What do Confucius, Josef Pieper, and Elizabeth Anscombe have in common? Far from being an attempt at obscurantist humor, this is a question that is worthy of serious philosophical reflection. Indeed, it will emerge that these figures are intellectually much closer to each other than any of them are to the dominant mode of theorizing about ethics in modern Anglophone philosophy.

In this talk, Nicholas Teh will explore Simon Leys' delightful essay “An Introduction to Confucius,” which highlights Confucius' emphasis on silence and contemplation as a precondition for philosophical thought. He will bring this and several other themes (the nature and method of philosophical thought, and the role of tradition and aesthetic perception) into dialogue with Anscombe's contra mundum approach to ethics in her seminal essay ”Modern Moral Philosophy", and Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

On Friday, October 10, at 12 PM, join Nicholas Teh (Notre Dame) as we explore silence and virtue over lunch. For the seminar, we read Simon Leys’s essays, “An Introduction to Confucius” and “Poetry and Painting.”