Admission requirements
Admission to this course is restricted to:
BA students in Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including Philosophical Skills and one of the following combinations: Ethics and Political Philosophy OR Philosophy of Culture and Concepts of Selfhood OR Concepts of Selfhood and and at least one of the components World Philosophies: China, India, Middle East or Africa.
BA students in Filosofie, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including Filosofische vaardigheden and one of the following combinations: Ethiek and Politieke filosofie OR Cultuurfilosofie and Continentale filosofie OR Philosophy of Mind and Comparative Philosophy.
Pre-master’s students in Philosophy who are in possession of an admission statement and who have to complete an advanced seminar.
Description
This course will introduce students to the various ways that Indian and Chinese philosophers, from the 19th century to the present, both responded to Western colonization efforts themselves and reenvisioned their own traditions for a hoped-for and realized post-colonial world. In the course of this overview, we will see how two general approaches, one accommodationist and the other self-assertive, can be found in major modern and contemporary thinkers from the Indian Bengali Renaissance to nationalist reformers to contemporary post-colonialists, and from the late Qing and early Republican period to post-Revolutionary and contemporary perspectives in China.
In the run of the semester, students will become familiar with how philosophy, and the standards for what counts as philosophy, are continually being renegotiated and re-framed in the span of the Colonial to Decolonial periods in India and China. Indian authors will range from Rammohan Roy, Vivekananda, Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar to B.S. Yadav and Gayartri Spivak, while Chinese authors will range from Kang Youwei, Hu Shi and Mao Zedong to Tang Junyi, Lu Hsiu-lien and Min Ouyang.
Course objectives
Students will:
read and analyze texts which exemplify the various ways in which philosophers in modern India and China responded to the challenges of Western colonial efforts and particularly of the Western standards and frameworks of philosophy that the former needed to somehow confront.
learn how to recognize different styles of both accommodation and self-asseertion that modern Indian and Chinese philosophers resorted to in their responses to the philosophical challenges that the Colonial Period brought them.
learn about how modern and contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers have envisioned the histories and futures of their own philosophical traditions in formulating their own senses and evaluations of post-colonial theory.
formulate questions from the readings and prepare to disucss and debate them during the class sessions.
do one paired presentation with another student during the semester which focuses on a preferred theme, idea or argument from that week’s reading material.
conduct a major intercultural philosophy research project which will result in a written essay by the end of the semester, with significant incorporation of at least one of the authors we have read during the course.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Research
Assessment method
Assessment
Midterm essay (30%)
Final essay (30%)
Oral presentation (30%)
Active participation (10%)
Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
Students can resit the final paper, with evaluation and feedback available via Brightspace no more than two workweeks after the completion of the assignment.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Essential readings will be communicated through Brightspace.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga
Remarks
Not applicable.