美国《纽约时报》是是美国严肃报刊的代表,长期以来拥有良好的公信力和权威性著称,1913年正式在美国出版发行,其新闻涵盖社会多个方面,当中文章更是囊括了丰富的词汇。所以可以通过阅读《纽约时报》来丰富自己的词汇量,从而更好地进备考。下面是小编推荐GRE阅读资料之哈佛最受欢迎的中国哲学课。
Michael Puett on the Enduring Lessons of Chinese Philosophy
哈佛最受欢迎的中国哲学课
Since 2006, Michael Puett has taught an undergraduate survey course at Harvard University on Chinese philosophy, examining how classic Chinese texts are relevant today. The course is now one of Harvard’s most popular, third only to “Introduction to Computer Science” and “Principles of Economics.” Mr. Puett and the writer Christine Gross-Loh have distilled the essence of his course into “The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life.” The book has been bought by publishers in 25 countries, including China, where the book will be published this year.
自2006年以来,普鸣(Michael Puett)一直在哈佛大学(Harvard University)向本科生教授中国哲学概论,探讨中国经典著作如何与当下产生关联。如今,这门课是哈佛最受欢迎的课程之一,仅次于《计算计科学入门》和《经济学原理》。普鸣和作家克里斯蒂·格罗斯-骆(Christine Gross-Loh)将这门课程的精华提炼出来,写就了《正道:中国哲学家论好的生活》(The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life)。这本书已被25个国家的出版社购买了版权,包括中国。今年它就会在中国面世。
In an interview, Mr. Puett discussed the value of rituals, reading Du Fu as well as Shakespeare, and why embracing your true self is not the answer.
在采访中,普鸣探讨了仪式的价值,谈到既要读莎士比亚,也要读杜甫,还解释了为什么拥抱真实的自我并非真正的答案。
Some Chinese philosophical texts are already very popular in the West. There are innumerable translations, for example, of Laotzu’s Tao Te Ching.
一些中国哲学著作在西方已经非常流行。它们有许多的译本,比如老子的《道德经》。
Some of the texts are indeed very popular, but one of my concerns is that they’re often read according to our stereotypes. They are often thought of as “traditional” ideas, focused on teaching us to accord with the world as it is, as opposed to what we like to call “modern” ideas that are focused on liberating us as individuals to decide for ourselves how to live. So-called Confucianism, for example, is read as simply being about forcing people to accept their social roles, while so-called Taoism is about harmonizing with the larger natural world. So Confucianism is often presented as bad and Taoism as good. But in neither case are we really learning from them.
有些著作的确很受欢迎,但我的一点担忧在于,人们往往是带着成见在阅读它们。它们通常被看作“传统”观念,重在教育我们顺应世界本来的样子,与我们喜欢冠之以“现代”的观念相对。后者主要是将我们作为个体解放出来,自己决定如何生活。比如,所谓的儒学就被简单地理解为强迫人们接受自己的社会角色,而所谓的道家思想就是关于与更大的自然界和谐相处。所以,儒家思想经常被呈现为坏的,而道家思想则被呈现为好的。但是在这两者上,我们都没有领悟它们的真谛。
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They come across as exotic and foreign.
它们给人的印象是有异域特色的陌生概念。
Precisely. They’ve become simply foreign and exotic, made into things that we have nothing to learn from.
一点没错。它们仅仅变成了来自异域的陌生观念,成了我们没什么好学的东西。
Is there another risk? That these ideas could be reduced to self-help tips?
还有别的风险吗?诸如这些观念可能会被降格为自助自立的建议?
A key idea of the book is precisely to oppose that. If we want to take these ideas seriously, we shouldn’t domesticate them to our own way of thinking. When we read them as self-help, we are assuming our own definition of the self and then simply picking up pieces of these ideas that fit into such a vision. So, for example, people sometimes take Taoism as a way to “help me find myself and live well in the world.” But these ideas are not about looking within and finding oneself. They are about overcoming the self. They are, in a sense, anti-self-help.
这本书的一个核心观点恰恰与之相反。如果我们想认真对待这些观念,就不该用我们的思维方式去改造它们。如果把它们当做如何自助的建议来读,就是在预设有关自我的定义,然后只是从这些观念中挑选出符合这一愿景的观点。所以,人们有时会把道家思想当作一种“帮助发现自我,更好地在世界上生活”的工具。但这些思想与审视内心和发现自我并没有什么关系。它们讲的是战胜自我。从某种意义上,它们是反自助的。
What is a key idea in China’s philosophical tradition that challenges contemporary assumptions?
