A public lecture on "CONFUCIANISM IN A GLOBALISING WORLD"

By
Professor Tu Weiming
Director of Harvard-Yenching Institute
Member of Utar's International Advisory Council

November3, 2004 at 9.30 a.m.

Cybertorium, Level 2, Menara Star
No.15, Jalan 16/11, 46350 Petaling Jaya

Presented by Utar and Asian Center for Media Studies

About the lecture

Globalization enhances cultural diversity and accentuates cultural identity. Unlike Westernization and modernization, which is conceived as a process of homogenization, globalization is characterized not only by economic and political convergence but also by social and cultural divergence. While, for ecological, technological, financial, or security reasons, we are inevitably intertwined in an ever-expanding network of relationships, we are acutely aware of our distinctiveness and uniqueness as individuals and groups.

Confucian humanism, as a critique of abstract universalism and closed particularities, seeks to realize public-spiritedness in our concrete and contextualized life world. Through dialogue at all levels - intercultural, regional, national and local, Confucian spiritually address four inseparable dimensions of human flourishing:

  1. integration of body, heart, mind and soul in personal self-cultivation
  2. fruitful interaction between self and community (family, neighborhood, society, nation and the world)
  3. sustainable harmonious relationship between human species and nature
  4. mutuality and mutual responsiveness between the human heart-and-mind and the Way of Heaven
Biography

Dr. Tu Weiming, is the Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies at Harvard University and the Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Born in February 1940 in Kunming, China, he grew up in Taiwan and obtained a B.A. in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University (1961). He earned both his M.A. (1963) and Ph.D. (1968) at Harvard. He has taught Chinese intellectual history, philosophies of China, and Confucian studies at Princeton University (1967-71) and University of California at Berkeley (1971-81). He also taught at Peking University, Taiwan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and L'Ecole Pratique des Haute Etudes.

Professor Tu Weiming holds honorary degrees from LeHigh University, State University of Michigan at Grand Valley, and Shandong University and honorary professorships from Renmin University, Zhejiang University, and Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He is a board member of the Chinese Heritage Centre in Singapore, an international advisor of UTAR in Malaysia, a vice-president of the International Association for Confucian Studies, a member of the Committee of 100, the chair of the international advisory committee for the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, a participant of the "Group of Eminent Persons" appointed by Kofi Annan to facilitate the dialogue among civilizations, a knowledge navigator of the World Economic Forum at Davos, a moderator of executive seminars at the Aspen Institute, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has published more than ten books in English and Chinese, primarily focusing on the modern transformation of Confucian humanism. A five-volume collection of his works was issued in China in 2001.

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