China looks to the Western classics

[BidenPresident]

If you look at message board history, and national politicians, the people most hostile to higher education and liberal arts in particular are Republicans.

I agree that the liberal arts and humanities are always under pressure to justify themselves, and I think that is a trend which has been going on for at least 50 years

"Padilla, a leading historian of Rome who teaches at Princeton and was born in the Dominican Republic, was one of the panelists that day. For several years, he has been speaking openly about the harm caused by practitioners of classics in the two millenniums since antiquity: the classical justifications of slavery, race science, colonialism, Nazism and other 20th-century fascisms. Classics was a discipline around which the modern Western university grew, and Padilla believes that it has sown racism through the entirety of higher education. "

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/m...whiteness.html

[evince]

Every time you teach people ideas of the historical world


You teach them to think and weigh ideas



This will change Chinas future

[Cypress]

Every time you teach people ideas of the historical world


You teach them to think and weigh ideas



This will change Chinas future

Socrates seemingly is kind of dangerous to traditional communist party dogma.

Socrates famously questioned tradition, convention, and recieved authority, and was ultimately executed as an enemy of the state.

[BidenPresident]

Socrates seemingly is kind of dangerous to traditional communist party dogma.

Socrates famously questioned tradition, convention, and recieved authority, and was ultimately executed as an enemy of the state.

Yes, another strain in classics in China is conservatism.

[Cypress]

Yes, another strain in classics in China is conservatism.

some elements of truth there.

I think revisionist history has also tried to paint the Confucian tradition as one that was subservient to authority.

Which is only partially true, and does not represent Confucian thought in it's most comprehensive form.

Confucius believed in a type of heirarchy, but he also believed in speaking truth to power, especially power that was unjust. And for his time and age, Confucius was seeking truly radical change for China.

[evince]

They will find ties to thoughts of freedom in the study of both


Chinas rulers will not be able to police their thoughts


The arch of mankind bends towards freedom



Truth crushed to the earth always rises