Carine Defoort
Biographic Data
| ID | 461675 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carine Defoort |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carine |
| FAMILY NAME | Defoort |
| SIGNATURE | DEFOORT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7606-0515 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Many Lives of Yang Zhu
Five Visions of Yang Zhu Before He Became a Philosopher
This paper traces the consecutive emergence of five important portrayals of Yang Zhu before he became a philosopher in the Republic. In the late Zhou, he was portrayed as a rival in debate and a defender of physical or personal integrity. From the Han onward, he became part of a rhetorical trope based on Mencius’ portrayal. In the Wei Jin he was a prominent figure in his own right. The fourth portrayal, from the Song onward, contained reflections…
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy
Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation w…
Remembrances of Li Xueqin (1933–2019)
I first met Li Xueqin in 1981, when he was a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and I was teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Paul Thompson and I took a train to Cambridge to invite him to London for a few weeks-Paul said we should pay a scholar of his caliber the courtesy of going in person rather than writing to him. In London, Li spent an hour or so every morning happily working his way through all of the galleries of …
Having a Word with Angus Graham
The Gradual Growth of the Mohist Core Philosophy
Because of the paucity of hard facts in our knowledge of early texts such as the Mozi, we inevitably have had to rely on assumptions when interpreting these texts. These assumptions have contributed to the portrayal of Mo Di as a philosopher, the founder of Mohist thought, and promoter of a coherent thought system in Ten Core Ideas. We can read the Mozi in a novel way by methodologically putting these assumptions on hold, not necessarily by rejec…
Heavy and Light Body Parts
The article analyses the metaphorical use of weighing body parts such as fingers, arms, or a head. Our understanding of the weighing metaphor has been much influenced by A. C. Graham's characterization of its rhetorical mechanism, followed by Griet Vankeerberghen in her description of one type of weighing ( quan B). The basis of this understanding are two corrupt textual fragments in the dialectical chapters of the Mozi . Several Lü shi chunqiu c…
The Modern Formation of Early Mohism
This essay shows the historical contingency of the currently dominant portrayal of early Mohism in the field of Chinese philosophy. It documents the emergence of this portrayal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by reconstructing, first, Mozi’s supposed promotion of ten core ideas and, second, the increasingly positive appreciation of his thought after centuries of rejection. The essay focuses on the book Exposing and Correcting the Mozi …
Do the ten Mohist theses represent Mozi's thought? Reading the masters with a focus on mottos
In order to introduce Mozi's thought, almost every contemporary textbook on Chinese philosophy refers to his ten novel theses or dogmas, which have been preserved as the titles of the Core chapters (8-37): to elevate the worthy, to conform upward, to care for all, to condemn military aggression, to moderate expenses as well as burials, to acknowledge the will of Heaven and the percipient ghosts, and to condemn music as well as fatalism. Through a…
Are the Three “Jian Ai” Chapters about Universal Love?
