We are very pleased to announce that the 4^th Lecture of the FAH Macao Humanities Forum (2023/2024) will be held on 13 Mar 2024. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Prof Roger Ames as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on the topic “The Confucian Philosophy of Family Feeling as an Inspiration for a New Geopolitical Order”. Roger Ames is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University, and Senior Academic Advisor of the Peking University Berggruen Research Centre. He is also Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Over the past 30 years, Prof. Ames has published various papers and manuscripts related to the interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture, and has also translated into English many Chinese classics, including Sun-Tzu: The Art of Warfare, the Confucian Analects and the Daodejing. He is also the founding editor of the China Review International and former editor of Philosophy East & West.

Details of the forum are as below:

Speaker: Prof Roger Ames

Topic: The Confucian Philosophy of Family Feeling as an Inspiration for a New Geopolitical Order

Date: 13 Mar 2024 (Wed)

Time: 16:00 – 17:30*

Venue: On-Site (E21A-G035) / ZOOM ( https://umac.zoom.us/j/97776221022 )

Language: English (with simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin on Zoom)

*Light refreshments will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis

Abstract:

The seismic sea change in the geopolitical order of the world that has accelerated over the first two decades of the 21^st century requires nothing less than the reformulation of the world’s geopolitical order. The international anarchy of the zero-sum Westphalian model of a modern state system with sovereign and equal nation states each playing to win has proven woefully inadequate to resolving the complex human predicament of our time. The perceived isomorphism among family, state, and world in Confucian philosophy gives rise to an alternative conception of the political in which governance is firmly rooted in personal cultivation within the institution of family.

In looking to Confucian philosophy as a possible resource for a new geopolitical order, I begin by joining Michael Walzer in common cause in his search for a “thin” universal minimalist morality that can provide a basis for a limited but important solidarity among the world’s peoples and cultures. An argument is made from the continuing narrative of Confucian philosophy that family feeling might serve as a universal minimalist morality in our search for a new world geopolitical order. And the question that arises is: given that the majority of the world’s population ground their values in family feeling rather than liberal individualism, what would be the alternative?

Please register for the forum by 11 Mar 2024 (Mon) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8J1jnDQu8Xfu1E2