CHEN, Shudong (Johnson County Community College)

As noun and verb, transitive and intransitive, the word “place” indicates as much of status, stillness, as of action or motion. The word could also connote the imaginary but indispensable locales that creative minds, such as Kafka, depend on for thought-provoking argument and imagery as his essay on “The Great Wall of China” and his novel America may so indicate. The word “place” could then also mean the crucial inborn knowledge not necessarily acquired through actual experiences. This seemingly unlimited or infinite space and power of the inborn knowledge is exactly what Goethe once so emphasizes to Eckermann in as much the same way as it is so stressed in Daodejing, which states how “a wise [person who] may know the world without leaving his home” (ch. 47), or confirmed, along with Emerson and Zhuangzi, by Dickinson, who insists likewise how “I never saw a Moor--/I never see the sea--/Yet know I how the Heather looks.” (J1052). Place could certainly also suggest a never ending process of search for common ground across cultures for transplanting, transforming, and translation of ideas. Similarly, it could also suggest a Daoist version of choice, adaptation, and freedom regarding where and when to fit in -- whether at the center, in the “marginal spots,” at the “low places,” or around “back positions.” Whether imaginary or physical, we need a place as Archimedes of Syracuse, who declares: “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth,” or simply as ordinary humans; we need a place even if just for the necessity to reflect in, upon, through, with, against, and beyond; we may need a place, just like Whitman’s little “noiseless patient spider,” to be at once physically and emotionally attached to, attached from, or nourished by. On the issue of place, the American literature is particularly rich with many of its creatively philosophical minds so brilliantly sensitive to the influences or power of places, such as Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Henry James, and especially Emily Dickinson.

“Problematizing the Liberal Notion of ‘Self’ via Aristotle and Confucius”

Both Aristotle and Confucius prioritize the collective before the individual. Contrary to modern liberal rights, Aristotle’s to dikaion and Confucius’s ren are both ad alterum (to another) rather than ad se (to oneself). A major difference, however, exists between the Hellenic and the Chinese thinker regarding the meaning of the “other.” As evident from Nicomachean Ethics, the “other” must be “either a ruler or a copartner” (NE V 1). Justice for Aristotle, in other words, can only occur between “equal members of a civil or political society, who alone can properly be called 'others'” (Annabel Brett).

…The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth. (Watson’s translation; emphasis mine.)

“Uncleanness of Childbirth and the Purity of Ancestral Rite”

“Belonging Somewhere: Journeys and Dwelling”

In my paper I will show how “belonging to” defines identity by being a central component of “dwelling”. “Belonging somewhere” is necessarily included in the first sense of belonging. Hence, “belonging” cannot be reduced to virtual or abstract entities, but remains rooted in places exceeding meaning by being grounded on earth. Such, “belonging to” has a bodily component of “belonging somewhere”. As Edward Casey has shown, journeys like those of Basho and Odysseus reveal the interlacement between places and identity.
CLAUS, C. Anne (American University)
“Coral Reef Cultures and Place-Making in Okinawa”

Over the past 40 years in southwestern Okinawa, views of the sea and ino (nearshore coral reefs) have shifted as this region has become a site of stewardship among coastal residents.  Village life shapes and is shaped by the coral reef in multiple dimensions. Spiritual interests in the nearshore sea result in engagements with the sea during annual festivals and in daily prayers, occasions during which the nearshore sea (ino) becomes a site for purification and protection. At the same time, Shiraho village has emerged as a cohesive target of mainland scientific and tourist interest because of its presentation as an eco-village with a strong “coral reef culture.” Past and present articulations of Shiraho as a cohesive village shaped by its coral reef are conditioned by demographic changes that have brought increasing numbers of newcomers from mainland Japan. Two recent conservation projects involve residents in new kinds of material engagements with the ino, and I examine how the Sunday Market and periodic walks provide the platform for self-reflective enforcement of a village sense of place as well as aspirational place-making by mainland Japanese conservationists. 

Throughout his professional career, Nietzsche employs a hermeneutic method of deliberately and experimentally estranging (entfremden) himself from the time, place, and culture of the present so that he might “look 'into the world' otherwise.” The practice involves a strategic distancing that seeks to awaken ordinarily dormant perspectives on emerging futures. This “subtler art and aim of travel” reveals a global sensibility that we can trace from Nietzsche’s first book to his last. His genealogical and depth-psychological searching of the ancient past presages a trans-historical philosophy of a global future, his interest in traveling to North Africa arises from a specific desire to sharpen his “judgment and eye for all things European,” and finally, his admitted trans-cultural need employs “the foreign” to “learn to think more orientally,” even “emigrate to Japan.” This global aspiration matures in the “trans-Asiatic eye” of Zarathustra and the enigmatic experience of eternal recurrence, which arrives through the spontaneous cycle of process itself. Since this eye “sees under itself,” it undermines fixed place. Nietzsche’s places are strategic: calls to wander, signposts for global travelers. His culminating figure of the “Hyperborean” is curious in many ways. For one, the self-proclaimed “disciple of Dionysus” in a final flash of lucidity again identifies himself as a pious worshiper of Apollo, thereby establishing a global task.

Starting off with an analysis of the recent attempts at comparative epistemology surrounding Ernest Sosa, I argue that much of the original comparative work done by major analytic Chinese philosophers in the Twentieth Century is ignored because it does not conform (and perhaps even undermines) contemporary models of knowledge. One major cause for this confirmation bias amongst English-speaking analytic epistemologists is the lack of attention to the importance of place, power, and history.