China looks to the Western classics

[BidenPresident]

As American universities reevaluate the role of Western classical education, Latin and Greek courses are proliferating in China, where students see the Classics as a wellspring of wisdom that remains relevant regardless of hemisphere.

At first blush, China looks like an improbable place to find “new perspectives” in the Classics. But in the past few decades, its universities have grown into bastions of curiosity about the West and its traditions. The irony is palpable. Across China, patriotic fervor is growing, and nationalists are more confident and dismissive of Western critics. But enter a humanities classroom and one is as likely to find students reciting speeches by Cicero as reading lines of Marx.

https://supchina.com/2022/01/13/china-looks-to-the-western-classics/

 

[BidenPresident]

“It’s a generational shift,” said T.H. Jiang, a philosophy lecturer in an elite U.S. university and a former humanities student at Peking University in the early 2000s. “Now, Chinese students are studying Medieval theology, the ancient Middle East, and ancient Near Eastern studies,” he told me. Jiang believed part of the intellectual curiosity came from a renewed confidence. “[Chinese students] started to think, ‘Oh, those other cultures are accessible to us. And because China is also a great civilization, why don’t we study other civilizations too?’”

 

[Jack]

'Opium Wars'. Probably encouraged reading.

 

[BidenPresident]

'Opium Wars'. Probably encouraged reading.

What does that have to do with studying the classics?

 

[Jack]

What does that have to do with studying the classics?

As you noted, China is nationalistic, along with being an Ethno-State. Their experience with Western Drug Cartels has a strong influence over them and their thinking and attitudes.

 

[BidenPresident]

As you noted, China is nationalistic, along with being an Ethno-State. Their experience with Western Drug Cartels has a strong influence over them and their thinking and attitudes.

Ok. Nothing to do with the topic.

 

[Jack]

Ok. Nothing to do with the topic.

They probably know more about Western Drug Cartels (like the British East India Company) fighting Drug Wars with China than most Westerners.

"The Opium Wars were two wars waged between the Qing dynasty and Western powers in the mid-19th century. The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and the United Kingdom, was triggered by the dynasty's campaign against the British merchants who sold opium in China. Wikipedia"

 

[Cypress]

The well rounded and well educated person should have some exposure to the intellectual traditions of both East and West.

 

[BidenPresident]

The well rounded and well educated person should have some exposure to the intellectual traditions of both East and West.

Interesting that as classics become weaker in the US it becomes stronger in China.

 

[Cypress]

Interesting that as classics become weaker in the US it becomes stronger in China.

It is a sign of confidence to promote the learning of the best of other cultures.

Conservatives generally feel any consideration of European intellectual history, Chinese philosophy, Indian mysticism to be suspect, when all they really need are the intellectual giants Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson to tell them what to think.

 

[BidenPresident]

It is a sign of confidence to promote the learning of the best of other cultures.

Conservatives generally feel any consideration of European intellectual history, Chinese philosophy, Indian mysticism to be suspect, when all they really need are the intellectual giants Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson to tell them what to think.

Unfortunately, it may be American liberals who are causing the decline. There is a black classics scholar in the US who is saying classics should be dismantled or weakened.

 

[evince]

Let’s remember what happen when America began sending their children to college to learn the classics in large numbers


The sixties

 

[evince]

Unfortunately, it may be American liberals who are causing the decline. There is a black classics scholar in the US who is saying classics should be dismantled or weakened.

One doesn’t make a shift

 

[Cypress]

Unfortunately, it may be American liberals who are causing the decline. There is a black classics scholar in the US who is saying classics should be dismantled or weakened.

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

 

[Cypress]

Let’s remember what happen when America began sending their children to college to learn the classics in large numbers


The sixties

GI Bill transformed American higher education

 

[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/magazine/classics-greece-rome-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.