BEIJING, SUMMER 2009

CONFERENCE ON CLASSICAL CHINESE AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The big conference may last for 4 days, if possible. It is appropriate that its general thematic unity should principally refer to the relationships between Tao and Logos. An overall title like *The Way of Things: a Contemporary Dialogue between Tao and Logos* could well capture that emphasis while addressing also present-day awareness. Each day of the conference should be devoted to each of the main different aspects of the *Way of Things*:

1. Origin and Structure of Reality: Principles and the Cosmic Harmony.

1. The Human Order as reproduction of Cosmic Order. Individual Position in it. Confucian *Propriety* and Platonic *Oikeiopragia*. Doctrine of the Mean.

1. The Legitimacy of Power. Natural order and Human Rule: the State. Evolution of the State. The International System. Classical Theory and Classical History in China and Greece.

1. The way as the Truth and the Way as Method. Rationality Chinese and Greek. The Dialecticians in the two Classical philosophies. Modern Epistemology.

The common language of the Conference may be English (to facilitate an ongoing, integrable debate) with simultaneous translation in Chinese and Greek. The proceedings should be published in the three languages.

The schedule appropriate to the Conference may best be presentations of half an hour, followed by a discussion of ten minutes.

The two specialized Symposia may concentrate each in a particular subject, say from the list that I indicated on former communications. The pattern here should be different. A limited number of participants (some 14 has proven a good number), with two hours sessions, one hour of presentation, one of debate. Duration of a week is suitable for such a kind of meeting.

Funding should be sought also from the private sector, in particular from high profile companies, from scholarly institutions and research projects etc., in addition to that provided by governmental support.