Tang Chun-I Visiting Professorship Departmental Seminar: The Ethical, the Ordinary, and the Spiritual

Abstract:

Writers from different spiritual traditions have emphasized the importance, in our reflections on the ethical life of humans, of attending to ordinary humans who might be unlearnt or even illiterate, such as the “simple laboring folk” (Tolstoy) or the “people of scanty learning” (Tagore). The point is echoed by some contemporary philosophers, such as Iris Murdoch who urges the “return from philosophical theory to simple thing,” “things which are familiar to us in ordinary life,” and who also highlights the idea of the spiritual in this connection. In what ways does attending to the ordinary and the familiar bear on our ethical reflections, and how might doing so lead to the idea of the spiritual?

This seminar presentation proposes that attending to the ordinary and the familiar highlights a mode of non-normative ethical reflection (reflection on the nature of the ethical experiences of humans) and a mode of normative ethical reflection (reflection on how it is desirable for humans to live) that differ from certain modes of ethical reflection common in the contemporary philosophical literature. Highlighting such modes of reflection helps us better understand the nature of the ethical experiences of ordinary humans, in a manner that engages directly with their ethical concerns and that also brings to light a certain kind of transformative experience that might be described as “spiritual” in certain common usages of the term.

Conducted in English
All are welcome