Introduction

Introduction

Given the crises facing the humanistic values and human existence in the contemporary world, as well as the ongoing pursuit of broadening and deepening academic visions, major global educational institutions have felt profoundly the necessity of establishing an institution for advanced research. Therefore, this university took the lead in establishing the first Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences in the Chinese-speaking region on October 18, 2005, aiming to provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary platform for research on fundamental issues in the humanities, social sciences, basic sciences, and technology by facilitating exchanges at both institutional and international levels. With revitalizing humanistic values as its foundational inspiration, and by transcending the fragmentation of disciplines in knowledge production, the institute seeks to promote interaction and dialogue across different fields and thereby fostering breakthroughs and advancements in academic research. Ultimately, it aspires to renew humanistic values and redefine the relationship between humanity and nature so as to contribute in its modest way to addressing the major crises facing the globe.

Mission

The Institute is dedicated to fostering an academic environment conducive to advanced research and revitalizing humanistic values by committing itself to the following missions:

1. Fostering academic dialogue across the disciplinary boundaries.

2. Integrating and encouraging advanced scholarship and fundamental research across all disciplines.

3. Organizing and supporting promising research teams of transdisciplinary scholarship of significance and originality.

4. Enhancing collaborations at various levels with other eminent academic institutions in the nation and abroad.

Major Inquiries

I. Catching up with Post-West – Re-evaluating Traditional Cultures amidst Western Modernity:

In the past four hundred years or so, the Hebraic-Hellenic thinking has produced what has been known as Western modernity, which, while having imposed itself as human destiny, eventually led to the Anthropocene. In view of increasingly penetrating critiques of Western modernity and desperate endeavors to redress the ills it has produced, can non-Western traditional cultures offer antidotes to these ills and play a role in coping with Western modernity in general and perhaps even going beyond this modernity? Following the spirit of decolonial “border thinking”, this line of inquiry will try to tap the local wisdom of non-Western traditional cultures with a view to finding alternative paths to Western modernity.

II. Unfolding Posthumanities – Negotiating Old Humanism and Scientific Advancements:

The developments of science and technology have been one of the deciding factors in shaping human existence. In modern times, the accelerated pace of developments in both has even more radically impacted on human existence in both positive and negative ways. While the positive impacts can offer impetus for reflecting and renewing humanistic values, the negative ones have proven to be especially imperiling as manifested by the Anthropocene. So how we are to make the best use of the advancements in science and technology while avoiding their pitfalls requires constant dialogues and negotiations with them. In so doing, this line of inquiry seeks to remold humanistic values into forms relevant to our time.

III. Envisioning Post-Globalization – Interrogating Neoliberal Globalization from the borderlands:

In the post-War period, the ways of global movement and interaction have undergone drastic changes through advances in technology as well as man-made disasters. Thus, while having brought the world closer than ever, globalization has also generated constant frictions: those between different cultures as well as between the rich and the poor. The impact of globalization has even distorted the practice of democracy on which the West has prided itself. Thus, this emphasis will seek to discover in the experience of these unprecedented human movements and encounters what is beneficial to re-inventing the humanistic values and make the best of it.