Update: Another relevant exchange with another student appended to the end. A student asks (referring to a passage from Primer Section 1.4): …if I said “NUS students are too studious.” compared to “NUS students are so studious.”, the first is prescriptive whereas the second is descriptive? The “too” conveys a unapproving tone and perceived limiter whereas […]
Continue reading →The bulk of the below was originally composed in response to some student reactions to the second lecture on Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj in AY2021-2022, Semester 1. Among the questions that came in for L04, one recurring theme stands out: many students think that Gandhi’s idea of passive resistance is too idealistic, unrealistic, won’t work in […]
Continue reading →Name redacted, of course. I’m posting, as usual, because the rest of you can benefit from it–not just my own responses (streamlined/revised slightly), but also the way the student carefully works through his/her own doubts too. Enjoy! Good day Prof! Partly because of doing the quiz, I have recently been thinking more about the descriptive […]
Continue reading →That’s 道 dào for you, a really important term in Classical Chinese discourse… about the human condition! The term is both a very ordinary term, but also co-opted for some fancy philosophical rumination. And this actually causes some confusion. Students who know a bit about the “daoists” but have not read much of anything else […]
Continue reading →The gentleman says: Learning must never stop. Blue dye is gotten from the indigo plant, and yet it is bluer than the plant. Right at the opening line of Xunzi, Chapter one: “An Exhortation to Learning”, you encounter this term “gentleman”, which translates 君子 jūnzǐ. As this is an important concept in early Chinese texts, […]
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