中国哲学传统中哪个核心观念对当代的假定提出了挑战?
Today, we are often told that our goal should be to look within and find ourselves, and, once we do, to strive to be sincere and authentic to that true self, always loving ourselves and embracing ourselves for who we are. All of this sounds great and is a key part of what we think of as a properly “modern” way to live. But what if we’re, on the contrary, messy selves that tend to fall into ruts and patterns of behavior? If so, the last thing we would want to be doing is embracing ourselves for who we are — embracing, in other words, a set of patterns we’ve fallen into. The goal should rather be to break these patterns and ruts, to train ourselves to interact better with those around us.
如今,我们往往被告知,我们的目标应该是审视内心和发现自我,一旦我们这么做,去努力做到真诚地面对真实的自我,我们总是会喜欢自己,会拥抱我们本来的样子。所有这些听起来是不错,也是被我们看作正确的“现代”生活方式的一个核心部分。但如果我们的自我恰恰是混乱的,容易落入陈规和行为模式,又该如何?倘若是这种情况,我们最不该做的就是拥抱本来的自我——换言之,就是拥抱我们落入的一整套模式。我们的目标反而应该是打破这些模式和陈规,训练自己与周围的人进行更好的互动。
You argue that Chinese philosophy views rituals as tools that can liberate us from these ruts.
你认为中国哲学思想将仪式看作工具,可以让我们从陈规中解放出来。
We tend to think of rituals as things that tell us what to do — to socialize us into certain ways of acting. But several texts we discuss have a very different understanding of ritual. Rituals force us for a brief moment to become a different person and to interact with those around us in a different way. They work because they break us from the patterns that we fall into and that otherwise dominate our behavior.
我们倾向于把仪式看作这样一种东西,它们会告诉我们该做些什么——使我们社会化,养成一些行为方式。不过,我们讨论的好几本著作对仪式有着截然不同的理解。仪式迫使我们短暂地变成另外一个人,以一种不同的方式与周遭的一切进行互动。它们之所以有用,是因为我们打破了自己以往的模式。若非如此,这些模式就还在支配我们的行为。
In the early Han dynasty, for example, we have examples of rituals that called for role reversals. The father would be called upon to play the son, and the son would play the father. Each is forced to see the world from the other’s perspective, with the son learning what it’s like to be in a position of authority and the father remembering what it was like to be the more subservient one.
比如,在古代的汉朝,我们看到一些仪式要求人们互换角色。父亲被要求扮演儿子的角色,儿子则扮演父亲。二者都不得不从对方的视角看待这个世界。儿子会明白处在一个权威的位置是什么感觉,父亲则会记住,做一个更需要服从的角色是什么样。
Are we at a phase of globalization where ideas that were once considered exotic might be valued as part of our own, broader cultural heritage?
我们是不是处在全球化的一个阶段,而在这个阶段,过去被看作异域观念的东西可能会被看作我们自己的一部分,当作更宽泛的文化遗产?
It’s my hope. We tend to think that we live in a globalized world, but in a lot of ways we really don’t. The truth is that for a long time only a very limited number of ideas have dominated the world, while ideas that arose elsewhere were seen as “traditional” and not worth learning from.
这是我所希望的。我们愿意认为自己生活在一个全球化的世界里,但实际上我们在很多方面并非如此。真实情况是,长久以来,只有很少数的一些观念主导着这个世界,而其他任何地方诞生的思想都被看作是“传统的”,不值得研习。
But imagine future generations that grow up reading Du Fu along with Shakespeare, and Confucius along with Plato. Imagine that type of world, where great ideas — wherever they arose — are thought about and wrestled with.
但是请想象一下同时读着杜甫和莎士比亚,同时读着孔子和柏拉图的著作长大的未来世代。想像一下那样一个世界,伟大的观念——不管是在哪里产生——都被拿来思考和斟酌。
以上就是关于GRE阅读资料之GRE阅读资料之哈佛最受欢迎的中国哲学课的资料分享,掌握一些高分的句子,和句子分析的技巧,可以帮助考生更加轻松的应对考试!
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