Registration is open for the conference. You can download the conference programme here and the poster here.

Programme

Philosophy of Self-Cultivation

June 22nd - 23rd 2023, Royal Holloway College Hallway & Room 1

Senate House (University of London), Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Programme

Thursday June 22nd

9:00 – 9:30 Registration and Breakfast

9:30 – 10:30 Keynote Lecture

• Manhua Li: Chair
• Karyn Lai: Two Kinds of Cultivation in the Zhuangzi

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 – 11:55 Panel 1. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Beyond Spiritual Exercise

• Jingyi Jenny Zhao: Chair
• John Sellars: Why ‘Spiritual Exercises’ are not Spiritual
• John Marenbon: Medieval Philosophy and Philosophy as a Way of Life

11:55 – 12:55 Lunch

12:55 – 14:00 Panel 2. Religiosity of Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

• Ben OLoughlin: Chair
• Nicholas Sihlé: Self-Cultivation and Lived Religion: Anthropological Notes on the Case of the Tibetan Buddhist Tantrists
• Feixuan Xu: Cultivating for Self-Cultivation?: Comparing Ancient Agrarian and Contemporary Artistic Practices on Raising Silkworms

14:00 – 14:20 Coffee Break

14:20 – 15:25 Panel 3. Cultivation as a Practice of the Self and Others

• Gauri Wagle: Chair
• Andrea Rehberg: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on Self and Other
• Jozef Majerník: Ascetic Practices in Book IV of Nietzsche’s Gay Science

15:25 – 15:45 Coffee Break

15:45 – 17:15 Panel 4. Nourishing Life: Reconnecting Humans and Nature

• Graham Parkes: Chair
• David Chai: Ji Kang on Nourishing Life
• Julia Ng: Completion as Self-Cultivation: Benjamin, Bloch, Zhuangzi

Manhua Li: Nietzsche and Ji Kang on Body Cultivation

17:15 – 19:00 Art Exhibition & Drinks Reception

19:00 Dinner

Friday June 23rd

9:00 – 9:30 Breakfast

9:30 – 10:30 Keynote Lecture

• Manhua Li: Chair
• Michaela Ott: Dividuation – a New Mode of Thinking the Human Condition

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 – 11:55 Panel 5. The Politics of Self-Cultivation

• Evrim Bayindir: Chair
• Mario Wenning: Cultivating Soft Resistance: Vattimo and Daoism on Weakening Strategies
• Gauri Wagle: Worldmaking and the Borders of the Self: Cultivation and Nationhood in Fanon

11:55 – 12:55 Lunch

12:55 – 14:25 Panel 6. Reconsidering Sagehood: Cultivating the Moral Persons

• Karyn Lai: Chair
• Tzuli Chang: On Moral Error: The Debate and Mencian Comment
• Jingyi Jenny Zhao: Learning from the Cradle: Children and Moral Self-cultivation in Ancient Greece and Early China
• Guillaume Dutournier: Inferring the Intention of the Saints. Canon, Self-Cultivation and Controversy in Neo-Confucian Thought

14:25 – 14:45 Coffee Break

14:45 – 15:50 Panel 7. Self-Cultivation and Modern Ethos: Sex, Gender, and Identity

• Suki Finn: Chair
• Deborah Goldgaber: Sex and self-transformation: Foucault, Bersani and the ‘End of Sex’
• Becca Bashford: What’s in a name? The Refusal of Recognition and Its Effect on the Cultivation of the Self

15:50 – 16:10 Coffee Break

16:10 – 17:40 Panel 8. Which Self is at Stake? Towards a Diverse Ethics of Self-Cultivation

• Suki Finn: Chair
• Oliver Spinney: Wittgenstein on Confession, and Working on Oneself
• David Collins: Authenticity and Self-Cultivation in Beauvoir’s Ambiguous Ethics
• Emma Syea: The Limits of Self-Cultivation

17:40 – 18:00 Coffee Break

18:00 – 19:00 Keynote Lecture

• Manhua Li: Chair
• Graham Parkes: Self-Cultivation through Others: People, Things, and Internet

19:00 – 19:30 Closing Remark

• Laura Sjoberg