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Moral Education between East Asian and Greco Roman Classics

19 June 2025

Please direct any questions you may have to the conference organizers, Cynthia Liu, Charis Jo, and Ross Moncrieff at admin@janus-project.org.

Thursday 19 June

13:00-13:30: Registration and Welcome 

 

13:30-15:00: Panel 1 - Greek and Chinese Moral Philosophy in Jesuit Sinology

  • Elisa Della Calce and Simone Mollea (University of Turin): "Educational Strategies in Teaching Moral Virtues: the Case of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus's Zhongyong (Book II)."
  • I Xuan Chong (University of St. Andrews): "Daoist Moral Education."
  • Yu Wang (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): "On the Stoic elements in Alfonso Vagnoni (⾼⼀志)'s educational philosophy."

 

15:00-15:15: Coffee and Tea Break

 

15:15-16:45: Panel 2 - European Images of China

  • Anqi Fang (University of Cambridge): "Between Talent and Virtue: Shijing's Dual Role in Ming-Qing Literary Practices and Its Exoticised Reinvention in Nineteenth-Century European Literature."
  • Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa (University of Oxford): "Drawing Asian Antiquities into Biblical Time: Comparative Philology and the Re-Sacralizing of Enlightenment Universal History between India and China."
  • Yue Zhuang (University of Exeter): "Perfecting Natural Reason: Sir William Temple, Confucianism, and the Quarrel of the
    Ancients and Moderns."

 

16:45-17:00: Coffee and Tea Break

 

17:00: Keynote - Thierry Meynard

 

Friday 20 June

9:30-11:00: Panel 3 - Morality Tales and Greek Didacticism in Ming and Qing China

  • Giulia Falato (University of Parma): "The Political Life of a Fable: The Belly and the Members from Rome to China."
  • Andrew Hui (Yale-NUS): "Mathematics and Moral Pedagogy in the Qing Court: The Kangxi Emperor's Study of Euclid."
  • Valentina Yang (KU Leuven): "From miraculous to exemplary: moral reframing of Christian devotional tales in early modern Sino-European interactions."

 

11:00-11:15: Coffee and Tea Break

 

11:15-12:45: Panel 4 - Jesuit Translations and Linguistics

  • Kim-Bảo Đặng (New University of Lisbon): "Shadowing Alvaro Semedo: Chinese Influence on Christian Translations in the Jesuit Missions in Vietnam."
  • João Riso (University of Lisbon): "The Use of Latin as an Intermediary Language in Learning Chinese: A Deeper Look into a 17th Century Latin-Chinese Dictionary."
  • Wu Di (University of Lisbon): "How the Jesuits learned Confucianism in the late Ming dynasty: the Latin annotations to the Four Books by Francesco Brancati."

 

12:45-13:30: Lunch

 

13:30-14:30: Panel 5 - Moral Education between Ancient China and Greece

  • Hin Ming Frankie Chik (University of Pittsburgh): "Desiring the Virtuous: Comparative Reflections on the Teacher as Moral Ideal in Early Confucianism and the Platonic Symposium."
  • Matthew Walker (Yale-NUS): "On the "Philosophical" Status of Xenophon's Memorabilia and the Analects of Confucius in Modern Europe."
  • Yu Wang (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): "On the Stoic elements in Alfonso Vagnoni (⾼⼀志)'s educational philosophy."

 

14:30-15:15: Coffee and Tea Break

 

11:15-12:45: Panel 6 - Aristotle and Confucianism

  • Xing Hao Wang (University of Chicago): "Aristotle the Xunzian: Virtue Politics in Ancient Greece and China."
  • Wenzhen Jin (University of Vienna): "Persuasion and Moral Instruction in Aristotle and Han Fei."
  • Benjamin Huff (Randolph-Macon College): "Moral Starting Points in Aristotle and Mencius."

 

16:45-17:00: Coffee and Tea Break

 

17:00: Keynote - Jingyi Jenny Zhao