The Seminar “R.H.Lotze and Philosophy of Values” was successfully held
From 20 -21 May, 2017, the seminar " R.H.Lotze and Philosophy of Values " co-sponsored by Center for Studies of Values and Culture of Beijing Normal University, School of Philosophy, Institute of Marxist Philosophy and Collaborative Innovation Center was successfully held in the Jingshi Hotel. More than 30 scholars from Fudan University, Wuhan University, Nankai University, Sun Yat-sen University, Sichuan University and many other research institutions participated in the seminar. Scholars made adequate preparations before the seminar, which entailed not only translations of Lotze’s works such as "On the Concept of Beauty", "The World of Ideas", and "Philosophy in the Last Forty Years", but also translations and introductions of other philosophers’ research on him, e.g. Walter, Schiller, Santayana, and Wallace, etc.
Professor ZHOU Fan, researcher of the center, presided over the opening ceremony and displayed vivid pictures of Lotze’s life and works. Professor WU Xiang Dong, dean of the School of Philosophy of Beijing Normal University, director of Center for Studies of Values and Culture, and deputy executive director of Collaborative Innovation Center, delivered a speech, expressing a warm welcome to all the scholars and introducing the basic situation of the School of Philosophy and Center for Studies of Values and Culture. He affirmed the importance of Lotze's thoughts from the perspective of philosophy of values.
The seminar kicked off with the speech of Professor FENG Ping from Fudan University, an external expert of the center. Starting from the background of domestic research on philosophy of values in the 1980s, Professor FENG Ping described the history, significance and prospects of the research work. She believed that research on philosophy of values should be rooted in the rapids of civilization transformation, and discover problems and study them. The seminar not only discussed Lotze's thoughts regarding philosophy of values, logic, aesthetics, knowledge, and his analyses of concepts such as beauty and existence, but also discussed the relationship between Lotze and Kant, Husserl, Heidegger and Brentano. Experts at the seminar affirmed Lotze had profound influence on post-phenomenology, analytical philosophy, neo-Hegelianism and pragmatism.
Finally, Professor LAN Jiu Fu from Beijing Normal University made a concluding speech from three aspects — the nature, content and significance of the seminar. The seminar was a professional and high-level academic feast. All issues discussed during the seminar was rather in-depth and concentrated. The seminar was elaborately held on the 200th anniversary of Lotze's birth, being a tribute to this great thinker. At the same time, Lotze was regarded as a pioneer of philosophy of values in the western world, the research on whom would beneficially boost the internationalization level of philosophy of values in China.
