[Report] The 3rd BESETO Conference of Philosophy

29 January, 2009 MURATA Junichi, NAKAZAWA Eisuke, OGUCHI Mineki

The 3rd BESETO (Peking University, Seoul National University and the University of Tokyo) Conference of Philosophy was held on January 10–11, 2009 at the University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus. The theme of the conference was “Philosophy in the East Asian Context: Knowledge, Action, Death, and Life.”

The BESETO Conference was designed for a further exchange between junior scholars after Professor Nam-In Lee (Seoul National University), Professor Xianglong Zhang (Beijing University) and Professor Murata Jun-ichi (University of Tokyo) discussed the significance of such an academic exchange at the PEACE meeting, held in Tokyo in September 2006.

The first meeting was organized in Seoul, Korea and was composed of presentations by graduate students and junior scholars. The second meeting was held on the 27th and 28th of December 2007 at Shaoyuan Hotel of Beijing University.

In the 3rd BESETO Conference, we had 45 presentations which had a wide variety of themes including Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy, classical philosophy, analytic philosophy, phenomenology and bioethics. Every presentation was well-formed, and there were lively debates about that. The conference was successful.

True, there are still a lot of problems with the BESETO conference. For this point, please see Mr. Frumer’s post on the UTCP Blog [here!]. He discussed the place and language of philosophy, meta-reflecting on the BESETO conference. I think it is important to develop the conference and our friendships further.

I want to express my profound gratitude to UTCP, DALS and Ichikou Memorial Foundation and to express my thanks to everyone who attended the conference. Particularly, I thank each and every one of participants from Beijing and Seoul.

(Eisuke Nakazawa)

Please download the photos in the BESETO conference.

Welcome Reception (2009/01/09)

　