A Cross-Cultural Conversation: Aristotle, Confucius, and Virtue Ethics

The collaborative workshop, which went three days and involved a group of seven scholars presenting and critiquing papers-in-progress on the topic of “Confucianism and Virtue Ethics,” was stimulating and extremely useful. Participants in the workshop all knew each other from a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar conducted last summer for six weeks at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. The opportunity to reunite in Montana and work through our individual research projects, which we will be presenting at a conference in Beijing next summer, was invaluable. Over the course of the three-day workshop participants continued to marvel at how lucky we were to have national and state humanities organizations that will support such meetings. Though I do not believe that “philosophizing,” so to say, is a luxury—in fact I think people do it all the time and take delight in it—it certainly felt luxurious for participants to be funded to travel to Bozeman from Virginia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas so as to sit together and talk about topics we love talking about with others who speak our same language. We were able as well to discuss our experiences this past year as teachers, and the challenges of bringing Chinese philosophy into the American classroom and the “Western” philosophical curriculum. A broad range of excellent ideas were generated, concerning how to expand course syllabi to create a more organic, less contrived, dialogue between “East and West.”

This notion of dialogue between East and West ran through this whole program, and anchored the public event that was presented on Friday June 19 at the Bozeman Public Library. This event was a resounding success: it was well attended, provocative, and great fun! The title of the event was “Ethics East & West: The Challenge and Promise of Dialogue,” and three workshop participants presented brief talks, which were followed by a really lively audience discussion. The talks were entitled, respectively, “Philosophical Dialogue with China? Shut Up and Eat Your Rice!” “Adam Smith + Confucius = Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics?” and “China and the Environment: Western Pressures and Eastern Principles.” Before each talk (which ran about 20 minutes), three Montana State University students presented key quotes from classic texts that anchored the talk.

The involvement of students was a great dimension to the lecture. For anyone considering doing future events like this, I highly suggest finding a way to incorporate more students, and to include them in more parts of the meeting (for example, it now occurs to me that it would have been great for us workshop participants to have students’ insight on how more effectively to bring Chinese philosophy into our classes).

The three talks that were given were wonderful—the speakers were lively, their points were clear and accessible, they had interesting visuals to carry listeners along, and they provoked timely questions about our relationship to China and the role of the exchange of “big ideas” in the development of that relationship (both in the past, and in the future). The audience, which consisted of about 50 people from various parts of the community, clearly enjoyed the talks, too! They felt at ease being on a first name basis with the speakers from the start, they put some very challenging questions to the speakers and added great insights to the topic. I occasionally forgot that I was moderating the discussion, because I got caught up thinking about a point someone had made, or raising my hand so that I could be called on, too!

After two solid hours it was time to wind down our gathering, but people lingered for another half hour or so enjoying refreshments, talking one-on-one with the speakers, and—most importantly—talking to other community members. One woman thanked us for holding the event off campus, where it was clear that the intended audience was Bozeman, and not Montana State University. I believe she is right that the venue made a difference in tone and feeling. There is a hunger here for intellectual stimulation and dialogue—that much is clear! More events like this one would be well appreciated. I am already at work thinking about how to do more to bridge the campus and the community, perhaps by organizing a monthly gathering where MSU professors (or students!) present work-in-progress for discussion. Work-in-progress, though academics are notoriously worried about sharing it publicly, is by far the most interesting kind of work! Once a project is tidy and complete some of the juiciness goes out of it. And with such a wealth of curiosity, experience and interesting observations available from community members, I believe our research would thrive from presentation outside of our typical academic circles.

I look forward to following the expansion of humanities programming in Montana—this networking site is a great resource for learning about what is going on and for coming to recognize the thriving humanities-loving community in our large and diffuse state.