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CATEGORIES:Lecture / Talk / Workshop
DESCRIPTION:A lecture by Jessica Zu\, Princeton University\n\nWhere can we 
 find moral agency in a world governed by scientific laws and Darwinist comp
 etition? Are human beings puppets controlled by invisible natural laws and 
 doomed to compete for survival? Some monotheistic cultures have drawn from 
 the concepts of God and soul\, and theorized a rational individual endowed 
 with free will\, thus conceptualizing an agent who can make ethical choices
 . However\, in pan-theist or non-theistic cultures\, without indigenous equ
 ivalents of God or soul\, what moral sources have thinkers used to resolve 
 these pressing issues?\n\nHow have their solutions molded the modern transf
 ormation of Asia?\n\nThis talk directs us to the philosophical culture of e
 arly twentieth-century China by analyzing the efforts of a group of intelle
 ctuals\, including Lü Cheng (1896-1989)\, who turned to an extreme form of 
 Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra\, the school of consciousness-only—as a source f
 or theorizing moral agency.\n\nThis talk shows how modern Chinese Buddhist 
 thinkers drew on older Yogācāra theories of consciousness and karma\, redef
 ining science in terms of karmic causation and streams of consciousness. Ms
 . Zu argues that by reframing scientific laws as karmic causality\, they re
 -enchanted an otherwise grim scientific world with Buddhist ethics and reca
 st social competition as collective spiritual progress.\n\nThis talk uncove
 rs the motivations\, context\, doctrinal inner workings\, and broader influ
 ence of Yogācāra theory of social evolution with implications for the Buddh
 ist underpinning of Chinese modernity\, calling into question the otherwise
  neat boundaries separating religion\, science\, social theory\, and moral 
 philosophy.
DTEND:20200210T220000Z
DTSTAMP:20260415T184019Z
DTSTART:20200210T200000Z
GEO:34.020197;-118.283725
LOCATION:Doheny Memorial Library (DML)\, 110c
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:When Dharma Meets Darwin: The Birth of a Buddhist Social Evolutiona
 ry Theory in Modern China
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_32460807272441
URL:https://calendar.usc.edu/event/when_dharma_meets_darwin_the_birth_of_a_
 buddhist_social_evolutionary_theory_in_modern_china
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