DEPT OF PHILOSOPHY
| Researcher : Ci J |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Ci J., "Capabilities, Poverty and Respect", Seminar with Professor Martha Nussbaum, Faculty of Law, HKU. Hong Kong, 2005. |
| Ci J., "The Subjective Dimension of the Capabilities Approach", Department of Philosophy, CUHK. Hong Kong, 2005. |
| Ci J., Desublimation and Resublimation in Post-Mao China, Naked Punch. 2006, 7: 71-80. |
| Ci J., Political Agency in Liberal Democracy, Journal of Political Philosophy. London, UK, Blackwell, 2006, 14: 144-162. |
| Ci J., The Two Faces of Justice. Cambridge, Mass., USA, Harvard University Press, 2006, 264 pages. |
| Researcher : Cook GA |
| Project Title: | Jean-jacques rousseau: man, nature and science |
| Investigator(s): | Cook GA |
| Department: | Philosophy |
| Source(s) of Funding: | Small Project Funding |
| Start Date: | 11/2003 |
| Completion Date: | 10/2005 |
| Abstract: |
| To study: (1) Rousseau and the botanical tradition, (2) Rousseau's herbaria: the material culture of his scientific practice, (3) The literary aspect of Rousseau's herbaria and botanising expeditions, (4) Rousseau's influence on the study of botany as a popular field study. |
| Project Title: | Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: Science in the service of society |
| Investigator(s): | Cook GA |
| Department: | Philosophy |
| Source(s) of Funding: | Small Project Funding |
| Start Date: | 12/2005 |
| Abstract: |
| Purpose: The PI seeks funding to support completion of a scholarly monograph entitled Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: Science in the Service of Society. This monograph examines the botanical project of the eighteenth-century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778); this is the least well-known and least studied aspect of his extensive oeuvre. The only previous book-length study—now outdated—is Albert Jansen, _Jean-Jacques Rousseau als Botaniker_ (Berlin: Reimer, 1885). The PI’s project is based on her critical edition of Rousseau’s botanical writings in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 8 (Hanover, NH, 2000; hereafter “CW 8”), a wholly new version superseding all previous editions in several respects: (1) the range of texts included, (2) the order of their presentation and (3) the scholarly apparatus. On the basis of this work, the PI reinterprets Rousseau as botanist for a scholarly audience that includes not only philosophy, but also history of science, history of ideas and political science. She has received an Arts Faculty Research Scheme in Fall 2005 to pursue this research. Previous research: This project builds on the PI’s recent work on Rousseau in which she approaches Rousseau’s study of botany from a variety of angles. “Rousseau and Exotic Botany,” _Eighteenth-Century Life_, Special Issue 26/3 (December 2002) shows that he viewed “exotic” or colonial botany with skepticism, while in “Rousseau and the Languages of Music and Botany,” _Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century_ (2004) we see that Rousseau used scientific language to make nature study easier, more accessible and more systematic. In “Rousseau et les réseaux d’échange botanique,” in _Rousseau et les sciences_ (2003) and “Idées et pratiques scientifiques dans la correspondance botanique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” _Annales de la société Jean-Jacques Rousseau_ (2005, forthcoming), the PI demonstrates Rousseau’s participation in the scientific republic of letters through botanical networks of exchange and correspondence. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s copy of the great Swiss botanist Albrecht von Haller’s Historia Stirpium indigenarum Helvetiae inchoata (1768),” _Archives of Natural History_ 30/1 (April 2003), discusses Rousseau’s extensively annotated copy of a major text on alpine plants that had long been thought lost and that the PI discovered in the Royal Horticultural Society Library, London. Key issues and problems: The central problem this work addresses is Rousseau’s relationship to science, natural history and botany especially, but also to chemistry, a science he mastered, but that he later rejected as concerned only with “dead” matter. Important authorities as Jean Starobinski, _Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la Transparence et l’obstacle_ (Paris, 1971) assert that Rousseau’s study of botany was a mechanical and rote activity that had no scientific merit. The PI’s study uses a variety of materials—correspondence, herbaria, annotated books—to demonstrate the inaccuracy of this assessment. These materials enable the PI to place Rousseau squarely in the midst of the debates and practices that animated natural history in the third quarter of the eighteenth century; most important were debates about nomenclature and taxonomic systems that were particularly heated in France, since leading French naturalists in Paris (Buffon and Daubenton) rejected Linnaean taxonomy and were slow to adopt the Swedish botanist’s nomenclature. This point merits particular emphasis: Rousseau has been described by Pascal Duris as “the architect of the popularization of Linnaean ideas in France” (_Linné et la France_, [Geneva,1993], 105) because he was a proponent of Linnaean nomenclature. Rousseau