The three consecutive chapters titled “Jian ai” in the Mozi are considered crucially important. Since the Mohist view on jian ai has always been illustrated with quotations from the “Jian ai” triplet, the former question may come as a surprise. This chapter starts by temporarily ignoring the titles of the triplet; then it works its way through the three chapters separately and concludes with a tentative understanding of the concept of jian ai as …
The Mozi as an Evolving Text
Mozi (ca. 479-381), known as the first outspoken critic of Confucius, is an important but neglected figure in early Chinese philosophy. The book Mozi, named after master Mo, was compiled in the course of the fifth - third centuries BCE. The seven studies included in the The Mozi as an Evolving Text take a fresh look at the Core Chapters, Dialogues, and Opening Chapters of the book Mozi. Rather than presenting a unified vision of Mohist thought, t…
Instruction Dialogues in the Zhuangzi
A Translation of the Mozi
This presentations confronts both academic and professional aspects of translation and journalism studies
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name? A Response to Rein Raud
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name?A Response to Rein Raud Carine Defoort In the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: "Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained."1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed that the two major traditions of mod…
Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate
Philosophy" is the showpiece of our university: every freshman student is required to follow a general course on philosophy. But regardless of the ways in which this course may be considered general, the fact is that attention to non-Western cultures is absent throughout. The course is not titled "General Western Philosophy," and yet philosophy is, quite simply, a Western matter. This demands no further explanation; it is taken for granted. It sh…
Law and Order in China, III
status: Published
Can Words Produce Order
This article presents and evaluates a dominant traditional Chinese trust in language as an efficient tool to promote social and political order. It focuses on the term shi(regicide or parricide) in the Annals (Chunqiu).This is not only the oldest text (from 722-481 BCE) regularly using this term, but its choice of words has also been considered the oldest and most exemplary instance of the normative power of language. A close study of its uses of…
Law and Order in China, II
status: Published
Law and Order in China, I
status: Published
The rhetorical power of naming
The traditional reading of ancient Chinese texts focuses on their content rather than their modes of expression: truth is considered a given, of which language is merely the expression. This approach misses out on a predominant way of arguing in Chinese texts, namely to evaluate the situation by (re) naming it. A discussion of four textual fragments (up to the 2nd century BC) concerning the topic of regicide illustrates different degrees of this …
Obscurity about Clarity
The 'Transcendence' of Tian
Recent French Publications in Comparative Philosophy
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name? A Response to Rein Raud
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name?A Response to Rein Raud Carine Defoort In the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: "Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained."1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed that the two major traditions of mod…
The 'Transcendence' of Tian
The Many Lives of Yang Zhu
Five Visions of Yang Zhu Before He Became a Philosopher
This paper traces the consecutive emergence of five important portrayals of Yang Zhu before he became a philosopher in the Republic. In the late Zhou, he was portrayed as a rival in debate and a defender of physical or personal integrity. From the Han onward, he became part of a rhetorical trope based on Mencius’ portrayal. In the Wei Jin he was a prominent figure in his own right. The fourth portrayal, from the Song onward, contained reflections…
Do the ten Mohist theses represent Mozi's thought? Reading the masters with a focus on mottos
In order to introduce Mozi's thought, almost every contemporary textbook on Chinese philosophy refers to his ten novel theses or dogmas, which have been preserved as the titles of the Core chapters (8-37): to elevate the worthy, to conform upward, to care for all, to condemn military aggression, to moderate expenses as well as burials, to acknowledge the will of Heaven and the percipient ghosts, and to condemn music as well as fatalism. Through a…
Recent French Publications in Comparative Philosophy
Obscurity about Clarity
The 'Transcendence' of Tian
The rhetorical power of naming
The traditional reading of ancient Chinese texts focuses on their content rather than their modes of expression: truth is considered a given, of which language is merely the expression. This approach misses out on a predominant way of arguing in Chinese texts, namely to evaluate the situation by (re) naming it. A discussion of four textual fragments (up to the 2nd century BC) concerning the topic of regicide illustrates different degrees of this …
Law and Order in China, II
status: Published
Law and Order in China, I
status: Published
Law and Order in China, III
status: Published
Can Words Produce Order
This article presents and evaluates a dominant traditional Chinese trust in language as an efficient tool to promote social and political order. It focuses on the term shi(regicide or parricide) in the Annals (Chunqiu).This is not only the oldest text (from 722-481 BCE) regularly using this term, but its choice of words has also been considered the oldest and most exemplary instance of the normative power of language. A close study of its uses of…
Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate
Philosophy" is the showpiece of our university: every freshman student is required to follow a general course on philosophy. But regardless of the ways in which this course may be considered general, the fact is that attention to non-Western cultures is absent throughout. The course is not titled "General Western Philosophy," and yet philosophy is, quite simply, a Western matter. This demands no further explanation; it is taken for granted. It sh…
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name? A Response to Rein Raud
Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name?A Response to Rein Raud Carine Defoort In the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: "Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained."1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed that the two major traditions of mod…
A Translation of the Mozi
This presentations confronts both academic and professional aspects of translation and journalism studies
Instruction Dialogues in the Zhuangzi
Are the Three “Jian Ai” Chapters about Universal Love?
