2025: Discursive and Non-Discursive Reasoning in Chinese Philosophy (11–13 July)
Date
11. - 13. Juli 2025
Venue
University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 59, CH-8001 Zurich
- Friday, July 11: RAA-G-15
- Saturday and Sunday, July 12–13: RAA-G-01 (Aula)
Please register for your online participationhere.
Organization
- Polina Lukicheva, University of Zurich
- Kai Marchal, National Chengchi University Taipei
- Grzegorz Polak, Maria Sklodowska-Curie University Lublin (UMCS)
- Rafael Suter, University of Zurich
Contact
Polina Lukicheva, Rafael Suter
Support
This workshop is organized with the generous support of
- Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation
- Nomis Foundation
- Swiss National Science Fund
- Schweizerische Akademie der Geisteswissenschaften
Abstract
This workshop explores how processes of thinking and reasoning are reflected in traditional Chinese philosophy — including forms that are not easily captured by formal or discursive logic. One avenue we pursue is the connection between vision and thought as developed in Chinese philosophical traditions. While the metaphor of vision in the European context often represents intellectual clarity or timeless truths, Chinese philosophical texts engage vision differently: as a means of attending to change, process, and the situatedness of the observer. The workshop brings together perspectives from Chinese philosophy, Buddhist studies, and related fields to examine how distinctions between discursive and non-discursive modes of thought are articulated — or problematized — in Chinese traditions, and how these approaches may offer alternative ways of understanding reasoning itself.
Program
Friday, July 11
10:30 – 11:30 am |
Welcome Address and Introduction: Between Logic and Intuition: On the Forms of Reasoning in Chinese Philosophy |
11:30 – 12:30 am |
Reasoning Within and Without Space: Reconstructing Models of Cognition from Late Ming to Early Qing Chinese Sources Polina LUKICHEVA (University of Zurich) |
Lunch |
|
2:15 – 3:15 pm |
The Affective Nature of Knowing in Wang Yangming Stephen ANGLE (Wesleyan University, Middletown) |
3:15 – 4:15 pm |
Vision and Cognition in Wang Kentang’s (1555–1613) Thought Elena GESSLER (Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei) |
Coffee break |
|
4:30 – 5:30 pm |
Buddhist Approaches to Reasoning and Argumentation in Late-Ming China: With a Focus on Yinming 因明 Commentaries Jakub ZAMORSKI (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) |
5.30 – 6.30 pm |
Concluding Remarks and General Discussion (Day 1) |
Saturday, July 12
9:30 – 10:30 am |
Saving Normativity in Conventional Truth: Reading the Philosophical Constellations of Dignāga, Dharmapāla, and Bhāviveka LIN Chen-kuo (National Chengchi University, Taipei) |
| Coffee break | |
10:45 – 11:45 am |
‘Not Seeing a Thing as Right Seeing’ – the Philosophical Implications of Selected Paradoxical and Apophatic Passages of Tang Era Chan Texts and their Early Buddhist Āgama and Nikāya Antecedents Grzegorz POLAK (UMSC, Lublin) |
11:45 am – 12:45 pm |
The ‘Inconceivable’ as the ‘Nature of Mind’ in Ouyi Zhixu’s Commentary on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith Hans-Rudolf KANTOR (Huafan University, Taipei) |
Lunch |
|
2:15 – 3:15 pm |
Trapping the Subtlety of Dao – Words, Images and Meaning in Liu Hui’s Philosophy of Mathematics Eva HENKE (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) |
3:15 – 4:15 pm |
What Li Shanlan's New Stylistic Code of Mathematics Reveals about Mathematical Objects and Patterns of Thought in 19th Century China Andrea BRÉARD (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) |
Coffee break |
|
4:30 – 5:30 pm |
Looking at the Same Mountain from Different Angles – Discursive Thinking and Intuition in Luo Qinshun 羅欽順 (1465–1547) Kai MARCHAL (National Chengchi University, Taipei) |
5:30 – 6:30 pm |
Concluding Remarks and General Discussion |
Sunday, July 13
8:30 – 9:30 am |
Standstill and Movement – Visualized Object and Invisible Reasoning and the Limits of Explicability in Fazang’s Gold Lion Rafael SUTER (University of Zurich) |
9:30 – 10:30 am |
“Being Lyrical” as a Way to Reach Cognitive Transformation - the Alchemical “Language Games” and the Poetic Art of Aesthetic Persuasion in Wang Chongyang’s Poems” (ONLINE) Zofia Anna WYBIERALSKA (National Chengchi University, Taipei) |
Coffee break |
|
10:45–11:45 |
Seeing as Emergent from a Profound Unity: Wang Yangming on Seeing and the Unseen ZHENG Zemian (Chinese University of Hong Kong) |
11:45–12:45 |
Tables and Arguments in the Works of Zhang Zai and Wang Yangming [ONLINE] Michael LACKNER (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Nürnberg-Erlangen) |
Lunch |
|
2:15 – 3:15 pm |
Regards Oblique and Concluding Discussion Michael HAMPE (ETH, Zurich), discussant |