implicitly opposed the nominalism and reductionism of Buffon and Daubenton, leading lights of eighteenth-century French natural history; they (1) espoused Lockean nominalism with respect to species, and (2) valued the study of “properties” (uses) over collecting, naming and ordering the plant kingdom. Rousseau rejects the study of properties in his _Reveries_: “it is habitual to look only for remedies and drugs in plants”; “People do not imagine that vegetal organization on its own could merit some attention” (O.C. I, 1063, 1064). The PI’s central claim in this study is that for Rousseau the final end of studying botany (and nature in general) is moral and social. This argument appears to contradict the position Rousseau adopted in his _Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts_ (the work that placed him at the center of Parisian intellectual life in 1750), in which he held the sciences and arts responsible for promoting the moral decay of society; nevertheless, he believed that science, one of the sources of society’s moral ills, could be enlisted as a remedy in the treatment of society’s moral decay. This approach has been termed Rousseau’s “homeopathic cure” because a dose of the disease is employed in its treatment (as in vaccination). Botany provides a good homeopathic cure as it is inexpensive, relatively accessible and concerns itself with the most agreeable of nature’s three realms: “the only spectacle in the world of which [the observer’s] eyes and heart never tire” (_Reveries_, seventh walk). In contrast with many other occupations, botany offers “a nourishment to the soul[,] a nourishment which profits it by filling it with the most worthy object of its contemplation” (first letter on botany to Mme Delessert, CW 8, 130) and a refuge from the conflicts of civil society. Rousseau believes, however, that botanical instruction had to be reformed because he is unconvinced by the assertion of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus that “all plants become known in a single year, at first sight, with no instructor and without pictures or description by means of stable recollection” (_Philosophia Botanica_, par. 151). Rousseau repeatedly refers to the impossibility of any novice realizing this goal because the instructional texts are for the learned while there are none to teach the ignorant (CW 8, 176-7, 204-5). This is the point at which Rousseau the pedagogue intervenes to transform the teaching of botany. Two works attack the pedagogical problem: (1) his elementary letters on botany to Madeleine-Catherine Delessert and (2) his dictionary of botanical terms, both published posthumously. These played a pivotal role in bringing botany to the attention of middle-class people with no particular scientific training. The letters to Mme Delessert appeared in translations into several European languages, most notably English (by Thomas Martyn, Regius professor of Botany, Cambridge, 1785). His legacy as a botanical educator is reflected in the works of early nineteenth-century educators such as Almira Phelps (U.S.), Priscilla Wakefield (England) and J.-L.Thuillier (France). |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Cook G.A., Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Anticipation of Plant Geography, In: Maurizio Font, Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas to the Cosmos. New York, Bildner Center, CUNY, 2005, 387-401. |
| Cook G.A., Botanical Exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland, Transferts culturels France-Grande Bretagne: agents, vecteurs, réseaux, University 8 St Denis, France. 2006. |
| Cook G.A., Ein Philosoph wirbt für die Botanik: Die Herbarien von Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Historisches Institut, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 2006. |
| Cook G.A., Jean-Jacques Rousseau and plant identification, International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. 2005. |
| Cook G.A., Review of Jean-Daniel Candaux and Jean-Marc Drouin (eds.), Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle: Mémoires et souvenirs (1778-1841). Bibliothèque d’histoire des sciences, 5. Geneva: Georg Editeur, 2003, British Journal for the History of Science . 2005, 8 (4): 482-3. |
| Cook G.A., Was there a biological concept of environment in the eighteenth century?, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 37th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada. 2006. |
| Researcher : Deutsch ME |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Goldstein L., Brennan A., Deutsch M.E. and Lau J.Y.F., Logic (key Concepts In Philosophy). London, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, 1-200. |
| Researcher : Goldstein L |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Goldstein L., Brennan A., Deutsch M.E. and Lau J.Y.F., Logic (key Concepts In Philosophy). London, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, 1-200. |
| Researcher : Hansen C |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Hansen C., The concept of "Being" in Chinese Thought, The 5th International Conference on Logic and Cognition. Guangzhou, China, 2006. |
| Hansen C., “Being and 有 無you-wu exist-notexist Revisited” , Beijing Roundtable conference on "Philosophy of Language: constructive engagement of distinctive perspectives". Beijing, China, 2006. |
