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臺大外文系學術演講 Between Remedies and Rites: Grief in Greco-Roman Philosophy and Early Confucianism （James L. Zainaldin） |
| 公告內容 |
NTU DFLL Faculty Colloquium
臺大外文系學術演講
Title: Between Remedies and Rites: Grief in Greco-Roman Philosophy and Early Confucianism
Speaker: Prof. James L. Zainaldin （Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, Vanderbilt University）
Moderator: Prof. Edward Nolan （National Taiwan Unversity）
Time: 15:30-17:00, April 17, 2026
Venue: B208, NTU Humanities Hall （臺大人文館B208室）
Abstract: This paper investigates why Greco-Roman antiquity developed a substantial tradition of “philosophical consolation” aimed at ameliorating grief while early China did not, despite deep engagement with mourning. Greco-Roman consolation, exemplified by Crantor, Cicero, and Seneca, rested on premises that grief is useless, death is not an evil, and emotions must be suppressed by reason—treating bereavement as a malady to be cured within a broader understanding of philosophy as “therapy of the soul.” Early Confucianism approached mourning differently: centered on elaborate rites, it positioned profound grief as a moral obligation demonstrating filial piety and humaneness, such that consolation would be ethically corrosive. Non-Confucian perspectives—Mohist arguments for abbreviated funerals and Zhuangzi’s reframing of death as natural transformation—underscore that this approach was deliberate rather than inevitable. The comparative inquiry defamiliarizes the Western assumption that grief is an affliction to be overcome and revitalizes an alternative intuition: that grieving can be a profound moral duty.
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