Theorizing at Rowan: Youru Wang (Rowan University), "Empathy in the Daoist Zhuangzi"
On Wednesday, March 27, at 5 PM, Youru Wang (World Religions, Rowan University), will present a talk entitled “Empathy in the Daoist Zhuangzi” The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 121 and online via Zoom.
Prof. Wang has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “This talk investigates elements of empathy in the classical Daoist text Zhuangzi in terms of four prominent aspects of current scholarship on empathy: different types of empathy; the other-centeredness of empathy; empathy as a process and the role empathy plays in responsiveness to others; and interaction between empathy and other capacities. While the Zhuangzi does not invent any specific term for an exclusive designation of empathy, it does pay great attention to the phenomena of empathy. It characterizes central features of empathy, such as other-centeredness, perceptual directness, its function as listening, mirroring, qi-energy-connecting and receptivity, how to cultivate one’s empathic capacity in one's encounter with others, and especially how empathy works with the Daoist forgetfulness of self-centricity.”
This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Asian Studies Program.
Series Info:
Theorizing at Rowan is a series of public, work in progress lectures covering topics of interest to scholars in philosophy, religion studies, and other related disciplines. The goal of the series is to promote scholarly exchange involving the Department of Philosophy and World Religions, the University, and beyond. Speakers will include members of the department as well as faculty from other departments at Rowan and from other institutions.
All Theorizing at Rowan events are free and open to the public.
For more information, visit https://theorizing-at-rowan.tumblr.com