Fu Peirong - Philosophy and Life (Huizhong Edition)

Author: Fu Peirong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: A philosophy course 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 about 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, passing on the joy of thinking to his students. He is a witness, and 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 enthusiastically received by students and has been rated 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" of humanity. This approach feels both accurate and highly original.