Classical Chinese
Ethical and Political Theory
MICHAEL PUETT | HARVARD GENED 1091
What is the best way to live a fuller and more ethical life? Concretely what should we do to begin to live in a more flourishing and inspiring way? Questions such as these were at the heart of philosophical debates in China. The answers that classical Chinese thinkers developed in response to these questions are among the most powerful in human history. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, they should be studied and taken seriously by anyone who cares about ethics, politics, and the ways to live life more fully.
The focus of the course is on re-thinking current ethical and political issues in terms of classical Chinese ideas. No previous knowledge of Chinese philosophy or history is assumed. There will be two lectures and one discussion section per week. The lectures will introduce students to each text and discuss the larger implications that each text has for our current understandings. The discussion sections then provide students with an opportunity to debate these implications in depth.
INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL
MICHAEL PUETT ON ZHUANGZI
SEARCHING FOR YOUR TRUE SELF
STUDENT PROJECTS
Kaylee Kim
Libby Wu
Adede Appah-Sampong
Isaac Jirak, Jack Bruce
About the Instructor
Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology at Harvard University. His interests are focused on the inter-relations between history, anthropology, religion, and philosophy, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. He is the author of The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity.