What I Have learned This Year?

The greatest thing I have gained from this course is the reading experience. It is just amazing that ancient philosophers have already discussed all the important questions of human life and our universe. And the most important thing I gained through the one year visiting program is my experience communicating with Christians. Let me talk about the two things seperately. First, I love the reading assignments so much. The wisdom of ancient philosophers inspired me a lot. I read Paedo, Nicomachean Ethics, Symposium, and other presocratics. They discuss the topic of love, virtue, death, wisdom and happiness, which sometime really get me touched. Especially Paedo, the scene in which Socrates at first failed to give a good argument about the soul of human. With several seconds of silence accompanied by the sorrow of people around him, Socrates just smiled and said that there is no need to be sad about me, because what I was doing is just for the sake of truth and to convice myself, by no means to win others. Also, the idea of doing philosophy as the practice of love and death is appealling to me, for we as limited creatures in the universe are all afraid of deathe and have the quest for being loved and loving others. These important matters of life are the basis and motives of philosophical studies, at least for myself. I hope to lead a decent and meaningful life which is not filled up with materials and products, but spiritual enjoyment. For the sake of such happiness, I believe most of us would say that puzzlements and difficulties brought about by the contemplative works are worth paying.

Second, my experience of communicating with Christains gives me two important knowledges. One is that Christian emphasis on the sinfulness of human beings is illuminating, which is one of the weakness of Chinese philosophy. My Christian Chinese friends here are always emphasizing this important aspect of Christianity in our bible study. The other thing is that Jesus is love, and God is love. Also I believe the Christian notion of love is unique and profund. Compared with Confucious notion of love, Jesus’s love is the one that is based on very intimate relationship amoing god and human, human and human. I think I will go on investigating this problem and do some further studies in Christianity.