of being towards next generations, the existential mechanism of Chinese traditional political, ethical life, education, and the consciousness of history are all disclosed.
  

Mercredi 9 décembre - de 18h30 à 20h30 - ENS, Salle 235B, 29 rue d’Ulm, Paris 5^e

• On the Possibility of the Revival of the Philosophy of Family in China in Contemporary Age

• With the looming conception of individual in modern Western philosophy, family as a self-standing ethical unit had faded away in Western philosophical discourse. In a sense, Even Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein is also some kind of individualism. Based on the existential structure ’being towards next generations’ in Chinese cultural tradition, which is totally different from the structure of ’Being towards death’, the concept of family and its ethical origination show its existential root. As the acceptance of individualism in Chinese circumstance is tortuous, it is necessary to rethink the positive and negative significance of individualism clearly in contemporary age. In the framework, the concept of family has the possibility to be reestablished in philosophy. The institutional form of family in contemporary age should differs greatly from the traditional, the idea of Family should be promoted once again to counteract the negative impact of individualism.
  

SUN Xiangchen is Professor & Dean at the School of Philosophy of Fudan University. He was born in Beijing in 1968, and got his BA, MA and Ph.D. degrees at Fudan. His fields of research include early modern philosophy, enlightenment philosophy, political philosophy, Jewish-Christian philosophy, phenomenology and comparative philosophy. As a visiting scholar or an invited researcher, he had worked at Peking University, Yale University, University of Birmingham, University of Chicago, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, National University of Taiwan.

Among his main publications are : Metaphysics of Seventeen Century, Facing the Other : On Levinas’ Philosophical thought, Political philosophy and Sino-Theology.