New Asia College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

New Asia Lectures on Confucianism 2021 were successfully held in October, with Professor Ng On-cho, Professor of History, Asian Studies and Philosophy, Department of Asian Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, as the keynote speaker to deliver two public lectures.

The New Asia Lectures on Confucianism were launched in 2013 under the sponsorship of the Moonchu Foundation. Each year, a distinguished scholar in Confucianism studies is invited to the College to deliver public lectures, with the aim of arousing interest among academics and the general public in more in-depth exploration of Confucianism through discussion on various issues.

The First Lecture entitled "A Synthetic Representation of Confucian Thought: Existential Concerns and Conceptual Vocabularies" was held at 3:00 p.m. on 23 October, at Function Room AC2, 4/F, Administration Building, Hong Kong Cultural Centre and was moderated by Professor Cheng Chung-yi from the Department of Philosophy of CUHK. Prof. Ng introduced the main existential concerns throughout Confucian thought, including the source of ultimacy and transcendence, the nature of humanity, the organization of community, the sense of the past and the interaction with nature, etc. Based on these frameworks, Prof. Ng further explicated some of the key corresponding conceptual vocabularies, including “tian” (天), “dao” (道), “tianming” (天命), “xing” (性), “zhengming” (正名), “xianwang” (先王), “sheng” (聖), “junzi” (君子), and “yin-yang” (陰陽) which led the audience into the holistic worldview of Confucianism.

The Second Lecture entitled "Chinese Confucian Exegesis, Western Hermeneutic theory, and the Discontent of Comparative Thought" was held at 4:30 p.m. on 29 October, at Lecture Theatre 4, Lee Shau Kee Building, CUHK with Professor Huang Yong from the Department of Philosophy of CUHK as the moderator. Apart from extending the discussion frameworks from the last lecture, Prof. Ng brought out the fact that our faithful representations of Chinese thoughts in a certain extent cannot escape western interpretative and theoretical interventions. Scholars would inevitably use the western languages and cultural contexts to interpret Confucianism. Comparative readings of the Chinese classics may generate new Chinese theories of reading, thereby ensuring the ancient texts’ significances in a global world through hermeneutics that is intercultural. Yet, such intellectual commerce would be the source of discontent, insofar as it cannot elide “Eurotropic” orientations which constitute the epistemological basis of transcultural inquiry. Prof. Ng further explained the importance of reading the original Chinese classics in a bid to understand it across the era with a visionary mind, leading to the truth of Confucianism.

During these two lectures, Prof. Ng led different Confucian discussions from individual pursuits and organization of community to the philosophical status of Confucianism which aroused positive feedback and discussions from the audience. The "Exhibition of Publications by Professor Ng On-cho, Distinguished Scholar of the New Asia Lectures on Confucianism 2021" was also successfully held from 8 October to 5 November 2021 on G/F, New Asia College Ch'ien Mu Library.