Circulars & Program

The World Congress of Philosophy is organized every five years by the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) in collaboration with one of its member societies. 

The XXIV World Congress will be held in Beijing, China, from August 13 to August 20, 2018, under the auspices of the Chinese Organizing Committee. 

The complementary aims of the 2018 Congress include an emphasis on exploring dimensions of the human and inquiring into the challenges facing humanity:

To globalize philosophical investigations to encompass the diverse forms of philosophizing by past and present thinkers across cultures, with special attention to critical reflections on philosophy itself and the tasks and functions of philosophy in the contemporary world;

To open the philosophical area to enable philosophers to address emerging global issues through fruitful interactions with other disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, with other activities in economic, social, political, and religious spheres, as well as with diverse cultures and traditions;

To encourage philosophical reflections to become public discourses on recurrent human concerns, such as ecology, justice, and peace. Endowed with arguably the longest history of cultural continuity but deeply challenged by severe ruptures in its modern transformation, China provides a unique locale to raise fundamental questions about self, community, nature, spirituality, traditions, and modernity, evoking the idea of philosophy as practice as well as theory. 

The 2018 Congress invites discussions on the nature, roles, and responsibilities of philosophy and philosophers to enhance a common awareness of “learning to be human.” It is committed to attending to problems, conflicts, inequalities, and injustices connected with the development of a planetary civilization that is simultaneously technoscientific and multicultural.

PLENARY SESSIONS

1. Self

2. Community

3. Nature

4. Spirituality

5. Traditions

SYMPOSIA

1. Ren, Ubuntu, Love, and the Heart

2. Mind, Brain, Body, Consciousness, Emotions

3. Philosophy at the Margins: Domination,

Freedom, and Solidarity

4. Rights, Responsibility, and Justice

5. Human, Non-human, Post-human

6. Science, Technology, and the Environment

7. Creativity, Symbol, and Aesthetic Sense

8. Reason, Wisdom, and the Good Life

9. Expressibility, Dialogue, Translatability

10. Differences, Diversities, and Commonality

SECTIONS FOR CONTRIBUTED PAPERS

1. Aesthetics and philosophies of art

2. African philosophy

3. Africana philosophy

4. Ancient Greek philosophy

i. Presocratic philosophy

ii. Classical Greek philosophy

iii. Hellenistic philosophy

iv. Neo-Platonic philosophy

5. Bioethics

6. Buddhist philosophy

7. Business ethics

8. Byzantine philosophy

9. Chinese philosophy

i. Pre-Qin philosophy

ii. Philosophy from Han to Qing

iii. Modern Chinese philosophy

iv. Contemporary Chinese philosophy

10. Christian philosophy

11. Comparative philosophy

12. Conceptual history

13. Confucian philosophy

14. Contemporary philosophy

15. Contemporary philosophies in China

16. Cosmopolitanism

17. Daoist philosophy

18. East Asian and Southeast Asian philosophies

19. Environmental philosophy

20. Ethics

21. Ethics in research

22. Existential philosophy

23. Experimental philosophy

24. History of analytic philosophy

25. History of philosophy

26. Humanism and post-humanism

27. Human rights

28. Indian philosophies

29. Intercultural philosophy

30. Islamic philosophy

31. Jewish philosophy

32. Latin American philosophy

33. Logic

34. Marxist philosophy

35. Medical ethics

36. Medieval philosophy

37. Metaphilosophy

38. Metaphysics

39. Mystical traditions in philosophy

40. Moral psychology

41. Ontology

42. Phenomenology

43. Philosophical anthropology

44. Philosophical counseling and therapy

45. Philosophical hermeneutics

46. Philosophical issues about race

47. Philosophy and cinema

48. Philosophy and linguistics

49. Philosophy and literature

50. Philosophy and popular culture

51. Philosophy and oral traditions

52. Philosophy and psychoanalysis

53. Philosophy at the margins

54. Philosophy for children

55. Philosophy of action

56. Philosophy of architecture

57. Philosophy of argumentation

58. Philosophy of artificial intelligence

59. Philosophy of cognitive neurosciences

60. Philosophy of communication

61. Philosophy of culture

62. Philosophy of death

63. Philosophy of development

64. Philosophy of economics

65. Philosophy of education

66. Philosophy of family

67. Philosophy of food

68. Philosophy of gender

69. Philosophy of globalization

70. Philosophy of history

71. Philosophy of indigenous cultures

72. Philosophy of information and digital culture

73. Philosophy of language

74. Philosophy of law

75. Philosophy of liberation

76. Philosophy of logic

77. Philosophy of mathematics

78. Philosophy of mind

79. Philosophy of music

80. Philosophy of nature

81. Philosophy of physics

82. Philosophy of religion

83. Philosophy of science

84. Philosophy of sex and love

85. Philosophy of sport

86. Philosophy of technology

87. Philosophy of the axial age

88. Philosophy of the body

89. Philosophy of the human and social sciences

90. Philosophy of the life sciences

91. Philosophy of values

92. Political philosophy

93. Postmodernism

94. Renaissance and early modern philosophy

95. Russian philosophy

96. Social philosophy

97. Sociology of philosophy

98. Teaching philosophy

99. Theories of knowledge and epistemology

ENDOWED LECTURES

There will be at least five endowed lectures, named Ibn Roshd, Maimonides, Kierkegaard, Dasan, and Wang Yangming.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Papers shall be submitted either (a) as an electronic version by attachment to an e-mail message to the

following address: secretariat@wcp2018.pku.edu.cn or, in exceptional circumstances, (b) as one paper copy, typewritten and double-spaced, addressed to:

Chinese Organizing Committee 24th World Congress of Philosophy

Secretariat Department of Philosophy—Peking University

No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District,

Beijing, P.R.China 100871

北京市海淀区颐和园路 5 号北京大学哲学

系世界哲学大会秘书处

中国组委会（收）

邮编：100871

Submissions should not exceed 1800 words (or 3000 characters for papers submitted in Chinese), and should be accompanied by a maximum 200-word abstract (500 characters in Chinese). The submission should include an indication, prominently displayed, of the section for which the contributed paper is intended and shall be written in one of the official languages of the Congress.

The International Program Committee reserves the right to accept or not accept papers on the basis of criteria of quality. Only papers of a philosophical nature will be considered for inclusion in the program.

Papers and proposals for round-tables and poster sessions should be sent to the above addresses.

OTHER SESSIONS

The International Program Committee will decide specific topics of invited sessions, upon proposals by CD members.

Proposals are invited for round-tables on more specific philosophical topics. Organizers of roundtables should take into consideration that roundtables should usually include speakers from as least three different countries and that the participants must be registered for the Congress.

The organizers and the themes of round-tables are subject to the approval of the International Program Committee.

Proposals are also invited for thematic workshops and student sessions.

SESSIONS OF MEMBER SOCIETIES OF FISP

Member societies of FISP that wish to hold meetings during the Congress are kindly requested to apply to the Secretary General of FISP no later than June 1, 2017. The number of sessions organized by each member society may be subject to limitations.

IMPORTANT DATES

October 1, 2017 is the deadline for the receipt of contributed papers and for proposals for round-tables, workshops and student sessions. Papers and proposals received after this deadline, but before February 1, 2018, may be accepted, if space is still available.