Beyond Free Will: Variety in Understanding of Choice, Luck, and Necessity June 20-23, 2022 Vilnius University, Lithuania

Call for papers

Contemporary Western discourse on freedom and choice – some of the most championed modern
values – is usually anchored in the concept cluster of free will and autonomous choice. In turn,
academic research on free will in philosophy (including experimental philosophy) and psychology is
largely based on a limited conceptual framework with roots in particular debates in Christianity and
European philosophy. This framework is currently challenged by multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary approaches applied in the fields of area and Asian studies, comparative philosophy,
and also empirical research in cross-cultural psychology, and anthropology.

​In the present multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary conference, we invite scholars from philosophy,
psychology, anthropology, Asian studies, religious studies and other related fields to discuss theoretical alternatives to the dominant framework that are sensitive to cultural differences and local contexts as well as empirical research - especially cross-cultural and cross-linguistic – on conceptualisations of free and constrained action and cultural practices in dealing with these constraints.​

For more information, see the flyer.

Call for Papers- 1st Online Conference of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy  “Chinese Philosophy: Paths between Convergence and Divergence” -  December 3, 2021

As previously announced, due to the ongoing pandemic, the 4th Biennial Conference of EACP has
been postponed to the year 2023. However, our community of scholars needs opportunities to meet
and exchange research outputs before that time, thus the board – although convinced that online
conference could never substitute a face-to-face meeting – has decided to organize an online
conference in the meantime.

The conference theme is “Chinese Philosophy: Paths between Convergence and Divergence”.

It is usually acknowledged that Chinese philosophy bloomed during the Warring States, in an epoch
of cultural and political division when thinkers or masters roamed from one state to the other, trying
to present their ways of thinking and governing to the different rulers. Therefore, despite the antihistoric and monolithic Orientalist interpretation of China, this philosophy arose thanks to the
richness of the divergence of thoughts. Simultaneously, since the Han, the Chinese Empire showed
a holistic attitude aiming at composing those divergences, often at the price of homologation.
However, thanks to the disrupting and enriching effect of Buddhist thought, refined syncretic
schools arose as that of the Song and Ming Neo-Confucians. Furthermore, since the first Jesuits entered China, the meeting with Western thought has presented both divergent and convergent streams, which continues to be the case nowadays. Contemporary philosophy in China shows this divergence-convergence paradigm constantly at work. Despite this paradigm being in common with other civilizations’ histories, Chinese thought provides a very peculiar view on the question of divergence-convergence which contributes to a more prolific transcultural definition of the paradigm. This peculiar view – which we can differently name correlative thought, nonduality of opposites, relational thinking, binary categories system, etc. – took a large variety of forms in the long history of Chinese thought. One of the most renowned and influential is the yin-yang 陰陽 theory, but the paradigm is also evident in Han historiography, Huayan Buddhism, naturalist poetry, and Neo-Confucianism, not to mention contemporary New Confucianism, where we can find extraordinarily relevant and innovative instances of this paradigm. In this conference, speakers are invited to discuss their research to shed new light on the richness of this correlative intellectual attitude from any perspective: metaphysical, ethical, historical, theoretical, linguistic, rhetorical, esthetic, etc.

Scholars interested in Chinese philosophy and philosophy in China are invited to submit proposals
for individual papers or panels to the organizers of the conference: Selusi Ambrogio
<[email protected]>, Mercedes Valmisa <[email protected]>, and Jan Vrhovski
<[email protected]>.

Abstracts should be no more than 250 words. Panel proposals should include the title and a brief
description of the panel and the names, affiliations, email addresses of the participants, and the titlesof each participant’s presentation with 250 words abstracts. The deadline for submission is
October 31, 2021. Notice of acceptance of proposals will be sent to your email address by
November 21, with instructions for how to access and links to the conference.

The official languages of the conference are English and Chinese.