June 27, 2007: On a beautiful summer day, after a week-long succession of grey rainy days here in the Pacific Northwest, I'm writing this report. While we enjoy a relatively gentle weather here, typhoon no. 4 hit Japan hard, dumping much rain, which was followed by an earthquake in the central northwestern region. In England, they report the worst weather in the last one or two hundred years, as the Themes is rising, threatening to flood many areas, including a power supplying house. In Romania tens of people died of extreme heat, and countless fires are burning in Greece and Italy. Are these phenomena at all related to the global warming?

September 6: Since I began the initial draft of this report, over a month has passed. I am glad to inform you that you will soon be finding this report posted on the SACP website, which will be redesigned and in operation by mid-September or thereabout. We expect to be updating the contents as we go along.

Report of the 2007 Asilomar Conference

 

I would like to report to you on our 2007 Annual Conference on "Comparative Philosophy: Then, Now, and the Future" that took place at Asilomar, June 10-13. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of SACP, we had the pleasure of honoring Professor Eliot Deutsch, one of the founding members, as the keynote speaker. Over sixty members and a dozen "honorary participants" attended the conference, which was full of conviviality and enwrapped by the spirit of festivity. Talking about conviviality, many young and young-at-hearts partied every night, after our regular social hour. The lounge of Stuckup, one of the Asilomar compounds, where connoisseurs of good living happened to be staying, became the hub of the late nightly parties. The younger and the older freely mingled and spoke out their minds and opened their hearts.

A new feature of this year's conference was the implementation of Graduate Student Paper Award Contest. Over a dozen papers by graduate students were entered into this competition. The papers underwent a blind-review process among the Program Committee members. After very careful reading of, and deliberation on, each paper, the Committee identified the top three winners. Congratulations to Daniel Stephens, Meilin Chinn, Jeremy Henkel, and Michael Ing (the third place was a tie). Meanwhile, we solicited donations from among the general members and were able to fund the winner of the first prize with $900. We were also able to waive the conference registration fee for the winners of top three places. We thank those of you who generously contributed to this exciting venture.

At our membership business meeting, Al Albergate was unanimously elected Secretary/Treasurer to fill the vacated post. Al's tenure of the office is 2007-2010.

Other change approved was to do with the assignment of the Program Chairs. Please note the new (and continuing) chairs of the respective organization for submitting your proposal—APA (American Philosophical Association), AAR (American Academy of Religion), and AAS (Association for Asian Studies).

	APA Eastern: Doug Berger (dberger @siu.edu)
	APA Central: Ronnie Littlejohn (littlejohnr@mail.belmont.edu)
	APA Pacific: Jim Behuniak (jim.behuniak@colby.edu)
	American Academy of Religion: Gereon Kopf (kopfg@luther.edu)
	Association for Asian Studies: Robin Wang (rwang@lmu.edu)

Currently, the deadline for the APA Central (meeting at Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, April 17-20, 2008) is September 10, 2007, APA Pacific Division (meeting at Hilton, Pasadena, CA, March 18-223, 2008) is October 19, 2007, AAS (meeting at Hyatt Regency, Atlanta GA, April 3-6, 2008) is October 15, 2007. Please contact Ronnie, Jim and/or Robin to be on these panels. Other panels have been formed for this year.

Asilomar Conference: A Reflection on the Word "Comparative"

In his keynote address, Eliot Deutsch masterfully summarized the achievements of the "comparative philosophy" in the last four decades as well as the challenges we are presently faced with, which occasioned us all to reflect on the methodologies in the field of "comparative philosophy."

"Comparative philosophy," Eliot emphasizes, is a creative philosophy, underscored by the freedom of our spirit. Our engagement with traditions other than our own clarifies our own philosophical presuppositions and formulations of issues. Carefully navigating the course away from "general synthesis" (universalistic language), "typologies," and "piecemeal" approach of contrasting terms and concepts, Eliot points to the common core of human experience—by following the guiding principle of what he calls "metaphysical value." We are called to exercise our "good taste" in engaging the reality of human experiences, inter-culturally or trans-culturally. And this exercise of good taste involves aesthetic necessity. "Anything beautiful must harmonize," so the time-honored wisdom has it. As we heed to this metaphysical value, we find ourselves in the good company of great thinkers past and present.

It struck me to be noteworthy that we seem to be moving away from the term "comparative philosophy," as our engagement in this venture has progressed. It is as if the word "comparative" somehow does not sound right any more. In his keynote address, Eliot replaced "comparative philosophy" with "cross-cultural philosophy," "trans-cultural philosophy," and "global philosophy." And Fred Dallmayr, who introduced Eliot as the keynote speaker, noted Eliot's contribution to "global philosophy" or "world philosophy." The intended absence of the word "comparative" from the evening of discourse was quite interesting in itself. Former student of Raimon Panikkar, several of whom were present at the conference, are familiar with the professor's view that a "comparative" study of religion or philosophy ought to be "imparative" study, taking the Italian verb "imparare" (to learn) as the guiding light. In fact, a suggestion was brought to me that perhaps we may want to consider renaming our Society as: "The Society for Asian and Intercultural Philosophy" (SAIP). This, indeed, comes as a food for thought.

Announcement: Annual Conference 2008: June 8-11

The dates of next year's Asilomar Conference are June 8-11, 2008. Please mark your calendar. The theme of the 2008 conference is: "Globalization, Environment, and Community." The call for papers will be announced in late October or early November, which will come with the deadline of the submission of your abstracts on December 31, 2007.

Redesigned website to be operative in mid- to late-September 2007

You can again enjoy the accustomed convenience of (1) paying membership dues on line, (2) checking the Society's calls for papers for the panels held in conjunction with the APA, AAR, and AAS annual meetings, (3) submitting abstract proposals to the program chairs of these meetings, (4) registering on line for the 2008 Annual Conference at Asilomar, (5) accessing Online Forum, and (6) checking updated activities of the Society. The website URL remains the same: sacpweb.org, and once the website is up, we will contact you again to ask you to login and update your personal information.

Wishing you a very pleasant fall season,
Yours,
Michiko Yusa
President, SACP 2006-2007