Seminar: “The Historical Developments of Confucius in China”

The French Cultural Center (French Institute) - L'Espace cordially invites you to attend the seminar "The Historical Developments of Confucius in China"."by Anne Cheng,Sinologist, expert on the history of Chinese thought at the Collège de France.

Time:Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 5:30 PM

Location:French Cultural Center Hall

24 Trang Tien Street, Hanoi

Simultaneous French-Vietnamese translation

Introduction to the workshop:

Although Confucius (551-479 AD) alone seems to have created a cultural phenomenon intertwined with the fate of Chinese civilization, his appearance in the background of the Analects is shrouded in mystery and paradox: unlike his contemporaries such as Buddha or the pre-Socratic philosophers, Confucius was not a philosopher who founded an ideology, nor was he the founder of any faith or religion. At first glance, his thought appears pragmatic, his teachings based on the obvious, and he himself almost considered his life a failure. Therefore, we have every reason to wonder why Confucius holds such a special place in history?

The aim of the seminar is to explain the enduring value of Confucius' teachings, which, despite the ups and downs of history, have remained a source of inspiration in China for the past two thousand five hundred years and are still very popular in contemporary society.

Introducing the speaker:

Anne ChengBorn in 1955 in Paris to Chinese parents, she spent her entire education in France, nurtured by classical and European humanism, attending a teacher training college before dedicating herself entirely to the study of China. For nearly 30 years, she has been teaching and researching the spiritual history of China, particularly Confucianism, within the framework of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), then within the framework of the Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations (INALCO), before being appointed to a French university and most recently, elected to the Collège de France.

She is the author of the French translation of the bookAnalects- Confucius (Seuil Publishers, 1981) is the author of a book on Confucianism and the bookHistory of Chinese thought(Seuil Publishers, 1997, reprinted in 2002 and translated into many languages). She is also the editor of numerous collective works, including her most recent one.Ideology in China Today(Gallimard, 2007).