Fu Peirong · Philosophy and Life (Huizhong Edition)

Author: Fu Peirong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: A philosophy class can be boring or engaging, depending on who teaches it. The primary goal of a philosophy class is to ignite a love for wisdom and guide students to think about significant questions in the world and life. To achieve this goal, the philosophy teacher must himself be a lover of wisdom with a vibrant intellect. He can create a magnetic field in the classroom, transmitting the joy of thinking to his students. He is a witness—when students see him, they believe that philosophy is definitely not a dry subject. Such a teacher would naturally not use a ready-made textbook written by others to teach his class; he must write his own textbook, infusing it with his unique perspective and independent thinking. Professor Fu Peirong's Philosophy and Life is just such a textbook. The course he teaches at National Taiwan University has been warmly welcomed by students and has been ranked as the "Best General Education Course." The author truly has a deep understanding of philosophy and excels at expressing it in a concise and clear manner. For example, when explaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom, he defines it as a life attitude of "maintaining a curious nature and inquiring into the truth of all things," summarizes wisdom as having two characteristics—"wholeness" and "fundamentalism"—and explains the "love" in love of wisdom as a gentle and rational "friendship," distinguishing it from the passionate "love" and the superficial "love," which makes it both accurate and highly original.