The three consecutive chapters titled “Jian ai” in the Mozi are considered crucially important. Since the Mohist view on jian ai has always been illustrated with quotations from the “Jian ai” triplet, the former question may come as a surprise. This chapter starts by temporarily ignoring the titles of the triplet; then it works its way through the three chapters separately and concludes with a tentative understanding of the concept of jian ai as …
The Mozi as an Evolving Text
Mozi (ca. 479-381), known as the first outspoken critic of Confucius, is an important but neglected figure in early Chinese philosophy. The book Mozi, named after master Mo, was compiled in the course of the fifth - third centuries BCE. The seven studies included in the The Mozi as an Evolving Text take a fresh look at the Core Chapters, Dialogues, and Opening Chapters of the book Mozi. Rather than presenting a unified vision of Mohist thought, t…
Do the ten Mohist theses represent Mozi's thought? Reading the masters with a focus on mottos
In order to introduce Mozi's thought, almost every contemporary textbook on Chinese philosophy refers to his ten novel theses or dogmas, which have been preserved as the titles of the Core chapters (8-37): to elevate the worthy, to conform upward, to care for all, to condemn military aggression, to moderate expenses as well as burials, to acknowledge the will of Heaven and the percipient ghosts, and to condemn music as well as fatalism. Through a…
Heavy and Light Body Parts
The article analyses the metaphorical use of weighing body parts such as fingers, arms, or a head. Our understanding of the weighing metaphor has been much influenced by A. C. Graham's characterization of its rhetorical mechanism, followed by Griet Vankeerberghen in her description of one type of weighing ( quan B). The basis of this understanding are two corrupt textual fragments in the dialectical chapters of the Mozi . Several Lü shi chunqiu c…
The Modern Formation of Early Mohism
This essay shows the historical contingency of the currently dominant portrayal of early Mohism in the field of Chinese philosophy. It documents the emergence of this portrayal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by reconstructing, first, Mozi’s supposed promotion of ten core ideas and, second, the increasingly positive appreciation of his thought after centuries of rejection. The essay focuses on the book Exposing and Correcting the Mozi …
The Gradual Growth of the Mohist Core Philosophy
Because of the paucity of hard facts in our knowledge of early texts such as the Mozi, we inevitably have had to rely on assumptions when interpreting these texts. These assumptions have contributed to the portrayal of Mo Di as a philosopher, the founder of Mohist thought, and promoter of a coherent thought system in Ten Core Ideas. We can read the Mozi in a novel way by methodologically putting these assumptions on hold, not necessarily by rejec…
Having a Word with Angus Graham
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy
Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation w…
Remembrances of Li Xueqin (1933–2019)
I first met Li Xueqin in 1981, when he was a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and I was teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Paul Thompson and I took a train to Cambridge to invite him to London for a few weeks-Paul said we should pay a scholar of his caliber the courtesy of going in person rather than writing to him. In London, Li spent an hour or so every morning happily working his way through all of the galleries of …
Five Visions of Yang Zhu Before He Became a Philosopher
This paper traces the consecutive emergence of five important portrayals of Yang Zhu before he became a philosopher in the Republic. In the late Zhou, he was portrayed as a rival in debate and a defender of physical or personal integrity. From the Han onward, he became part of a rhetorical trope based on Mencius’ portrayal. In the Wei Jin he was a prominent figure in his own right. The fourth portrayal, from the Song onward, contained reflections…
The Many Lives of Yang Zhu
Philosophy (18 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (17 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Art (12 works) · Literature (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · China (6 works) · History (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works)