The Confucius-Aristotle Symposium 2024, co-organized by the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, the Mencius Foundation, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN), was held in Beijing on July 11-12.

Themed "The Commons in Intellectual Traditions and Future Practice," the two-day event was attended by 101 scholars from 17 countries, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Greece, with 66 international participants.

The forum aims to expand thinking on the concept of "community" and explore solutions to various contemporary global challenges, such as unequal development, changes in the international order, ecological and climate crises, and technological iterations through discussing how to draw upon the wisdom of ancient civilizations in the East and West.

The symposium included five panels: Civilization in History: Principle, Transfiguration, and Rebirth; The Public in Pre-Modern Polity: Governance, Wealth, and Ethnic Groups; Indra's Net: Ecology as a Methodology; Sustaining the Mind: From Embodied Skills to AI Platforms; Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Commons and Contemporary Practices of Commoning.

During the panel discussions, conference participants delved into the theory and practice of "community" from various dimensions such as classical studies, political philosophy, ecology and religion, artificial intelligence, and public policy-making.

The event also featured a holographic dialogue between Mencius and Aristotle presided over by Sachs and Meng.

Jointly initiated by UNSDSN and the Athens Academy, the Confucius–Aristotle Symposium was first held in Athens in 2019 and has been organized three more times since then.