| Hansen C., “Chinese ‘to be’ and ‘not to be.’”, 5th International Conference on Logic and Cognition, “Language and Logic” Institute of Logic and Cognition (ILC), Sun Yat-sen University. Guangzhou, China, 2006. |
| Hansen C., “Interpretive Theory and Rules for Translation: A Proposal for the Daode Jing”, International Scholarly Conference on Daoist Culture. Taipei, Taiwan, 2006. |
| Hansen C., “Meaning and Metaphysics of Dao”, Combined Philosophy Departments, Beijing and Tsing Hua University. Beijing, China, 2006. |
| Hansen C., “Relativism, Education and the Cultivation of Musical Taste”, RTHK Radio 4, “Arts Talk: Music”. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Researcher : Hawley P |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Hawley P., "Forward Induction and Communication", 9th International Pragmatics Conference. Riva del Garda, Italy, 2005. |
| Hawley P., "Jackson and Smith on Moral Absolutism", Research seminar on 'Mind, Meaning, Value' with Professor Frank Jackson, Department of Philosophy, HKU. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Hawley P., "Which Model?", Games and Decisions in Pragmatics II, Humboldt University. Berlin, 2006. |
| Hawley P., Skepticism and the Value of Knowledge, Naturalized Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Soochow University, Taipei, 2006. |
| Researcher : Lau JYF |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Goldstein L., Brennan A., Deutsch M.E. and Lau J.Y.F., Logic (key Concepts In Philosophy). London, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, 1-200. |
| Lau J.Y.F., "Property identity and teleological theories of content", Research seminar on 'Mind, Meaning, Value' with Professor Frank Jackson, Department of Philosophy, HKU. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Lau J.Y.F., "The Nature of Emotions", Seminar with Professor Martha Nussbaum, Faculty of Law, HKU. Hong Kong, 2005. |
| Lau J.Y.F., Approaches to Critical Thinking, MIDM Workshop 'Structured Thinking', Faculty of Architecture, HKU. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Lau J.Y.F., Cognitivist theories of emotions, representations and affects, The Fifth European Congress for Analytic Philosophy. Lisbon, 2005. |
| Lau J.Y.F., Commentary on the paper "The Problem of Aggregation" by Professor Li Hon-Lam (CUHK), Philosophy Seminar, Department of Philosophy, HKU. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Lau J.Y.F., Critical Thinking in Education: Theory, Pedagogy and Practice, Educational Development Centre, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Hong Kong, 2006. |
| Lau J.Y.F., Philosophy And Food - Deconstruction And Post-modernism In Haute Cuisine, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Baptist University, Hong Kong. 2005. |
| Researcher : Li YK |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Li Y.K., Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Critique of the Arts, MPhil Thesis. HKU, 2006. |
| Researcher : Martin MR |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Martin M.R., "Mo Tzu Against the Confucians: A Defense of Mo Tzu's Utilitarianism", Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities: Conference Proceedings. Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii Conference on Arts and Humanities, 2006, 2006: 3860-3898. |
| Researcher : Moore FCT |
| Project Title: | Developing learning environments |
| Investigator(s): | Moore FCT, Kwo OWY, Jones J. |
| Department: | Ctr for Advancement of Univ Teaching |
| Source(s) of Funding: | Other Funding Scheme |
| Start Date: | 05/2001 |
| Abstract: |
| To edit and organise selected papers into a book from a conference on the scholarship of teaching and learning; to illuminate new challenges for educational practice in higher education in Hong Kong; to present scholarly responses to the challenges. |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Researcher : O'Leary TE |
| Project Title: | Michel foucault - the transformation of experience |
| Investigator(s): | O'Leary TE |
| Department: | Philosophy |
| Source(s) of Funding: | Small Project Funding |
| Start Date: | 11/2004 |
| Completion Date: | 10/2005 |
| Abstract: |
| To address Foucault's concept of experience (based on his unpublished writings) and the application it may have in the field of the philosophy of literature. |
| List of Research Outputs |
| O'Leary T.E., Art and the Urban Kaleidoscope, In: Rani Ambyo, CP Biennal 2005: Urban/Culture. Jakarta, CP Foundation, 2005, 58-65. |
| O'Leary T.E., Foucault, Dewey and the Experience of Literature, New Literary History. Maryland, USA, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, 36: pp.543-558. |
| O'Leary T.E., Foucault, Experience, Literature, Department Seminar, UNSW & University of Melbourne. 2006. |
| O'Leary T.E., New Approaches to Foucault on Literature, Recasting Foucault, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Sydney, 2006. |
| O'Leary T.E., The Shipwreck of Freedom: Aristotle, Tragedy and an Irish Novel, Literature and Aesthetics. Sydney, University of Sydney, 2005, 15: pp.191-202. |
| Researcher : Wong PH |
| List of Research Outputs |
| Wong P.H., Names and Assertions: Soames's Millian Descriptivism, MPhil Thesis. HKU, 2006. |